mccune68

Shoot, I'm sorry, I missed that. I searched and found Sekhmet3713's issue and then a quoted response to that, but stopped there. I did in fact have version 44 installed, so I will try rolling back to 40 and see if I can fix it. I appreciate you taking the time to not only make this guide but come help noobs like me with our questions, thanks!

I just ended up with the exact same conclusion. Narrowed the full load down to Weather Systems Merged, then narrowed the merged mods there down to Minty Lightning. Like you, I was sure to rename the ESP as suggested in the guide. Tried redownloading and reinstalling all mods in the merge and still had the same issue. Removing Minty Lightning from Weather Systems Merged allowed me to actually have the main menu fully load, otherwise it will always CTD.