Female character causes CTD SSE

[darkeknight007]

I have an issue with female character causing CTD. It started yesterday. I just started using Racemenu for SSE and was able to get it to work great, but since I was new to using it I wasn't sure if it was missing any features that should be working other than the options reported by the author. I looked at a video and the author said to use NIF optimizer on the meshes that came with racemenu. I didn't do that so I thought I should just go ahead and run it on the racemenu files I have already installed in character assets. After doing that I started getting the CTD when viewing my female player character in game. It happens every time I load a save with my female character or use racemenu. I noticed it was female because I disabled all mods, deleted racemenu, and started a new game. In the beginning when prompted to create character, default is male. The male character was completely fine (was able to switch between races and features) until I switched to a human female character and then immediate CTD. I think some kind of female NIF files were damaged or changed but not sure how to change all NIFs (well except for reinstalling). I use CBBE, reinstalled it, reinstalled XPMSSE, reinstalled racemenu (before deleting altogether) and loose files. I just sux cause I had everything running fine until I ran NIF Optimizer on those files. Never had crashes except for video driver issues, but even that didn't go to CTD. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[WastelandAssassin]

if it was working fine up to the point of using NIF optimizer , why don't you just reinstall the game , install racemenu (without running NIF optimizer) , and see if making a female character works properly now?

if it does , just install the other mods you wish to use , and play the game that way

I'm not sure about NIF optimizer , don't think I've ever used it (though I don't think I've used Racemenu with SE , only on Oldrim)

my guess is you did something wrong in the optimization process , but I really don't know what you may have done wrong

[darkeknight007]

WelI, I've used NIF Optimizer before and usually use the default settings, which is usually the advice given. I did run it in the character assets folder instead of running it only on the racemenu files, but I was under the impression it does not affect SSE NIF files. I eventually will reinstall if I can't come up with a specific culprit but just trying to avoid all the reinstalling + setup apps + mods.

[WastelandAssassin]

I don't think you should have any SSE NIF files in your data folder

the game delivers the files in BSA archives (or similar formats) , so you shouldn't have these as loose files unless you unpacked these archives for some reason

maybe you optimized something from a different mod that causes this? like a body mod or something along these lines?

the thing is , even if you disabled all mods , it doesn't mean they aren't loading into the game

for example , body mods don't require a plugin , because they provide the game with an alternative set of meshes and textures to load , instead of the ones inside the BSA archives (and the game will load loose files instead of the files in the BSA archives , if loose files exist)

so if you really want to test it properly , remove all folders containing loose files (basically cut the Meshes folder from your data folder , and move it to a different location . since NIF files are the issue , I think you only need to move the Meshes folder) , and test the game now

if it really is a problem with meshes provided by your mods , simply reinstalling the mods should fix the issue

[darkeknight007]

Yeah, you are right, totally forgot the original files were in bsa. So I just renamed the meshes folder and the new game ran fine. So I bet I can just reinstall those mods so they can recreate the folder, which I think will correct the issue. Thanks for that info.

[WastelandAssassin]

no problem

glad we were able to fix the issue :)