Cheers for the detailed answer. Indirectly, you did answer the question (and filled in a few other questions I had) but (there's always, one of these, right?) ... you mentioned that 'when you manually extract BSAs .... you have to then manually delete the BSA after'. This is actually what my question was referring to. I don't want to delete the BSA ... I want to keep the BSA in the /mod folder, along with the it's extracted contents. But I want to disable the BSA in the 'Archives' tab, so that MO doesn't try and load it (loading the extracted loose files instead). When I uncheck the BSA in the archives tab, it gives me the warning, everything looks okay ... but when I quit/restart MO, all of the BSA's that I've handled like this are then reactivated ... seemingly against what I wanted to do. I was just wondering if the fact MO ignores my request to disable a BSA (but keep it in the /mods folder) between program instances is by design or is possibly just something that wasn't handled correctly. But I think you also answered that with your first sentence ... I can't disable a BSA if there's a matching ESP. Full stop. (even if I extract it, but want to keep it around, it'll always be loaded, then immediately overwritten by the loose files that were extracted from it ....) Though I understand why this is the case (your post, along with 'umpteen' pages on the whole 'BSA extract/intact issue' have made this clear) for some reason the behavior I was seeing in MO wasn't registering as 'correct'. I'm rebooting my reality now, in an attempt to fix this. Then I'll go drink some milk. Thanks for the help ;)