Inconstant crashing: FO4 VS. Windows 10?

[edgeburner]

Thank you for reading....I'll get right to the point. I run a lightly modded game only about 44 mods. Thing is that I get inconsistent crashes. I mean i can literary play for hours without a crash, then, game will begin to crash on walking around and occasionally on fast travel, but not consistently..it will occasionally crash on saved game load. I have had the game crash on loading a saved game, tried again and it loaded fine. I've had a save fail to load three times in a row. restarted my PC and the very same save loaded fine, ran without a crash for hours. On the very same character for days....level 60. Resaver finds no orphans.


I understand the Windows 10 fails to flush it's RAM cache properly, but, To my layman's mind, it seems to me to me that perhaps the problem lies within the OS relationship with FO4? I dunno

 

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Tom Sprint.esp
freefov.esp
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luxor8071's HD Texture Pack AIO Pt 2.esp
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luxor8071's HD Texture Pack AIO Pt 4.esp
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luxor8071 HD Texture Pack AIO.esp
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FO4 NPCs Travel.esp
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VarmintRifle.esp
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Armorsmith Extended.esp
Bashed Patch, 0.esp

[edgeburner]

Also running some f4se mods...Along with def-ui and Fallout 4 enhanced color correction.....Which seems to play nice with Clarity.

[LucidLady]

I had a brief stretch where I had trouble loading up saves. I found that it helped if I loaded up my second-most-recent save, and THEN loaded up the most recent save.

I haven't had that problem for a very long time. I can't remember what was causing it for me. I think I had some mods which added greenery to the terrain, or altered the terrain in any way. I noticed it happened most often when I loaded up a save where my character was outside. Haven't used one of those in a long while, so that might be the issue?

 

Also, ffs.... You're using UFO4Patch, eh? Every single time I see one of these "help i'm crashing randomly all the time!" threads, they ALWAYS have UFO4Patch in their load order.

I highly un-recommend using that mod. Unless your game is Vanilla.

I run with nearly 300 mods, and do not use UFO4Patch. When I first started using mods, I installed UFO4Patch by default because I figured "you're supposed to". But I ended up having all new glitches and gamebreaking bugs which I never experienced before. They all cleared up when I stopped using UFO4Patch. The ONLY time my ultra-modded game ever crashes is about 20% of the time when i'm trying to make a Save. No other time. Never randomly when i'm running around or anything.

 

However, for you specifically, I think your problem might be coming from Insignificant Object Remover (that counts as a Terrain altering mod which is dubious as to whether it works or not)

I used to use IOR too, but it's a very old mod which hasn't been updated for some time. And it genuinely seemed to slow the game down more, which is a known issue that is brought up in the comments section of that mod. Random running-around crashes stopped happening after I stopped using that mod, as well.

Then again - Note, that was on the XBOX. It may be a different story, I don't think i've tried it on the PC. I'm going to give it a shot, and see if I start randomly crashing.

 

Also, Free FOV sounds highly suspicious - FOV altering mods are notoriously problematic. More-so than any other mod in your load order, i'd try disabling this one.

 

And if that doesn't stop the crashing, try disabling Flicker Fixer too.

Edited August 11, 2020 by LucidLady

[edgeburner]

Thank you for the advice and insight, LucidLady. I don't consider any of the mods you mentioned as essential, so I'll go without those on my next character.

I did disable IOR and played for about three hours without issue . But, again, there is not a discernible pattern or consistency to my crashing. I don't crash that often, but, when i do, it seems to happen in bunches, then the game runs fine for long stretches of time

Also, with FreeFOV, the mod author achieves this via the following: "Moving the camera node on the first person skeleton.nif back by 4 units reveals more of the world that was already being rendered, granting an increased FOV with no performance cost. There is a ton of rendered geometry not visible, but beyond 4 units I ran into clipping issues with the previs system." I have heard that changing your FOV via ini files can cause issues, that is why i loaded this mod.

Again,, thank you.

BTW, I never load from auto or exit saves. I always make a hard save before exiting the game and load from that.

Edited August 11, 2020 by edgeburner

[LucidLady]

Thank you for the advice and insight, LucidLady. I don't consider any of the mods you mentioned as essential, so I'll go without those on my next character.

 

I did disable IOR and played for about three hours without issue . But, again, there is not a discernible pattern or consistency to my crashing. I don't crash that often, but, when i do, it seems to happen in bunches, then the game runs fine for long stretches of time

 

Also, with FreeFOV, the mod author achieves this via the following: "Moving the camera node on the first person skeleton.nif back by 4 units reveals more of the world that was already being rendered, granting an increased FOV with no performance cost. There is a ton of rendered geometry not visible, but beyond 4 units I ran into clipping issues with the previs system." I have heard that changing your FOV via ini files can cause issues, that is why i loaded this mod.

 

Again,, thank you.

 

BTW, I never load from auto or exit saves. I always make a hard save before exiting the game and load from that.

[sorry for late reply]

 

I see, it's good that the FOV mod maker took that into account. Still, i'm suspicious of it. The engine doesn't handle FOV changes very well at all.

If you still end up crashing after having disabled the 3 mods I mentioned, my only suggestion would be to try going without UFO4Patch.

The UFO4Patch alters ALOT of things in the base game. It changes things on a very wide scale. Which means it's extremely likely to conflict with other mods.

If you play a vanilla game, it's totally fine. But unless the mod specifically states that it doesn't touch any vanilla records, it's likely to conflict with UFO4Patch.

 

That aside, you've definitely got the right policy with Saving. I never allow Exitsaves or Autosaves, either. I have no troubles loading from those types of saves, but as I said before - creating a save is the only time my game ever crashes, and Autosaves are the most likely to make a crash happen for me. It's always just plain best to create a fresh Hard Save rather than any other kind of save. And don't replace Hard Saves, either. Make a new one every time. Delete (or move) the old saves. I like to only keep about 5 max saves in my Saves folder.

[edgeburner]

I"m going to create a new profile in MO2...minus the mods you mentioned... load up my clean vanilla save before exiting the vault and give it a whirl. Again, thank you.

Anyway, i did a little experiment today. Got up this morning, fired up my PC, checked my memory cache in task manager: 1.25 gb. Played the game for about three hours with no issues. Quit the game checked the cache: 4.25 gb. Ran a few errands, checked the cache upon return: Still 4.25gb. Played FO4 for about two hours, no issues. cache up to 6.50gb. Loaded up my last hard save....crash, tried again, save loaded fine, game crashed after about an hour of playing, cache up to...7.50gb... Tried to load my last hard save and it crashed on load three times in a row. Restated my PC, checked the cache: 1.25gb. ...Started the game from the very same save, loaded right up and I played for about three hours without issue..... A small sampling size, so to speak, but, There my be a correlational. I'm going to repeat the process on days when i actually have time to dance with FO4 for most the day.

[LucidLady]

I"m going to create a new profile in MO2...minus the mods you mentioned... load up my clean vanilla save before exiting the vault and give it a whirl. Again, thank you.

 

Anyway, i did a little experiment today. Got up this morning, fired up my PC, checked my memory cache in task manager: 1.25 gb. Played the game for about three hours with no issues. Quit the game checked the cache: 4.25 gb. Ran a few errands, checked the cache upon return: Still 4.25gb. Played FO4 for about two hours, no issues. cache up to 6.50gb. Loaded up my last hard save....crash, tried again, save loaded fine, game crashed after about an hour of playing, cache up to...7.50gb... Tried to load my last hard save and it crashed on load three times in a row. Restated my PC, checked the cache: 1.25gb. ...Started the game from the very same save, loaded right up and I played for about three hours without issue..... A small sampling size, so to speak, but, There my be a correlational. I'm going to repeat the process on days when i actually have time to dance with FO4 for most the day.

 

[edit] Ah, I see. My own memory cache was at nearly 5gb.

It was at nearly 5gb even just after a restart for me.

I was able to create a new scheduled task which automatically runs in the background indefinitely that will clear your memory cache. Now it sits at around 200mb at all times.

Here's a video on youtube to show you how to do it, super simple -

 

I'll try it out while the game is running and let you know if i run into any problems.

So far i've only tried it while playing for about an hour, and it seems to work out fine. It automatically clears the memory cache every 5 minutes.

I'm actually hoping this helps out my own problem - how my game ONLY crashes a fraction of the time whenever i'm trying to create a new save.

I just did a bunch of quicksaves and didn't crash for a single one, which is impressive to me.

Edited August 14, 2020 by LucidLady

[edgeburner]

Thanks, LucidLady. I actually watched this vid along with about 5 others, but, being the lazy ass i am, was searching for something akin to CCleaner that would flush that cache in one click. I will try that task scheduler method myself. Though it may be Monday before i can devote enough time to the game to properly test it.

[LucidLady]

I mean, i'm sure you could just install that little program and click it once in a while if you want.

But the setup to make it run by itself once every 5 minutes is incredibly simple to set up.

So far I caught it get up to 1.6gb while the game was running and I had a stream going in the background. Then it auto-cleared.

*shrug* I'll make sure to check back and update if anything changes on my end.

 

Not sure what was making your cache keep raising up to nearly 8gb.

Some sort of memory leak? You'd think that would be mentioned on any of your mod pages.

Edited August 14, 2020 by LucidLady

[edgeburner]

I leave my PC on all day, I'm not on it all day, but, I leave it on. I don't like hibernation mode so I set my display to "go off" after ten minutes of inactivity. Also, I don't play fallout 4 (games) five times a day as a rule. But, The rare times I do is when the cache builds up. Before I download and install a mod, I browse the first few pages under the "Post" tab and the "Bugs" tab. I don't recall any of the mods I use containing any post about memory leakage. Of course, that is not an absolute.

I did create a new task with that executable and set it for ten minutes. Seems to be working fine, but, I haven't put it through the wringer yet. will let you know If an issue arises.

Thanks

Edited August 14, 2020 by edgeburner