What does this gobbledygook message mean?

[TheGreatFalro]

I agree with you old, it isn't obvious to me either. Do younger ppl speak a different language? People my age did not grow up with computers, (hint, my senior year in high school we got a computer the size of a large desk. School administrators were very proud. course students weren't allowed to use it.) The part about links being deleted still confuses the s*** out of me. Which is probably why I can't seem to get bodyslide to work right either. Can someone plz explain it so an old broad like me can understand?

Here goes. If anything of what I say doesn't make sense just let me know (send me a private message reminding me if you can, as this forum moves quickly and I don't get notifications if someone replies to me).

 

Short version (longer one below, and an even shorter one at the end):

 

Basically, Vortex keeps a list of what files and folders it has been told to "manage" (i.e. install) and a computer-language "description" of what information each file contains (look up "md5 hash" if you're interested, but be prepared for more gobbledygook).

The warning you see comes up when Vortex "notices" that the description Vortex has kept is no longer accurate to the file(s) that are actually in the game's data. This can happen for many reasons, but Vortex has no way of knowing how this happened, just that it did.

 

What the warning is telling you is that the mods listed have had some or all of their files fail the "difference check", so to speak. In almost all cases, "Save Changes" is the correct action to take and you don't need to do anything else. The only exception to this is if you accidentally deleted something in the game's folder and you want Vortex to put it back.

 

 

Long version (may be too much info):

(Side note: this may not be 100% accurate in terms of technical detail, but it's close enough)

 

Background: Skyrim (and other Bethesda games) look for mods (in the forms of Meshes, Textures, and Plugins [and other miscellaneous files]) in the "Data" folder inside the folder where the game is installed. The game(s) will only look in this folder, and nowhere else. Because of the way Vortex works, Vortex installs mods into a different folder (the "Mod Staging Folder" in Vortex's settings). Then, Vortex takes advantage of the way computers store information, which I'll explain briefly: Essentially, the computer stores information in two parts. First is the contents of the information, which it stores on the hard drive as a sequence of "On"s and "Off"s. Then it stores what is called a "pointer" somewhere else, which, as the name suggests, is a small piece of information that "points" to where the first part (the contents) is stored, similar to a road sign. When you see the file on your screen in Windows, you're actually seeing the pointer.

The way Vortex uses this fact is by placing a second pointer (the first one being in the Mod Staging folder) inside of the game's "Data" folder. This makes Windows (and the game) think that the mods are in both places, while taking up the space on the computer only once.

 

This leads to the error above: Vortex has noticed that the pointer in the "Data" folder now points to a different file than the pointer in the Mod Staging Folder. This can happen for many reasons, but most often it's because you or a program (i.e. Bodyslide/Outfit Studio) has moved or changed a file in the Data folder. Vortex cannot tell you what, specifically, caused this. Unless you know you did something you didn't want to do, it is always safe to click "Save Changes".

 

 

 

 

Shortest version:

Unless you are absolutely 100% sure that something in the game's folder has changed that you don't want changed (and you will know for sure when this is the case) then it is always best to click "Save Changes", and there is nothing else you need to do.