Vortex corrupted, how to save what is possible?

[Frittyblack]

editfinally: Solution how to restore a backup can be found here:
https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/7688828-vortex-corrupted-how-to-save-what-is-possible/?p=70532368

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Vortex broke my game/mods too...

I had a whole copy (backup) of my skyrim installation with several mods deployed.
Then I did some changes to the original which did not work well (no big problems, just not what I wanted to achieve).
Therefore I deleted the whole original installation and renamed the backup folder to "Skyrim Special Edition".

Started Vortex again, but it claims that everything was changed (are the same files as previously, but not exactly the same, since its a backup). I told him to save changes and always use the newest file and it started deploying. 20 minutes later, nothing changed, it was still at the "sorting mods" stage, so I quit Vortex.
Started again and tried to deploy again, but now I get hundreds of error messages.

Looking at the installatin folder and also in my skyrimse folder (where the unpacked mods are stored from nexus) showed that nearly every file there has now a size of 0 KB and therefore not working anymore!

So Vortex did not only destroyed my installatino, but also the unpacked mods itself ?!?!?!

Now you could say "do not close Vortex while deploying", but 1) over 20! minutes nothing happend! 2) There has to be a mechnism to prevent things like this, even if I close it! 3) Why is Vortex too stupid to simply see that it is a backup folder and everything is fine?! 4) why does it also compromise the unpacked mods folder, there is no reason to change these at all !??!

Now I have neither my orignal nor my backup folder anymore and have to install everything from scratch...



edit:
currently trying to solve the problem without complete new install.
I deleted the folder of unpacked mods, so Vortex will show everything as "uninstalled". Then I installed "FNIS" again and deployed. But it still says FNIS would be missing, so I looked at the newly unpacked FNIS and again, everything is 0KB ?!?! unpacking the zip with 7zip shows no problem, so Vortex is currently totally messed up!


Can anyone advise what I should do now to save as many settings/mods as possible? I don't want to start everything from scratch, it took me days to install/set up all those mods =/
Is is somehow possible to undo all the changes done from vortex (the 0KB thing) so I at least hjave again a fully working installation+mods from skyrim?!

additional information:
Vortex version: 0.17.11 (not the newest, because vortex is dangerous and I dont wanted to change a running system)
Windows 10 pro
Skyrim Special edition.

[BigBizkit]

Vortex broke my game/mods too...

 

I had a whole copy (backup) of my skyrim installation with several mods deployed.

Then I did some changes to the original which did not work well (no big problems, just not what I wanted to achieve).

Therefore I deleted the whole original installation and renamed the backup folder to "Skyrim Special Edition".

 

Started Vortex again, but it claims that everything was changed

 

That would be because as far as Vortex (or any other mod manager) knows you did change everything. As you say, the backup consists of different versions of the files (timestamp etc.) so getting a huge "External Changes" prompt is expected. Doing what you did you put the entire mod folder out of sync with the staging folder, so Vortex needs you to confirm the changes (or revert them). So far, everything seems to have worked as expected.

 

We need more information about the deployment not going through after that, and in particular about this bit:

 

 

Started again and tried to deploy again, but now I get hundreds of error messages.

 

What kind of error message? What did it say? What was the context? That's the crucial part.

 

 

 

Looking at the installatin folder and also in my skyrimse folder (where the unpacked mods are stored from nexus) showed that nearly every file there has now a size of 0 KB and therefore not working anymore!

 

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that (the folders). Could you try and be more specific?

[Frittyblack]

thank you for the response.

The error messages were messages like "failed to start FNIS", "error with mod", "xy is not a valid plugin", "LOOT failed" and stuff like this.
These error messages are caused by the 0KB problem. The Fnis[..].exe is only 0KB and also various other files.

Luckily it are not as many files affected by this 0KB thing than I thought first. But as described above, I "uninstalled" every mod by deleting/moving the folder and installed it (from the zip files) again (only FNIS to see if it works) and again the Fnis exe and other files from it are 0KB. So there might be something damaged that even a new installation from the archive is not working =/ (while unzipping the archive with 7 zip has no problem exe works fine then)

currently I'm making backups from everything related to skyrim/vortex I can find... and also to get an overview how many mods are affected by this 0KB thing...

[Frittyblack]

Okay.. WinMerge tells me that still thousand of files are affected by the 0KB thing, this is only ~3% of all files, but still too much to fix them by hand.

Luckily my last backup to another drive was only 1 month ago and since then only few mods were added. So my plan is now to use this backup and add the few new mods.

Can anyone tell me now, how to go on? I will copy the backup to the vortex unpacked folder.
Vortex should again tell me that everything changed. What to do now and how to prevent the same problem from happening again? Wait more than 20 minutes?

[loyboy86]

New Vortex update is bugged, wouldn't let me install any mods. had to reinstall older Vortex to get everything working again.

[Frittyblack]

@loyboy86: I'm at version 0.17.11, so not the newest (because I know that new updates often mess everything up.. but this time I messed it up myself)

I did what I wrote above (put the backup unpacked mods to the unpacked-folder), and right after starting vortex it noticed the changes and I confirmed, but now:
1) Vortex lists every mod twice, once as uninstalled zip and once as installed... (I just ignored the uninstalled once for now)
2) For whatever reason, all my conflict rules I did set up days ago, are not valid anymore, it shows a lot of conflicts (I ignored them for now)
3) Then I hit deploy and this time it was not stuck at "sorting", BUT again it destroyed (0KB) at least the FNIS exe (for sure even more)

So WHY the hell is Vortex changing (destryoing) the unpacked mod files?!?! Isn't it supposed to ONLY change the mods in the installatino folder and leaving the other untouched?!

Where does Vortex store the conflict rules I set up (and which mod is enabled/disabled)? In Appdata/Roaming/Vortex I only see the loadorder (of esp`s) and the plugins, but no load order of other files of mods. When I copy one profile content to another, they do not look the same within vortex.

edit:
Regarding 2): I guess this is linked to 1), the rules I set up are only valid for the now "uninstalled" mods.
So I need a way Vortex recognizes these unpacked mods as the same and as installed...

[rmm200]

Files in your Downloads directory are archives. Zip, RAR, etc.

Vortex never messes with those. Add whatever mod archives you like here. Vortex will list them as Uninstalled - until you Install them.

The Mods staging directory is managed by Vortex, and consists of the unpacked mods plus changes Vortex makes. Discovered disk changes are merged back to this directory.

Dink with this directory at your own risk. Never drop mods here on your own. Any changes you make here are definitely unsupported.

If you have loose mods, esps, etc - zip them up and let Vortex install them.

[Frittyblack]

Files in your Downloads directory are archives. Zip, RAR, etc.

Vortex never messes with those. Add whatever mod archives you like here. Vortex will list them as Uninstalled - until you Install them.

The Mods staging directory is managed by Vortex, and consists of the unpacked mods plus changes Vortex makes. Discovered disk changes are merged back to this directory.

Dink with this directory at your own risk. Never drop mods here on your own. Any changes you make here are definitely unsupported.

If you have loose mods, esps, etc - zip them up and let Vortex install them.

Yes, I know all of this.

 

But because of this mess I now HAVE to find a way how to: Not install everything from the zip files again (because this also means I have to go through the fomod installation of every mod, have to set all the rules again and all this stuff that will take days fro that many mods).

So I'm hoping for a developer/support agent to tell me a way to trick Vortex into "thinking" everything is alright, eg by directly changing some vortex profile files. This is the only way to go.

And as I said previously, the 0KB thing also happens when installing FNIS new from the zip file.

 

But your hint to just zip the loose files to install them again at least circumvents the need to go through the fomod installation again... But still everything else would be lost, so I fear this is no option.

 

I think Vortex could be a brilliant tool, but currently you see, that a backup of mods is worthless. With this normal behaviour of vortex you can not restore a backup (with everything set up) and that is really really bad. So tell me the trick how this is still possible.

 

edit:

you wrote: "The Mods staging directory is managed by Vortex, and consists of the unpacked mods plus changes Vortex makes. Discovered disk changes are merged back to this directory."

What exactly does this mean? Are changes from instalaltion folder merged to the unpacked folder, or the other way round? Or does it depend on what I choose, when vortex tells me that there was a change? I always choose "newest file" , while I never change anything within the installation folder, so I see no reason why Vortex should change/destroy the files in the unpacked folder...

[rmm200]

 

Files in your Downloads directory are archives. Zip, RAR, etc.

Vortex never messes with those. Add whatever mod archives you like here. Vortex will list them as Uninstalled - until you Install them.

The Mods staging directory is managed by Vortex, and consists of the unpacked mods plus changes Vortex makes. Discovered disk changes are merged back to this directory.

Dink with this directory at your own risk. Never drop mods here on your own. Any changes you make here are definitely unsupported.

If you have loose mods, esps, etc - zip them up and let Vortex install them.

Yes, I know all of this.

 

But because of this mess I now HAVE to find a way how to: Not install everything from the zip files again (because this also means I have to go through the fomod installation of every mod, have to set all the rules again and all this stuff that will take days fro that many mods).

So I'm hoping for a developer/support agent to tell me a way to trick Vortex into "thinking" everything is alright, eg by directly changing some vortex profile files. This is the only way to go.

And as I said previously, the 0KB thing also happens when installing FNIS new from the zip file.

 

But your hint to just zip the loose files to install them again at least circumvents the need to go through the fomod installation again... But still everything else would be lost, so I fear this is no option.

 

I think Vortex could be a brilliant tool, but currently you see, that a backup of mods is worthless. With this normal behaviour of vortex you can not restore a backup (with everything set up) and that is really really bad. So tell me the trick how this is still possible.

 

edit:

you wrote: "The Mods staging directory is managed by Vortex, and consists of the unpacked mods plus changes Vortex makes. Discovered disk changes are merged back to this directory."

What exactly does this mean? Are changes from instalaltion folder merged to the unpacked folder, or the other way round? Or does it depend on what I choose, when vortex tells me that there was a change? I always choose "newest file" , while I never change anything within the installation folder, so I see no reason why Vortex should change/destroy the files in the unpacked folder...

 

 

The Installation Folder IS the unpacked folder. There are no others.

 

If you go into your game directory and delete an ESP, for example, Vortex will detect the disk change.

When you say Newest - Vortex will go into your mod folder and delete the ESP. That is making it match the disk.

Same if you use the CK to modify your mod. Vortex will merge the CK changes into your mods folder when you say Newest, which is what you want.

[Rattledagger]

1: So WHY the hell is Vortex changing (destryoing) the unpacked mod files?!?! Isn't it supposed to ONLY change the mods in the installatino folder and leaving the other untouched?!

 

2: Where does Vortex store the conflict rules I set up (and which mod is enabled/disabled)? In Appdata/Roaming/Vortex I only see the loadorder (of esp`s) and the plugins, but no load order of other files of mods. When I copy one profile content to another, they do not look the same within vortex.

 

1: If not mistaken you've restored your data-directory and for some unknown reasons some of these files, including FNIS, is zero byte files. You've installed a new copy of FNIS with "good" files to the mods folder. If you now Deploys, Vortex detects the difference between data folder and give you basically two choices (even it list it as 3):

 

Choice A, permanently delete the files in data directory and replace with files from mod directory.

 

Choice B: permanently delete files in mods directory and replace with files in data directory.

 

"Use new files" likely means option B, meaning you permanently changes the "good" files with the zero byte files from data directory.

 

Uninstall FNIS + re-install FNIS + Deploy + "use new files" Will just repeat the process, you'll instead need to choose option A.

 

2: Vortex stores all the information about file conflicts inside some kind of database and while these databases is also stored under appdata\roaming\vortex I'm not aware of any method of "fixing" this, unless you can restore a backup of the state before you had the problems.

 

The plugin rules on the other hand is stored in a human-readable file called custom rules or something so you don't need to re-create these rules.

 

...

 

To be sure you'll not immediately running into more problems, just deleting everything in data + mods folder is likely your best option, even this means repeating all FOMOD installer choices.

 

It's maybe possible to delete everything in data for so finding all mods with zero byte files under mods and only re-install these mods, but this can still mean some mods has missing files or corrupt files despite not zero bytes. Also the mods will show up as duplicates and you must still re-create all the file conflict rules.

 

So really, in some cases a clean start is better than trying to repair the current screwed-up state.