I somehow broke my Skyrim installation...

[DerellLicht]

Steam shows me as having played Skyrim for 993 hours. However, when I try to start the game (whether from Steam, SKSE, or NMM), I get just the intro game screen, and then it shuts down without displaying the first menu.

 

On top of that, in NMM version 0.61.23, 9 of my 22 mods show exclamation point under "Download Id", which seems to mean that the mods are not present on Nexus?? I ran "Check for missing/outdated Download ID", which updated most of the mods, but not these 9. Is this issue perhaps related to my inability to run the game??

 

I last played Skyrim about 2 or 3 months ago, and at that time it worked fine...

 

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I tried disabling all of the mods with invalid download IDs, but the game still does not run, so apparently that's not the issue.

Edited August 14, 2016 by DerellLicht

[Oubliette]

Why are you posting twice on the same topic? The PtB tend to frown on spamming a question like that but at least this one isn't annoyingly highlighted in blue.

 

You're relying on NMM a bit much. Try typing the name of the mods with the exclamation mark into google and see if they're actually missing or not. Even if they are missing on the site that doesn't automatically mean they stopped working, just that no one else will be able to get them. In some instances this makes you a very lucky gamer because people are always finding out something they want is gone only after the fact, if you like it make a backup and make sure to keep them safe!

 

As for your game, crashing before the menu is usually a sign of a missing master of mod conflict. It's a simple enough problem to solve with so few mods.

 

The following is standard trouble shooting for issues not pinned to an obvious source, verifying your game files through steam is only step 1 aka the easy step.

• First - have you verified your game files through steam and updated to the latest patch?
• Second - uncheck all your mods, start a new game, save after the chargen. This will be your 'tester save.' Do Not Overwrite or Delete this save.
• Third - Enable five mods.
• Four - Go into game with your tester save. Run from one end of the game world to the other. Go into a few cities. Interact with a few things that are related to your problem. See if anything crashes/doesn't animate properly.
• Five - No sign of problems? Repeat 3-5. It crashed or something's not right? Go to step 6.
• Six - something not right? uncheck one of the five mods then go back to your tester save, repeat step 4.

Continue until you have found and fixed your error.

Edited August 14, 2016 by Oubliette

[Darkstyler35]

Hello,

• Skyrim doesn't start troubleshoot.
• Verify gamecache.
• CTDs troubleshooting page on Reddit. depending on what's happening in game, choose the subsections that describe the best your problem.
• Make sure you're using the good mods >> Dangerous mods list.

Here is a list of things that may help stabilizing your game if not already been done. :

/// Load order / mods conflicts :

• Use L.O.O.T once and click on the "sort plugins buttons".
• Create a wryebash patch including leveled lists.
• Create a merged patch with Tesedit excluding leveled lists
• More specifically, you may create a manual patch between two or more mods.

/// Cleaning and correcting potential bugs :

• Clean your master files to eliminate potential problems : Gopher's videos cleaning your masterfiles on the Nexus Tesedit page.
  Start Tes5edit, simply untick everything, (right-click/select none) and add only a tick to the esm/esp you want to check + update.esm, Tesedit knows what to do and will load all the dependencies automatically.
  - Begin with loading only Skyrim + update, ITM / UDR + save ctrl +s and close.
  - Then load Skyrim + update + Dawnguard, ITM / UDR + ctrl +s and close.
  - Then load Skyrim + update + Hearthfire, ITM / UDR + ctrl +s and close.
  - Then load Skyrim + update + Dragonborn, ITM / UDR + ctrl +s and close.
• The method above can be used to clean mods. LOOT should tell you which plugin you should clean. You may also do a check errors.

/// Settings / memory :

• Have you installed the skse patch + memory blocks log ?
• Skse installation : skse on steam or Manual install.
• Backup your ini files and delete the files. Skyrim.ini / SkyrimCustom.ini / SkyrimPrefs.ini found in C:\Users\Utilisateur\Documents\My Games\Skyrim then use your vanilla launcher to autodetect and use best settings for your computer.
• Using crash fixes may help to fix some crashes.
• You may install ENBOOST >> ENB graphics / ENB haxx.

/// Save game :

• Don't uninstall mods at mid-game, there are no clean save in Skyrim but using save script cleaner can help removing orphan scripts.
• New SkyrimTools, (corrupt saves topic).

/// Meshes healer :

• Read here, this is potentially a cause of CTD that you can resolve by following the mod procedure on this page.

/// Useful informations :

• Skyrim performance monitor.
• STEP troubleshooting page.
• Ensure your skyrim installation is healthy = Make skyrim vanilla again.
• an efficient guide to build your game : STEP.
• Make sure you're using the latest USLEEP.
• Papyrus log is a scripts log only and doesn't cover anything else, not a crash log. Interpreting Papyrus Log Errors, thanks to Arthmoor.

Hope this helps.

[MaxShadow09]

As Oubliette said, crash at startup usually happens because of two reasons:

 

- Missing masters

- More than 255 active plugins

 

If you're using NMM, go to your plugin list, and see if there's any of them with red font. That means it needs another plugin as master, but it doesn't exist in your data folder. If there's any with yellow font, that means that some of its masters are disabled. I think the game loads those masters even if you disable them.

 

If you have more than 255 active plugins, you should see the active plugins number in red (in NMM). If you don't have more than 255 active plugins, but you're near the limit, perhaps there are some disabled masters, and the game is loading them anyway (making you hit the limit). That happened to me once in Fallout 4, when I merged a plugin with many masters.

 

Keep in mind that opening the vainilla Skyrim Launcher sometimes enables all your plugins. I suggest you make a backup of your plugin list files before doing that.

Edited August 14, 2016 by MaxShadow09

[DerellLicht]

Thanks for the all the inputs/suggestions; I will try them shortly, one at a time.

 

As for the dual posting, I apologize for that; I actually intended them to be different questions; the other post was about Skyrim not running, this one was intended to address the NMM anomalies - but of course, since I started both posts exactly the same, nobody knows that. I should have just left this post, and not the other.

 

Thank you all again; I'll post an update later, once I've done some of these tasks.

[MaxShadow09]

Don't pay attention to the missing ID, that happens when NMM can't get the info from that file, because you downloaded it manually, or perhaps it just can't find that file on the site. It won't affect anything.

[DerellLicht]

Okay, this is resolved...

I had un-installed Falskaar mod, and didn't realize that two of my plugins were linked to it. I had to re-install them and un-check Falskaar, then all is well! The two mods were indeed listed in red on the Plugins tab - but I haven't been looking at that tab, only at the Mods tab. I know better now!

 

I still need to resolve mods with Download ID issues, I'll probably just uninstall and re-install from Nexus page, but either way, Skyrim is running fine now, and I learned some new debugging techniques!!