Mods aren't unisntalling - Vortex?

[LucidLady]

I'm incredibly confused. There's two mods in particular that I have uninstalled (via vortex), yet they don't seem to actually be uninstalled.

 

Both of these mods are very simple. Their contained files are easy to find in the Fallout4 directory.

The first mod is - Big E's Planetary Expressions

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/41066?tab=description

I actually installed this on the same day that I installed HD Moon with Phases (as it was suggested, and looked ok)

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/30490

Both of those mods seem to affect the same folder in the Fallout4 directory. (data -> textures -> Sky) And both mods have the same names for files.

Just take a look at those mods, how simple they are. Basically - they're so simple that it seems impossible for me to be just making a little mistake here.

 

The second mod is - Extended Facial Sculpting

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/25087

 

I'm very comfortable with manually installing and uninstalling mods n' whatnot. So I have no trouble looking at the folders that these mods are touching. What's confusing me is - they ARE uninstalled. There's not a trace of these mods' files anywhere in my Fallout4 directory. And yet, when I start new games, they're still fully in effect. I don't know what i'm supposed to do at this point. This is concerning because - how many other little mods are not being uninstalled, that I have no idea about? These two are just very apparent because I keep seeing random huge planets/moons in my game, and can inexplicably only use the Extended Sliders on my male faces.

 

To be more specific - in regards to the Extended Facial Sculpting mod :

You're only meant to install either the Female version of the mod, or the Male version.

If you install the Male version, you get no Extended Facial Sculpting options on your female character

Ok - I initially installed this for my Male character. Now i'm making a new Female character, and uninstalled the mod.

I started up the new Female character, with the Female version of the mod manually installed, and yet the game seems to think I still have the Male version of it installed.

In order to manually install Extended Facial Sculpting, it's just a matter of copying and pasting two text files.

(specifically, you have to paste the two text files into \data\Meshes\Actors\Character\CharacterAssets)

Simple. I look in my Fallout4 directory, and only the two Female text files are in there. That's it and that's all. There is no .esp or anything else involved in installing this mod manually. There is a ModuleConfig.xml file if you want to install via Vortex or any other mod manager program - but like I said I installed this mod manually, so that file is nowhere to be found in my Fallout4 directory

This kind of thing never happened when I was using NMM. I initially installed this mod via NMM, and would love to try installing it again with NMM now, but I can't seem to get that to work anymore. I can't get NMM to install from file/zip anymore.

 

In regards to Big E's Planetary Expressions :

I only ever installed the Jupiter file. That's the only moon-replacer I wanted.

But now, in my game, I get all of the different moons. Which, if you look at the mod page - you see that the other planets are entirely separate files. So I don't understand how i'm seeing those other planets at all. I uninstalled the mod soon after installing because it didn't seem to be working - my moon was just the HD version of the regular moon. And I was getting close to the 250 mod limit...

Edited October 16, 2019 by LucidLady

[StormWolf01]

Heyas. Ok, so I'm totally not familiar with Vortex. However, I know that NMM used a backup location for mods installed through it. I'm totally guessing here, but if Vortex also does that, its possible that the over ride files are still running from the backup?

I'm guessing this, because I had a mod that screwed up my game, and I manually deleted all traces of it. Then, it was still showing up in my load order, even tho I'd deleted the esp from my data folder. Guess where it was hiding?

[LucidLady]

Come to think of it, I also have another mod that doesn't seem to be installed - yet still is installed. It's just the Evil Detective Outfit, I can't find the esp or anything in any of the folders it's supposed to be in, but it's still in my load order. So I have to keep it un-checked.

 

What you're saying sounds right so far. I do keep seeing "folder handled by vortex" files all over the place for mods that I deleted long ago.

 

But where is this backup location? Where's your NMM backup location? How am I supposed to figure out where it's backing this stuff up?

 

[edit] ok nevermind, i found the default backup location for NMM. And yeah, it looks like every mod i've ever downloaded is still in there, including these trouble ones. At least the zips for them are. Just gonna go ahead and delete them, see if that works.

For anyone in the future who may stumble across this thread, the default NMM backup location is - (whatever drive your game is installed on, for me it's E) E:\Games\Nexus Mod Manager\Fallout4\Mods

 

but I still don't know where the Vortex default backup location is. will keep searching.

Edited October 17, 2019 by LucidLady

[LucidLady]

Well, the Evil Detective and Big E's planet-moon issues seem to be taken care of.

But the facial sliders mod is still bewilderingly broken.

It still insists that I have the male version of the mod installed.

 

I have tried removing the two text files entirely - load up the game, and all the face presets I saved in Looksmenu lose their effects which were granted by the Extended Facial Sliders mod.

Ok - that's what you expect to happen. That means I am in fact touching the correct files.

But when I reintroduce the female text files, load up the game - and still only the male character is getting the sliders.

On that mod's page, there are a few older files which were specific to each gender. (the most recent is a simple fomod containing all files for both genders, which i've deleted entirely from every backup location I could find)

 

Now, when I installed the older, female specific file (which again only put two simple text files into the CharacterAssets folder) and load the game up - I get single-side sliders on the female - but the male still gets all the full-face sliders.

 

I don't think this is a matter of something wrong with the mod - otherwise you'd see alot of people commenting about it. So i'm inclined to think there must still be a trace of this mod somewhere that's not uninstalled. I'm just so super confused at this point.

[StormWolf01]

Heya LucidLady! Well, I'm glad to hear that I've pointed you in a direction that got "some" of your woes sorted out! :D

Sorry for not posting back sooner, in regards to those folder locations. I'm afraid I wouldn't have been much help with that, as I don't have EITHER of them (NMM or Vortex) installed on this rig.

 

Hrm. They're .txt files? Maybe they're bat files, and maybe they have an autostart included in them. (saving that thought for later, it doesn't look like it).

 

Ok, looking over the download/install files for the AOI, I found something that would be easy to overlook or miss.

 

 

Go to your Fallout4/Data folder, and see if you have a folder named Fomod. (it may have caps in other places, but it's the same folder).

Look inside to see if you have a moduleconfig.xml file located inside it.

If you do, please attach it to your next post, and I'll look it over to see if there's any reference to other mods in that file, or just this one. If it's got other mod references, I'll post the new file back, and you can replace your existing one.

[StormWolf01]

Sorry to double post, but this is new information.

I just read over your original post LL, and I'm sorry...I'd forgotten where you'd said that you had manually installed from the start.

I've looked over those text files, and all they are are figures for additions to sliders. So that's not the issue.

 

Unless that config file is hiding there somewhere on your system, the only other thing I can think of is that there's still traces of it there in LooksMenu. In which case I'd recommend uninstalling and reinstalling LM.

Open up your computer by clicking on the my computer icon. Go up into the search box and type in moduleconfig and have it search your ENTIRE computer for the file. That will take a while, especially if you have large hard drives. So expect to have time to grab a bite to eat or something, while it looks for it. Make SURE to do a Right Click/Properties on any files that the search finds, to make sure they are in Fallout related folders. Other software may use files by that same name.

[LucidLady]

Hey, i'm glad to have any discussion at all! The sheer length of my posts must be daunting to anyone who comes in, I know.

 

Hmm, I do have a Fomod folder. But there's just a "folder managed by vortex" file, and an "info.xml" file, with another vortex backup of that.

It's probably for a different mod which is working properly.

 

Alright, I searched the entirety of My Computer for moduleconfig, and.... nothing came up. Disconcerting.

Last step - reinstall Looksmenu. Can't believe I didn't think of trying that earlier, really.

Unfortunately, no change. Damn. I was really hoping it would be something simple like that...

 

Oh well. Guess i'm gonna play as the Anime Race for a while lol, problem irrelevant now

From the looks of it, i'd think just changing out the two text files would be enough.

I can't find any traces of the male files on my machine at this point.

Makes no sense.

[StormWolf01]

Heyas LL. Yeah, this has got to be aggravating for you. I understand. I have a body mod on this rig that is botched up, and I can't track it down either.

There's two more things that come to mind. The second one isn't so good. Actually just thought of a 3rd also.

1- try reinstalling bodyslide. Just thought of that.

2- disable all mods but looks menu, see if problem is there. If no, one by one enable mods, when problem re-occurs, there's your culprit.

3- uuugh. Uninstall entire game, manually delete all associated folders, and start over. :(

 

Ok just thought of one more. do the complete uninstall and wipe of NMM and vortex, and any other mod related programs if you use them. Maybe its hiding in there somewhere where we haven't thought to look.

 

I do have a bit of advice tho also. For future reference. I have a backup hard drive. An external USB drive. (this can be done on your original hard drive if you have the spare space). EVERY time that I install this game on a new computer, I make a backup copy of all the files that were installed. A "clean slate" install, if you will. I also have a backup copy of after the "essentials" have been installed, like f4se. (In my case it's a pretty big hard drive, so I also make copies of my game folders about once a week, if they've been in use). I also do this with all of my savegame files.

 

This way, if my install gets screwed up to the point that there's no repairing it, I can just manually delete everything and copy it all back in via the backup files. A clean install backup, you can do on a USB stick, or even a micro SD card if you have an adapter. They just need to have enough space to hold all the files.

I really hope that it doesn't end up coming to have to wipe everything and reinstalling. I KNOW how time consuming that is! IF you end up going that route, I highly recommend getting a program that can read your installed mods. I use f4edit for it, but that;s kinda more than what's needed. But it shows a list of all my installed esp/esm/esl files. I just screenshot that list, and save them with my saved files so I know what I had, when. f4edit also shows them listed via my loadorder, not alphabetically, so that also helps, when it comes to setting everything back up.

[LucidLady]

Hoo boy, sorry for the late reply. I've been trying some of your suggestions. The basic ones - reinstall Bodyslide and all the mods. (of which I have close to 300, so it has been time consuming). I'm still not done, in fact. It's just, i've run into a very large problem.
The game stopped starting. I'd just get a black screen instead of the main menu.

 

So I disabled every single mod - and starting the actual game instead of F4SE. And it started, alright.

Then verified game files (again), and it said it found 15 files which were now reacquired. Okay.

 

I restarted my PC, then I re-enabled all mods and started up F4SE, and it's starting up. But it's not starting up the same as it has been for the past year. I get that black screen and then the main menu shows up as usual.

However now, when I start, absolutely EVERYTHING is purple.

Except for NPC skins... Including any mod added item.

 

I checked my fo4Custom.ini and made sure that it was set to allow mods, and it is. As far as I can see. It has the lines -
[Archive]
bInvalidateOlderFiles=1
sResourceDataDirsFinal=

 

When i actually play the purple game, everything seems to be functioning as expected. All scripts firing and whatnot. I don't get a "this mod is missing" message or anything. It's just all the textures that are borked.

Also, my Steam seems to think I need to update the game? I haven't let it, as per usual. So it's not as if my f4se is outdated or any of the mods i'm currently using.

I check the main fo4 exe in the directory, and it's the same version i've been using for months. (the most recent version, before this apparent update today)

 

I'm gonna try installing some of my visual mods, I guess. Some of the clothing, that's what i'll start with.

Edited October 20, 2019 by LucidLady

[LucidLady]

Alright, yeah. Looks like a reinstall of every visual mod is all it takes.

Not sure what exactly killed all my textures, though. I've validated game files a BUNCH of times before, and never had this happen.

 

It made me way more tense than I needed.

This is just my personal issue, but - I get extremely, weirdly stressed when something on my PC isn't working, yet I can't figure out why. This simple face-sliders mod thing is bothering me way more than it realistically should. It's so basic, it should be easy to make it work and yet it doesn't work.

 

Gonna just play for a while and see if something non-visual makes the game explode.