SSEEdit Fatal: Could not find ini---at wits end

[Seeker17281]

I've been at this for the past 3 days now and after having dug through all kinds of material found from googling "TESVedit Fatal: Could not find ini" and "SSEEdit Fatal: Could not find ini" I've finally come to the conclusion that I'm going to have to be spoon fed the $!@($#%^& answer (obviously ticked off and frustrated).

 

I'm not sure what all the info needed is, and I don't want to presume a complete history of my system and it's configuration is wanted/needed so unless prompted for more info, for the sake of some brevity I'm going to summarize my experience up till this failure.

 

Downloaded SSE, ran NMM, checked to see if I can use TESVedit. Spent a day instead looking at the 3 main mod organizers weighing their pros and cons and realized I needed to abandon NMM and pick up MO2 and make use of SSEEdit for SSE. Downloaded and installed both into a seperate folder on my game drive. Watch Gamer Poet's vids on MO2 as I'm totally unfamiliar with it.

 

I made a couple of mistakes with SSE and wasn't sure what it was but it kept stuttering and CTD, and because I didn't take notes of my progress this time like I usually do, I didn't know what I had FUBARD'd so I figured I'd just start over. So uninstall everything, reinstall SSE and lesson learned, start taking notes of where I am and what I'm doing.

 

So SSE is fresh, backed up on a separate drive and I got the creation kit installed. Next I install MO2 on my game drive, got it connected to my Nexus account, made sure that everything in it's folder is exempt from my AV and wanted to clean the Beth-ESMs to make a backup of them as well. Following Gamer Poet's MO2 Install guide religiously up to this point, going into the Modify Executables pointing it SSEEdit where it resides in my "modding utilities" folder, and include the argument of "-SSE". Fire up MO2, select SSEEdit, hit run and

 

 

SEEdit 4.0.1 (40732B8C) starting session 2019-01-23 15:59:42

Using Skyrim Special Edition Data Path: E:\steam\steamapps\common\Skyrim Special Edition\Data\

Using Backup Path: E:\steam\steamapps\common\Skyrim Special Edition\Data\SSEEdit Backups\

Using Scripts Path: E:\Modding Utilities SSE\Programs\SSEEdit 4.0.1\Edit Scripts\

Using Cache Path: E:\steam\steamapps\common\Skyrim Special Edition\Data\SSEEdit Cache\

Using ini: C:\Users\Fherrit Den\AppData\Local\Temp\My Games\Skyrim Special Edition\Skyrim.ini

Fatal: Could not find ini.

First off I don't understand why SSEEdit wants to dig up the ini's from a AppData\Local\Temp\My Games folder instead of the user\documents\my games\SSE folder, because there are ini's in that folder. However I do have a C:\Users\Fherrit Den\AppData\Local\Skyrim Special Edition folder but it only contains a file named "Plugins.sseviewsettings" which I assume from looking at it is just display settings set by the launcher.

Secondly, I have no idea how to point SSEEdit at anything because it wont' load past that error message, so I can't configure anything for it

So after nearly 16 hours of reading/watching videos, and trying a multitude of different solutions that seem to work for others but not me, I have no ###### clue as to why I can't get this utility to function. If some kind soul would be so kind as to illuminate my dumb ass as to what I'm doing wrong I'd be deeply grateful.

 

 

 

 

 

In case it's of any relevance, my system consists of:

Win10 OS, I-7 9700, 32 GB RAM, GTX 1070ti

[3aq]

Append a .bak to both your skyrim.ini and skyrimpref.ini and then open up SkyrimLauncher to generate new ini files. Retry your SSEedit. If it doesn't work then my only other advise is to use MO2 and run your mods and games and every other program through it instead. In regards to mods installation and plugin order, MO2 is as safe and idiot proof as it gets.

 

After thinking it over more, I recalled this situation did happen to me. The way I fixed it was deleting the entire SSEEdit path and unpacking a new copy onto a different parent directory. After I reinstalled the SSEedit path in its directory. Bit convoluted to follow but it did resolve my issue. My particular issue was something messing with the directory pathing. Hope this helps.

 

edit: added more

Edited January 24, 2019 by 3aq

[Seeker17281]

Did as suggested, appended both with a .bak, ran SSE from it's launcher and had the folder containing the ini's open on my other monitor. Launching SSE with it's launcher created new ini's, then upon seeing that I quit the game and attempted to load SSEEdit through MO2, got the same error message stated in my initial post. Ran SkyrimSE.Exe instead, just in case launching the game with it might direct paths correctly, quit after a successful loading screen and once again tried to run SSEEdit through MO2. Again, same error message.

 

When I make use of the "Show Open Folders Menu" and select "Open My Games" folder, the ini's with the modified .bak appended ones show the same ini's as before, using the "Open ini's Folder" I see the init's stored in E:\ModOrganizer\profiles\Default folder with both Skyrim.ini and skyrimprefs.ini having the date/time stamp from my attempts after following your recommendation.

 

As initially stated, my understanding is of middling level, so if I'm wrong then I'm receptive to being corrected, but it doesn't seem like the skyrim ini's are absent. They are definitely present, but SSEEdit isn't seeing the ini's its wants to see. I'm assuming it wants the skyrim inis, otherwise I doubt you would've pointed me as recreating them by appending them and reloading Skyrim through it's launcher.

 

While i appreciate that MO2 is safe and intuitive generally, I have to reiterate that so far my steps have been to install MO2 to its own directory on my game drive, opened the SSEEdit archive and installed it a separate folder (which Gamer Poet said was fine to do so not like I'm pulling that out of my ass) and pointed MO2 at SSEEdit's with the argument to use itself with SSE.

 

I've done literally nothing else, no installing mods, no other utilities, just installed and configured SSEEdit, yet the utility keeps barfing up the same error code, can't find ini's. So while "idiot proof" it may be, it clearly isn't seeing something that it needs to see where it wants to and is looking elsewhere than you assume it should. So how do i get SSEEdit to see what we want it to?

[3aq]

I am unsure, perhaps your issue is different from the one I was experiencing. I will have to look back to the post I made ways back, in which case you'll see another edit.

 

 

so I found the topic, use this as reference(?), ymmv: https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/6561331-mo2-parameter-87-error-code;-unable-to-start-sseedit/

edit: found the topic.

Edited January 24, 2019 by 3aq

[Seeker17281]

Thanks for the suggestion 3aq, I did as you posted but it didn't solve my situation, however I did get xedit to work and posting this follow up as to how, a bit longish to read but I wanted to be thorough in case anyone else winds up having a problem similar to mine and this account is of some assistance.

I’m not one of these bright jewels that can look at programs and figure much out about them without a lot of research into tutorials or readmes, and if the particular issue isn’t warned about it’ll blindside me like it did here. However after 20 some hours of googling up forum posts addressing all kinds of xedit issues I started to have this nagging feeling that my clue was in that last line of xedit’s error message.

A quick bit of relevant history: I had upgraded everything in my rig except my hard drives and psu last month, which in turn required I upgrade from Win7 to Win10. Put briefly, I didn’t like Win10 but if I wanted my new rig to boot up, my OS was going to have to be Win10 (Mobo’s usb ports were unusable otherwise). Fortunately I had backed up some folders from before the upgrade from my Win7 install, among which was the “My Documents” folder, as it contained a number of files I didn’t want to lose, among which was the “My Games” folder.

 

After a clean install of Win10 setting up everything, making the rig fully functional and all that, I dropped a copy of my previous “My Documents” into Win 10’s folder of the same name. I tested a few programs to make sure the associations were intact, my CAD's saves, word processor and several games were all fine with the new home and I assumed I was set. However, on my rig under the AppData\Local\Temp there wasn’t a “My Games” folder to be found.

Xedit was looking for inis in a place that didn’t correspond to where the “My Games” folder is on my system. Why would it do that? I’m assuming because the author told it to, and guessed that’s because its set up like this for most people, but not me. Why?

So as of this writing, I have no idea where Win10 normally defaults the “My Games” folders to, but on my rig under the AppData\Local\Temp there wasn’t a “My Games” folder to be found. The error code that Xedit kept tossing at me nagged me to try to do something to make it happy. So I did the following;

1. Went into C:\Users\XXXX\Documents\My Games\Skyrim Special Edition and copied the Skyrim Special Edition folder containing the inis generated from launching the game,
2. Then I went into C:\Users\XXXX\AppData\Local\Temp, manually created a folder named “My Games”, opened it and pasted the copy of “Skyrim Special Edition” folder containing the inis from the other location.
3. Restarted my system

Loaded up MO2, started Xedit and suddenly the welcome screen says hi and is eager to get to work. :ohmy: :dry: :confused:

I don’t particularly like this and consider it a make shift patch to the problem, hopefully the team behind xedit will in the near future allow one to select where xedit will find the ini’s it’s looking for rather than making a assumption of where it should be, unless I'm that black swan incident that even other Win7 users moving to Win10 experience. G

[3aq]

I am glad you got this resolved and shared your process while doing it. Kudos to you. Hopefully (though it would be better if it doesn't happen) it helps other people down the line should similar occurances happen. knock on wood*

[rpowell327]

I have the same problem however mine is a problem with it looking for the .ini in OneDrive. I don't use OneDrive I use Norton 360 w/ LifeLock and Norton's cloud. it gives me no option of setting where to look for the .ini . Please if some one could help me figure this out it would be greatly appreciated. I have windows 10 pro (probably my biggest problem) and mod organizer 2

[Engetzu]

YO! Anyone with this problem. Go to windows security. Virus & Threat protection. Manage Ransomware protection. Allow an app through controlled folder access. Hit the plus sign. Find all the Skyrim relevant stuff windows has been blocking and let em thu bois.

 

May not work for everyone but helped me out.

[wisereaper]

YO! Anyone with this problem. Go to windows security. Virus & Threat protection. Manage Ransomware protection. Allow an app through controlled folder access. Hit the plus sign. Find all the Skyrim relevant stuff windows has been blocking and let em thu bois.

 

May not work for everyone but helped me out.

Thanks Engetzu, I was skeptical as I wasn't getting a message that any skyrim paths were being blocked (or SSEEdit) so I allowed skyrim se and skyrim se launcher as well as sseedit and it works

[RagnarSeptim]

Hi all sorry to revive this but I am getting this same issue however its only happening when opening it with MO2 with the Non SSE version. I about to try Engetzu suggestion but i will update this if it fails again. if anyone else has something i should try i would greatly appreciate the help. thank you