Completely Broken Even After Reinstallation

[boogiebot257]

So, couple nights ago, got a hankering for New Vegas. Spent almost an entire day downloading the game and some mods on my s#*! internet. I got all the mods installed and running just fine, except for one: oHUD. Now, for me, oHUD has never worked properly, even after installing it properly. I don't know why I downloaded it, total bonehead move on my part. Basically, oHUD didn't work, so I figured I'd just uninstall it.

 

Boy did the game not like that.

 

Upon getting into the game again, Project Nevada and the Mod Configuration Menu. I decide to reinstall both of them, and that sort of reduces the errors, but does not get rid of them.

 

What happens next is a riptide of experimentation with oHUD, MTUI, UIO, MCM, and PN. Experimentation that crippled three of those mods and made them crash the game. I can't really tell you what I did wrong, because I don't know myself, all I did was installation and reinstallation. After a while, I just say 'f*#@ it', completely remove all the mods I have from the game and from NMM, and try to see if I can salvage it.

 

Nope. Game crashes on startup now, always. With and without DLC on, without mods, tested with the normal launcher and executable, NVSE, and FNV4GB. It always crashes. It even continues to crash after I re-installed it (which took literally all day yesterday).

 

TL;DR: One mod seems to have completely made the game non-functional and I need help.

 

Now, I will concede that this is probably my fault. I had a couple obvious problems going on, specifically using oHUD and Fallout 3 Weapons Restoration with Project Nevada. I did a few installations saying no to overwrites, something I've never done, but did for mods I figured would make sense not to overwrite. This is, absolutely, not anyone mod's fault. I've been modding for several years, so I pretty much know how it all works, but I suppose I didn't quite have the know-how to tackle this. And I do realize downloading several mods at once instead of adding them gradually was likely a bad move.

 

So, with everything out of the way, I can say what's going on now: I have uninstalled FNV completely again. Removed all the inis, saves, game files, basically I tore out the FalloutNV folder in 'My Games', and flat-out erased everything in the Fallout New Vegas Steam folder. I have not completely removed either from my system, they're all still sitting in my recycle bin, in case I need them.

 

Where do I begin fixing this game?

[dubiousintent]

First of all, are you installing the game to Steam's default location (C:\Program Files\...)? If so, especially given you have uninstalled everything, re-install to some other folder such as "C:\Games\Steam". That will avoid a lot of hidden issues, and will have the additional benefit of avoiding anything from your old game files that might remain despite your efforts to remove them. See the "Installing Games on Windows Vista+" link in my signature for the full explanation.

 

It sounds like you have successfully purged your old game files, particularly as you remembered to clear out "My Games". The INI files there were mostly likely causing your problems as they do not get cleaned up when you uninstall mods. Depending upon your Mod Manager, uninstalling does not necessarily restore vanilla files that were overwritten by mods, and the BSA Redirection form of ArchiveInvalidation causes the game to look for loose files with a later date/time stamp than the BSA. This failure to restore is especially true for XML (menu/HUD/UI) files or any which prompt you about overwriting.

 

So now you should be able to perform a new install and get a stable vanilla game (with DLC) up and running. Do that before you try to use FNV4GB and NVSE, as there are some initialization of the INI files that needs to occur in the standard launcher the first time the game is run.

 

If you have the disk space, I suggest you now make a copy of the vanilla game folder as a backup. (The recycle bin is not a safe and reliable repository.) If you don't have the disk space, how about backing up to the cloud?

 

oHUD is pretty hard to mess up. But what I have seen is that people miss some of the caveats when installing multiple Menu/HUD/UI affecting mods (some of which they are not even aware/thinking that do so, such as Project Nevada). Take a look at this post and see if you might be willing to try one more time to get it working. If it still fails, well that is why I suggested backing up the vanilla folder. Best to deal with troublesome mods early in the process.

 

As a general rule, you should always let a mod "overwrite" to maintain it's "rule of one" integrity. If you don't want it to overwrite a given file, you should either change the install order so the one you want to win is later, or not include the mod, or create a "merge" file to deal with it.

 

Ask if you run into other problems.

 

-Dubious-

Edited April 23, 2016 by dubiousintent

[boogiebot257]

Thank you so much! This got the game working fine, as fine as New Vegas can work. Had no crashing issues, but have run into some very odd bugs all in the span of one play session. Specifically, a point where talking to someone brought up the Hardcore Mode pop-up, with the game getting stuck in that mode after I closed it. Then dying a bit later sent me back to the title screen for some reason. Then returning to Goodsprings ended up with most of the houses and Victor becoming inert. I could walk right through the doors and Victor, but couldn't interact with them in any way. I did get to after going to the saloon though.

 

I've only had these once, so bits of oddness. Dunno if those are indicative of a much larger problem though. But thank you for showing me how to get the game running!

[dubiousintent]

Glad to hear you were successful in getting back up.

 

As for your oddities: suggest posting your Load Order if they persist.

 

-Dubious-