Analysis of BOSS Log - A Few Questions

[MShoap13]

The ITMs are mostly harmless in those files. By cleaning them you will gain yourself some smaller files and will be that much more memory efficient. :P

 

However, those UDRs are bad, bad. Those should be gotten rid of. Since you will be getting rid of those when you clean your files, you might as well get rid of the ITMs too. It won't hurt to be rid of them. They serve no good purpose by being there and offer a small risk of causing trouble.

 

If BOSS says it should be cleaned it's pretty safe to assume that you can clean it.

 

Ok so bearing in mind I've never used TESEdit, how hard is it to clean? Watching Gopher's youtube tutorial atm (/watch?v=UOQO2S6HDBw). Thanks for the advice incidentally!

 

It takes about two minutes per plugin and is all of 3 right clicks and 3 left clicks. Be sure to keep backups of any plugin you clean (especially the files from Bethesda) in-case any unforeseen problems pop up or TES5Edit's cleaning algorithm gets updated in the future. You may also want to make your Bethesda provided files read-only after cleaning them to prevent Steam from overwriting the cleaned versions should you ever need to verify the integrity of your game cache.

[Killianmcc]

The ITMs are mostly harmless in those files. By cleaning them you will gain yourself some smaller files and will be that much more memory efficient. :P

 

However, those UDRs are bad, bad. Those should be gotten rid of. Since you will be getting rid of those when you clean your files, you might as well get rid of the ITMs too. It won't hurt to be rid of them. They serve no good purpose by being there and offer a small risk of causing trouble.

 

If BOSS says it should be cleaned it's pretty safe to assume that you can clean it.

 

Ok so I followed the guide (still not exactly understanding though), but I simply did 'Apply for Cleaning' and 'Remove "Identical to Master" Records' in TESEdit to all the mods I received Dirty Edits for and now I'm not getting any of them back from BOSS and Skyrim is running fine. No clue if I actually dealt with the ITMs or UDRs properly. Have I? :P I'm hoping this will be a useful guide to anyone receiving errors from BOSS and isn't quite sure of how to deal with them.

[Killianmcc]

The ITMs are mostly harmless in those files. By cleaning them you will gain yourself some smaller files and will be that much more memory efficient. :P

 

However, those UDRs are bad, bad. Those should be gotten rid of. Since you will be getting rid of those when you clean your files, you might as well get rid of the ITMs too. It won't hurt to be rid of them. They serve no good purpose by being there and offer a small risk of causing trouble.

 

If BOSS says it should be cleaned it's pretty safe to assume that you can clean it.

 

Ok so bearing in mind I've never used TESEdit, how hard is it to clean? Watching Gopher's youtube tutorial atm (/watch?v=UOQO2S6HDBw). Thanks for the advice incidentally!

 

It takes about two minutes per plugin and is all of 3 right clicks and 3 left clicks. Be sure to keep backups of any plugin you clean (especially the files from Bethesda) in-case any unforeseen problems pop up or TES5Edit's cleaning algorithm gets updated in the future. You may also want to make your Bethesda provided files read-only after cleaning them to prevent Steam from overwriting the cleaned versions should you ever need to verify the integrity of your game cache.

 

Hi stars2heaven, thanks for the reply. Think I've got it sorted (see my above post). Thing that worried me most was when I wanted to clean Update.esm, it is obviously a massive mod that had a couple of 100 ITMs and a lot of UDRs which either meant trawling through each file within it individually or doing what I did. Which is the right method? Am I just fortunate that my method worked and there's some cases where it wouldn't or is it the correct way of cleaning (for my issues at least) or do I still have problems in my files that I have covered up cosmetically and now BOSS simply can't see them? :P

[stars2heaven]

Yep, that's all it took. I'm pretty sure that Gopher went over why those edit's should be cleaned. But to rehash:

 

ITM = Identical to master. That means that there is an actual edit in the file that is identical to it's master file. Usually the master file is Skyrim.esm. A mod that has ITM can potentially cause trouble for any mod that loads before it. For instance, you might have a mod that changes the damage of a weapon but you also have a mod that has an ITM for that same weapon in it. In this case your mod that changes that weapons damage won't work! The mod with the dirty edit, the ITM, will prevent those changes from taking effect.

 

UDR = References that have been deleted. These are very bad because a mod that loads after a mod that has a UDR for the reference that mod edits will cause the game to crash. This happens because the game thinks that the item no longer exists, but it has a mod telling it that the item does exist. There may be more to this than I've explained here, but these are always bad. There is no good reason to ever have them in your file.

 

Edit: if you went through and did what Gopher said, you are done. If you want you can do it again, it won't hurt. If you did it right you will notice in the message log that this time TES5Edit removed 0 files instead of however many it removed before. Also, it won't prompt you to save.

 

Dirty edits do go a little deeper than this, but that info is reserved for mod authors for the most part, as the mod user is unlikely to know the difference between a wild edit and an intentional one. Don't worry about that last part if it confuses you, lol.

[Killianmcc]

Yep, that's all it took. I'm pretty sure that Gopher went over why those edit's should be cleaned. But to rehash:

 

ITM = Identical to master. That means that there is an actual edit in the file that is identical to it's master file. Usually the master file is Skyrim.esm. A mod that has ITM can potentially cause trouble for any mod that loads before it. For instance, if you have a mod that changes the damage of a weapon but you also have a mod that has an ITM for that same weapon in it. In this case your mod that changes that weapons damage won't work! The mod with the dirty edit, the ITM, will prevent those changes from taking effect.

 

UDR = References that have been deleted. These are very bad because a mod that loads after a mod that has a UDR for the reference that mod edits will cause the game to crash. This happens because the game thinks that the item no longer exists, but it has a mod telling it that the item does exist. There may be more to this than I've explained here, but these are always bad. There is no good reason to ever have them in your file.

 

Great summary, thanks! And just to be sure Gopher said there are some cases were an ITM is intended but that is incredibly rare and even still bad modding on the authors part, correct?

[stars2heaven]

 

 

Great summary, thanks! And just to be sure Gopher said there are some cases were an ITM is intended but that is incredibly rare and even still bad modding on the authors part, correct?

 

I don't really know for sure. I honestly can't think of a situation where one would be required, though I know that mods existed like this for Oblivion. I don't know of a single mod for Skyrim that is this way.

[Killianmcc]

 

 

Great summary, thanks! And just to be sure Gopher said there are some cases were an ITM is intended but that is incredibly rare and even still bad modding on the authors part, correct?

 

I don't really know for sure. I honestly can't think of a situation where one would be required, though I know that mods existed like this for Oblivion. I don't know of a single mod for Skyrim that is this way.

 

Good to know, so I'll just keep doing it the way I did it above :D Thanks for your help dude. Made cleaning your mods easier for at least one person!

[MShoap13]

Ok so I followed the guide (still not exactly understanding though), but I simply did 'Apply for Cleaning' and 'Remove "Identical to Master" Records' in TESEdit to all the mods I received Dirty Edits for and now I'm not getting any of them back from BOSS and Skyrim is running fine. No clue if I actually dealt with the ITMs or UDRs properly. Have I?

 

You didn't "Undelete and Disable Records" for the ones BOSS stated had UDRs? If not, you didn't fix them.

 

BOSS knows if you've cleaned a mod by it's CRC hash. UDRs don't change the filesize or the CRC so once you've cleaned the ITMs it thinks you've done everything.

[Killianmcc]

Ok so I followed the guide (still not exactly understanding though), but I simply did 'Apply for Cleaning' and 'Remove "Identical to Master" Records' in TESEdit to all the mods I received Dirty Edits for and now I'm not getting any of them back from BOSS and Skyrim is running fine. No clue if I actually dealt with the ITMs or UDRs properly. Have I?

 

You didn't "Undelete and Disable Records" for the ones BOSS stated had UDRs? If not, you didn't fix them.

 

BOSS knows if you've cleaned a mod by it's CRC hash. UDRs don't change the filesize or the CRC so once you've cleaned the ITMs it thinks you've done everything.

 

Oh right. I remember which mods had the UDRs. Much risk of something something going wrong if I just do "Undelete and Disable Records" to them?

[MShoap13]

Nope. It's safe.