Black screens and other symptoms

[TheSonofFarore]

I'm out of ideas on how to fix this. I've tried isolating the problem, but it doesn't seem to be plugin related.

 

Symptoms:

Whenever a certain type of message box appears on my screen (such as the final check after the tutorial, or when a quest is either completed or assigned) my games video feed either freezes, or goes completely black. The most common thing that happens though is that my game will sort of minimize for a second and then come back up with a complete black screen and the audio still playing sometimes I can even hear my mouse rolling over the accept button. Occasionally I might get a message saying my display driver failed and recovered, but I've tried every solution relating to drivers and nothing has worked.

 

I'm using Windows 7 home premium

My gpu is AMD Radeon R9 380 Series

I'm using Mod Organizer

 

I attached a speccy and my load order.

 

 

Really I'm just hoping that anyone is familiar with a problem like this because there's no way I can word this in a search bar that isn't going to be thousands of threads asking why their missing masters are making the game load up black. Please help me, I'm just so frustrated at this point.

[M48A5]

I had a similar problem, so I put my old video card back in. This solved the problem, so I bought a new card so that I could keep the better image resolution.

[dubiousintent]

The "message saying my display driver failed and recovered" is strongly suggestive of a failing video card as originally suggested.

 

Good news is your hardware is adequate to the job. But with only 2GB of VRAM, stay away from texture image sizes greater than 1024x1024. You may want to see the wiki "Display resolution versus Image Size" article if you are considering a new card.

 

I don't use MO, so perhaps I am reading the "load order" (LO) wrong, but sorting your file on "mod priority" indicates the LO is just plain wrong. But that may not be what we normally consider the visible "load order". We need to see it after it has been sorted by LOOT, along with things that do not appear in the "load order", such as NVSE and it's related plugins, texture replacements (specifically their larger image sizes: 1024x1024, etc.), and "post-processors" like ENB or SweetFX.

 

Your problem description seems to indicate it occurs when the game switches to "movies" or "cut scenes". These involve the use of built-in functions called "IMODS". ENB is known to have problems with some IMODS. Please see 'Issue: Image Modifications (IMODS, aka "fade to black", etc.) don't work' in the wiki "Fallout NV Mod Conflict Troubleshooting" guide.

 

If you aren't using ENB, then it may be that the game is failing to load the associated ".BLK" file.

 

-Dubious-

[TheSonofFarore]

Here is the LOOT organized load order, as well as the Mod list (in reverse order for some reason. note that the "-" means it's inactive and "+" is active) I tried it with everything except reducing my texture sizes since it's never effected my game before, but if you honestly think it could be the problem I'll try it. Honestly I think there is some sort of Direct X conflict or something but I honestly have no idea. I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel here.

the only things not listed there are enb straight from the dev site, and nvse.

Edited July 18, 2018 by TheSonofFarore

[dubiousintent]

That LO list is much more "unexceptional". Nothing obviously wrong with it. At 131 you are possibly pushing your "active plugins" limit. It varies by system and mix of mods between 130-140. But the problem described doesn't fit the symptoms of "too many plugins".

 

* You really need to use a "Merge Patch File" with that collection of mods. Please see the 'Third Rule: The Rule of One' and 'Merge Patch File' sections of the wiki "FNV General Mod Use Advice" article. This might be causing the conflict.

* A DirectX problem would surface much sooner (usually as soon as you start the game) and more generally than just in the circumstances described.

 

* Did you try the "IMOD emulator for ENB" mod referred to in the provided link in my earlier reply? (As you confirmed you are using ENB, this is now the most likely source of the problem other than a failing video card.)

 

* Try testing under the circumstances that usually trigger the problem, but without ENB enabled and see if the problem persists.

 

* You might inquire if the TTW team has encountered any IMOD issues.

 

* The problem as described is not going to be due to the image size of texture files. "Cut scenes" and such are "baked" movies/slideshows (".BLK" files). They are not dynamically built up from individual images you could have replaced that I am aware of.

 

No one likes to hear replacing a piece of hardware is likely to be needed. But it will happen sooner or later and you should always plan for it as an eventuality. (A "home user" can only reasonably expect to get 5 years out of any computer. More is just "gravy".) Keeping an older but functional component on hand to use for testing is one way to isolate if that will be absolutely necessary. If you don't have a video card, maybe you can borrow one for testing from a friend?

 

-Dubious-

[TheSonofFarore]

It may be helpful to not that the problem goes away when I disable all esps, but I can't seem to isolate it because both halves of them crash it. I find it highly unlikely that there are two different plugins that have the same error. Also I disabled all TTW pluggins I had and it still happened when leaving the docs house. I don't have a graphics card to go back to and this one is only 2 years old. I tried the imod fixer you suggested and it didn't work. Also I've tested the esp limit by bringing it down to only 100 plugins and it still crashed. Finally I did TRY to disable enb but I'm not 100% I did it right, all I did was move the d3d9.dll to a sub folder to keep it from activating and it still happened there as well.

 

There arent any particularly ornery mods in my plugin list by your first glance? other than ttw of course.

 

 

-UPDATE- So I looked online again for something to rollback my drivers and apparently there are even older drivers that I could use. Rolled back to those and so far it seems to have worked. I'll let you know if that changes though since it wasn't always consistent.

Edited July 18, 2018 by TheSonofFarore

[dubiousintent]

Don't discount the possibility of more than one plugin creating a conflict. "Mod isolation" can devolve down to eliminating all plugins and install and test one by one to pin down a conflict. (This is actually the preferred installation method, but I recognize many don't take the time to do that.) The "halve, test, and halve again" method is simply a relatively quick way to do similar. Note that "disabling" a plugin doesn't remove/restore any files it overwrote.

 

Re: plugins. The only "might be a problem" plugin I see is "Nevada Skies" (NS). This covers the weather and thus is a "world wide exterior effect" overhaul. It has been known to cause conflicts with some mods; especially those that try to have their interior cells reflect the exterior weather (e.g. "Interior Lighting Overhaul" (ILO) and "Portable Tent"). There have been reports (as I now vaguely recall) that problems arose because it might try to trigger a "storm" when you exit an interior which can interfere with an IMOD. (Note that because they both have multiple component plugins, a conflict between NS and ILO could easily appear in both halves of a split of your LO. If this does turn out to be the case, please let me know so I can add it to the "Troubleshooting" guide.)

 

Re: disabling ENB. If you moved it to a sub-folder of the game, it MIGHT have found it anyway. (Evidence suggests it won't, but one never knows for sure how deep a program's search of the path structure may dig.) If you moved it to some folder that is not in the system "PATH" variables and outside of the game folder, that should be sufficient.

 

If ENB did load (other than ENBoost (i.e. "enhost.exe"), which is separate and not what we are talking about), then you should be seeing the splash screen message about using "< Shift+Enter >" to edit it's settings. Among those setting is the ability to disable it.

 

Re: Video drivers. Yes, the latest versions are always "an adventure" with older games. At some point every manufacturer stops testing them against an older game title as a cost cutting measure. Sooner or later it will happen to every card. My advice is to not update a driver unless you know it fixes a problem you are having. The big difficulty arises when you are "playing" two different games which require different drivers. That's when the idea of using "virtual machines" or more than one computer with different OS setups starts to appeal. (The "home" version is deliberately crippled so it can't use "virtual machines". Which is just one reason why I always buy the "Pro" version.)

 

I always hang onto the previous working version of a driver whenever I update, just in case. (i don't purge older versions unless I need to free up space. This can be helpful when you are up against the "10% of total disk space" requirement to defragment drives.)

 

-Dubious-