Exactly what is causing my game to crash? Constantly?

[th3overseer]

I'm baaaaack. So, everything I said in this post http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/3836895-new-vegas-fnvedit-are-broken-because-reasons/ is still valid. But, I was informed that, likely, the crashes are caused because of some mod that got removed at some point. Well, OK, traces of whatever mod-from-hell that I foolishly deleted were probably lingering and causing errors. But that should not be on a new file. So, I start a new file. The main screen loads up, and I press new game. No problems so far. Then, the into cinematic starts, and I skip it. No problems so far. I have that roleplaying start mod on, so that asks me which faction I want to start with. All good so far. There's a loading screen, and once that finishes, I'm informed that the Great Khans like me for my actions... and then it crashes because of course it does. I've been trying to google issues, and I've heard three solutions, all of which work. Sometimes. Maybe.

The first is to rename the music folder so the game can't find it. Sometimes this works, and everything loads. The downside is... there's no music. Ever. Also it still crashes sometimes. Then there's this thing where I "verify integrity of the game cache" through steam. Sometimes it says there's an issue with two files, sometimes just one. Sometimes it makes the crashes piss off into whatever hole they crawled up from... sometimes it does not. Lastly, there's fiddling with that archive invalidation thingy. Say it with me now: sometimes it works, sometimes it does nothing and crashes persist. But if one of those works, and I can actually play the game, it only lasts for that session. The millisecond I close the game, it resets itself. So next time I try to open it, the crashes will return, and I get all giddy with anticipation to see if it will crash the second it loads, or wait until it spots and enemy, or just if I try to go outside. (I have NVAC, if that was in question.)

So... what the hell do I do?

[T1887]

Delete everything and do a fresh install (keep your save file) I have trouble with mine, too. The game is old, buggy and has compatibility issues with every Win OS after XP.

When you get it working well with a small number of mods, copy your entire game folder as a backup.

I hope Fallout 4 doesn't have so many issues.

[dubiousintent]

When you go to the trouble of "starting over" be sure to delete or at least rename the INI files in your <useraccount> "My Games" folder. Let the game rebuild them from the reinstalled defaults. That way you don't carry over any changes previous mods may have made to them. (Which they are prone to doing without telling you.)

 

The "verify files" routine should always need to restore at least one file, which will be an INI file, simply because the game always modifies it with your hardware info the first time it runs.

 

When you "fresh install", you want to get the basic vanilla game stable before adding any mods. That means run around a bit with a "test" character (not your saved game), full save, and then reload and run around some more. Then tweak your INI files, test, install your first mod (starting with stability mods), test, and another, test; rinse and repeat until you have all your mods loaded and running fine. Then try to load and run your saved game (i.e. rename your "Saves" folder to "Test Saves" or something and restore your saved game folder as "Saves".) If that crashes then you know you have a corrupted save game and need to go back to an earlier save where it isn't.

 

Oh, and if you are going to "fresh install" do NOT accept the default "C:\Program Files" folder. Move it out of that tree into something that is not "system protected". See the "Installing Games on Windows Vista+" article in my signature.

 

If you can't get a stable vanilla game without any mods other than stability ones, then you probably have a hardware issue. Software problems tend to be repeatable under specific conditions. Hardware problems tend to be erratic, often not manifesting until they have been on for a while (heat buildup).

 

-Dubious-

Edited March 10, 2016 by dubiousintent

[Billy1969]

you might also want to install one mod at a time and check if everything works each time in game. A very common error people that add mods to their game make is that they download and add a bunch of mods, don't check their load order, don't have the script extender installed for mods that require it, etc etc, and then they fire up their game and of course it crashes, not saying you did this, but best is to take the gentle approach, add one mod at a time, check, backup, continue.