Random crashes when loading saved game

[MaxShadow09]

Hi people, I'm having a weird problem and I hope someone here can help me. Last friday the game was working fine. I'm playing with a ton of mods (580 total esp's, merged they make 230 active esp's). Yesterday I installed a few more mods. When I load my last save, it showed the loading screen, and just before it starts the game, it crashes. I thought one of the mods I installed was giving problems, so I started disabling them, one by one, and it kept crashing, until I removed my FO4Edit merged patch. I load my save and it starts normally. Looks like I found the problem! Well nope. I re-enable all the mods I disabled before, and the game crashed again. Maybe something else is causing problems, so I disable those mods again. And it kept crashing.

At this point things start getting quite weird. I try something else: I delete my .ini files and let the game generate new ones. Then I enable archive invalidation, and the game starts again. Looks like I found the problem once more!. Well nope. Adding some mods again makes it crash.

I keep trying different things. This time I try to run the game without F4SE, and it works normally. I add some mods, and it crashes again.

But this is the weirdest thing: after trying different combinations of mods, configs, with and without F4SE, I manage to load my saved game. I close the game, and restart it without touching anything. And BAM... crash again. I really don't know whats happening, but the game is apparently crashing randomly. It doesn't matter what mods I have, or what I'm using. Most of the time it crashes, but there are a few times where it loads fine. Starting a new game seems to work fine in any case. I don't know if it's a problem with the game or my PC, but it's getting on my nerves. It was working perfectly fine a couple of days ago.

 

My rig is quite old, but it can run the game decently with low settings. I use NMM to install mods, and the total size of all the mod I installed is above 50GB (not counting the game and the DLCs). But belive me, it worked fine.

I would appreciate any help you could give me, as long as its not uninstalling all the mods, or reinstalling/validating the game (all the vainilla texture ba2 were modified to reduce the texture size). Any ideas?

Edited July 16, 2017 by MaxShadow09

[jones177]

Hi

You need to find out if the CTDs are in your saves or in your game. Test with a new save.

 

One mod can trash your game. It happened to me this weekend. I installed one mod. I read the comments & bug reports. No one mentioned CTDs so I installed. Played the game & all was fine. Switched off to do some real world stuff & when I started up again CTD on loading the last save. All saves crashed that had the mod installed. The save I made before installing the mod was fine. I lost about 2 hours of play.

 

With Skyrim(old version) it was easy to spot an event that if saved would trash a save. With this game it is almost impossible. Because of this CTDs can creep into your save. With my game I have character saves that CTD a lot & other character saves that don't CTD at all. It is not my game, it is the save.

 

Since Oblivion(2007) I have overwhelmed my hardware with mod many times. It only takes one mod to upset any balance you had. I use Fallout 4 Performance Monitor to see if a hardware issue is causing a CTD on loading a save. I use FPM because it lets me know what my HD/SSD is doing as well. With my hardware I know that at 94% CPU usage a save will crash on load. If VRAM goes to the roof it will crash on load. If the cache on a HD is overwhelmed it will crash. The simple graphs will let you know.

If your saves are successful indoors & not out doors it is a hardware problem.

 

Now for some strange stuff.

 

Heavy modding can impact your hardware in some strange ways. Some errors can survive a reboot. This game engine has taught me to switch off between sessions.

 

Later

[SMB92]

I like to look at new mods I add in FO4Edit with a filter applied before I decide to run with them. This way I can find out how bad the conflicts are despite what the mod says it does or what you think it does. Found quite a few surprises in the past.

[MaxShadow09]

I found the problem! I loaded an old save file and it worked fine. However, as soon as I tried to equip an Alternate Strap Brown Dufflebag with Rifle (from Survivalist Go-Bags), the game crashed. Turns out I had that backpack equipped in all the following save files. Whatever is causing that crash, only happens sometimes. That's why I was able to equip it the first time, and why sometimes I was able to load my game. I managed to load my latest save file after that, and removed that bag from my inventory. Everything works fine now. I checked the mod page, and some people reported crashes too in the bugs section. Anyway, thanks for the replies. :happy:

[SMB92]

The mesh has probably gone corrupt or there is a problem with it in general. Check that mod for updates, or maybe redownload and reinstall (remember to uninstall first)