Vortex deciding not to manage games by itself...

[SuzanoSho]

I'm not sure how this even came about, but after downloading and installing every mod for Fallout 4 through Vortex, modding the game, getting it stable, and playing for a few months, then taking a break from Fallout 4 to mess with Skyrim Special Edition (another game completely managed with Vortex), and finally coming back to FO4 after a month or so, I noticed that both Fallout 4 and Skyrim Legendary Edition have mysteriously been un-managed by Vortex...

I can assure you that I didn't reinstall, touch any settings that would affect this, nor change the installation of the games themselves...however, no big deal, I'll just set them to be managed again, right?...

Well, unfortunately, upon doing so, I get a warning notification that "Mods can not be deployed", a big fat 0 for the active mods count, the base directory changed back to default, and when trying to set to the directory it had previously (with both the "downloads" folder and "mods" folder still intact and full of the installs/downloads), it tells me that the base folders have to be empty...

Is there any way to get my previous set up back to the way it was?...

[Tannin42]

Vortex stores all its settings/profiles/... in

c:\users\<username>\appdata\vortex

or, if you're using shared mode

c:\programdata\vortex

This is independent of which installer you used and whether you changed the mods/downloads directory, certain data is always in one of these directories.

What you described indicates that you either deleted that directory (in which case idk, maybe it's still in your recycle bin?) or, for some reason, vortex is now looking at the wrong directory, either because

you're using a different user account or because you toggled between per-user/shared mode and forgot to mention that.

[SuzanoSho]

Vortex stores all its settings/profiles/... in

c:\users\<username>\appdata\vortex

or, if you're using shared mode

c:\programdata\vortex

This is independent of which installer you used and whether you changed the mods/downloads directory, certain data is always in one of these directories.

What you described indicates that you either deleted that directory (in which case idk, maybe it's still in your recycle bin?) or, for some reason, vortex is now looking at the wrong directory, either because

you're using a different user account or because you toggled between per-user/shared mode and forgot to mention that.

Hmmm...while I don't remember toggling between those modes, I suppose that's a possibility, seems like something that would be so simple to do that I would have forgotten (I wouldn't have any reason to do so tho)...

 

I definitely wouldn't have deleted the directory, as it's actually still there...the profiles folder is still there, with the load order and plugins files also still intact and having not been modified in over a month...also, I suppose that I should mention that all of my plugins are present in Vortex as well, just all disabled for whatever reason...clicking the Mods tab shows that there are no mods there...

 

At this point, I guess I'll just have to try and see if the game still works as it's supposed to if I enable all the plugins, as I don't think anything in the data folder for Fallout 4 has been altered either. If something else seems out of order after doing so, I'll be sure to report it in here (this is a beta after all)...

 

Thanks for the help!...

[Tannin42]

You can toggle back and forth between shared and per-user mode so you can just check if your mods are installed in the other mode.

 

The other way you could lose your mods is if you moved them to the vortex application directory because it gets replaced during update (see the sticky here: https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/6454716-do-not-put-modsdownloads-into-your-vortex-install-directory/)

Apart from that your mods will not just disappear. Not even in alpha state.