Spontaneous game CTDs, help!

[Cait833]

You really should look into choosing between Monster Mod and Immersive Patrols - anything that adds a lot of spawns will make the game even more unstable than it already is with a load order as big as yours, and can have straight out incompatibilities if two mobs just happen to spawn in the same place.

 

You do not need to upgrade your card - as I said before, Skyrim is already unstable and runs on a modified Gamebryo engine (fairly buggy and not that kind to 'messy' mods either), but is hidden quite well by having a small population and low-mid res textures.

[prod80]

Your card, your papyrus log, you "unclean mods" are not the cause for this I suspect.

Also don't clean DLC's or Update.esm... there is no mod that requires you to have cleaned master files before its stable... CTD has nothing to do with unclean mods, its non sense thrown into the world. I've never seen a CTD issue where an unclean official master was to blame.

I suspect the game engine coming to it's limit and becoming unstable making it crash. You should avoid >1 spawn mods and see if lowering to lite texture mods helps. Be selective in your mods.

[ripple]

There is absolutely no reason not to clean the DLCs and the patch esm's. They are a mess, and have given the USKP team no end of headaches. They should be cleaned as a matter of 'good load order maintenance.' The real 'nonsense' is people saying that cleaning the DLCs will somehow 'break' them (which is a rather widespread 'misinformation' that's been circulating, particularly on the Steam forums, along with other 'Steam forum facts' like 'BOSS will destroy save games...' or 'Steam Workshop subscriptions is the best method of managing Skyrim mods'). The problem with the DLC and patch esm's is that they contain edits to the default game esm. Aside from things like the widely reported Breezehom navmesh 'horrors' introduced by Hearthfire (which can't be repaired by simple mod cleaning), I am fairly certain that at least one of the 'unclean' DLCs and/or the patch esm's contain UDR errors....

CTD has nothing to do with unclean mods, its non sense thrown into the world.

I am puzzled as to why you would say this--and perhaps I am misreading what you intended to say--but it must be 'corrected' so no one is under the mistaken impression that it's 'ok' to ignore 'dirty edits'....

The 'dirty edits' message in the BOSS log refers to two types of 'errors.' The first is duplicate to master records, which are unnecessary records that are generally 'harmless' but can cause some mods to 'not work properly' if those mods contain records that are 'overriden' by duplicate to master records from a mod lower in the load order. One of the 'myths' in circulation is that most modders know how to maintain clean plugins, so most 'duplicated to master records' are intended by the modders--this is a myth, and the truth is actually the opposite. In fact, the 'real stats' is rather dismal. Of the hundreds of plugins I've checked out which contain duplicate to master records, I have ever only come across two mods where there were (semi-)legitimate reasons for retaining such records (and in one of them, the mod author had explained they were intended to be 'place holders' for edits that might be included in a future version, which meant they were still ultimately unnecessary).

The second type of 'dirty edits' is deleted references. These -can- cause CTDs if those objects or records are referenced by a mod lower in the load order. This was a wide-spread issue with Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, when we had a bunch of 'clean clutter' mods where the modders simply went into the GECK and started deleting default game stuff. It wasn't a problem for most Skyrim users until more recently, with the influx of 'renovating settlements and cities' type mods, where once again we have inexperienced modders who just delete default game 'stuff' without filtering their plugins through TES5Edit afterwards. Cleaning the plugins using TES5Edit will undelete any deleted references, and set them to 'disabled', and those references will no longer cause CTDs even if polled by mods loading later in the load order.

So, when it comes to mod cleaning, the bottom line is.....don't think about it, just do it.

Edited May 19, 2013 by ripple

[prod80]

No, what im trying to say is that CTD is not related to having your masters skyrim.esm, dawnguard.esm, hearthfire.esm, dragonborn.esm or update.esm cleaned.

 

Sorry if this caused confusion... If any other mod contains dirty edits it can cause problems (depending on what is not clean)... but maintly its not a CTD rather stuff not working... it must be a really really bad mod to cause a CTD

[ripple]

No, what im trying to say is that CTD is not related to having your masters skyrim.esm, dawnguard.esm, hearthfire.esm, dragonborn.esm or update.esm cleaned.

It *could* be since as I mentioned, I am fairly certain at least one of those plugins contain deleted references (why Bethesda would deleted a base game reference in a DLC or the patch is beyond me, but good job, Bethesda). Although I agree that it's *unlikely* that any of the CTDs he is experiencing is caused by that (but it's hard to tell, with such a load order. The more plugins you use, the greater the probability). There are probably multiple factors causing the CTDs he is experiencing. I think the only way we can stabilize his load order is just to be systematic and eliminate every possibility of instability, one by one.

 

But cleaning is just good 'load order maintenance' that every mod user should practice, like using BOSS to organize load orders (It's actually all mod authors who need to do this, but since that's not going to happen...)

 

Of course, never clean Skyrim.esm, as it's 'THE master' so there would be no point.

Edited May 19, 2013 by ripple