I say very strange for several reasons, not least because for the past three months I have been building, refining and testing a huge build based off SRLE and SRLE Extended plus many worlds/quests/locations mods plus Legacy of the Dragonborn and a lot more besides. Skyrim Unbound has been in there from the start and I have never once had a CTD on start. I have had the occasional one during play testing at various stages entirely down to VRAM overload but nothing like what is happening now. I am reaching out in the hope that someone far more clever than me and more well versed in dealing with CTD issues can at least point me in the direction of what might be happening.
THE CRASH
The crash now occurs every time I try to start a new game (I have no saves as I am still testing and tweaking so I delete all saves before each start). Skyrim loads up fine, I wait patiently on the ridge above Helgen in ruins for a few minutes to let all of the MCM menus initialise, etc and once the final message disappears from the top left I enter the MCM menu > Skyrim Unbound > Start your adventure (it makes absolutely no difference what Unbound options I select, or if I pick a completely random start). This then takes me to RaceMenu and again it makes no difference what character I create or whether I just leave it all at default and click done. I name my character (or leave it as Prisoner/Adenturer, makes no difference) and click Accept. Camera pans back round to the brazier, I see one or two items/spells being added in the top left and then I am firmly back on my desktop. Every time.
NOW HERE'S WHERE IT GETS WEIRD
So I know what you're thinking. You're looking at my modwatch and going to tell me it's script overload or an out of memory crash. Think again. Up until two nights ago everything was loading fine, I could start anywhere with any character - no issue. What did I do in between times? I edited Enhanced Landscapes Merged.esp to completely remove three worldspace blocks outside Solitude to revert them back to Vanilla in game to fix major clipping issues with Solitude Expansion. I installed Play Random Idle, reinstalled XPMSE, reinstalled Realistic Animation Project Idles for random idle support, added CR for the Player NPC record to carry the Skyrim Unbound record forward to ensure it wasn't being overwritten by anything, added CR for the child races from RS Children to fix the shiny potato head issue caused by Height Adjusted Races, updated Crash Fixes, removed Revenge of the Enemies and all associated patches and CR, added AAE instead and added the relevant AAE patches and CR. Reran LOOT, reran FNIS/Bashed Patch/ASIS/DSR, loaded everything up in xEdit and sorted masters on everything. So nothing fundamental changed from the last successful start, yet now as described above it crashes every time.
NOW HERE's WHERE IT GETS EVEN WEIRDER
So after wasting an entire day removing Play Random Idle, reinstalling XPMSE again with just the options as detailed in SRLE, reinstalling RAP Idles without random support, downloading and reinstalling USLEEP, Unbound, SKSE, RaceMenu, Crash Fixes and anything else I thought might have been corrupted still with no change I decided to try unbound on a Vanilla with essentials profile. And with absolutely NOTHING ELSE loaded I am getting exactly the same crash, every time. This is on just the core files with USLEEP, SKSE, FISS, SkyUI, Crash Fixes, Bug Fixes, RaceMenu and Skyrim Unbound, nothing else, and all of these are fresh installs. WTF?
So some more tests:
Vanilla esms only - Helgen>Character Creation>No crash
Also then tried Unbound without RaceMenu - ...>CRASH!
Remember this is with fresh downloads/installation of all the aforementioned files.
NOW THIS IS WHERE IT GETS EVEN WEIRDERER
So as a last resort I decided to completely delete my entire steamapps Skyrim folder and restore my Vanilla backup (yes I followed every letter of the SRLE guide so I have a backup - thanks NEO). I then reinstalled SKSE and ENBoost (No ENB for now) and rechecked all of the ini files to ensure the correct settings. I left the SKSE memory patch in there, the correct settings in enblocal.ini as per the Crash Fixes instructions, Crash Fixes settings as per guide. These were Vanilla esms, so recleaned them all as per SRLE. So all is now back to a completely fresh clean setup.
So I load up the Vanilla Essentials profile - SKSE, USLEEP, FISS, SkyUI, Crash Fixes, Bug Fixes, RaceMenu, Skyrim Unbound - and start a new game. This time it runs through everything and starts without a hitch, no crash. Skyrim Unbound Completed. All great I think breathing a huge sigh of relief. I open up my full profile (which obviously now also benefits from the fresh reinstall of Skyrim and all of the aforementioned core files) and start a new game. And there's my desktop again. FFS :(
So I switch immediately back to the Vanilla Essentials profile without changing anything, start a new game, and the crash is there again as well. How can this be happening? Can something in the main profile be causing some sort of corruption in one of the core files which once it's happened in the main profile then affects the Vanilla profile as well?
OTHER STUFF
I am not seeing any Crash Fixes popup messages when the crash occurs, it is instant. Crash Fixes installed is currently 12 Beta 3.
I have papyrus logging enabled to try and catch it but I can't see anything in there at all that might give a clue (unless I'm missing something). I am at work right now but I will upload a log to pastebin this evening.
My modwatch (in my signature) is up to date as of this morning.
There are many merged plugins in the build which obviously won't mean anything to you so I have created a Dropbox folder with screenshots of what is contained within each merge. Each merge has been individually CR'd if required, and load order optimised pre-merge. I like to think I know what I'm doing. There are no errors on any of the merges when checked in xEdit with the complete load order loaded in. Some of the merges have changed slightly since I took the screenshots but nothing fundamental.
The CR on the build is a merge of the prebuilt SRLE and SRLEX CR files with any records from plugins I'm not using removed, plus a my own CR on all of the additional stuff which took me about two weeks. I'm fairly confident it is robust even if it's not perfect.
My system is i5 4440 @ 3.2Ghz, 16Gb RAM, GTX970 4Gb, 2x250Gb SSD (Skyrim on a dedicated SSD, nothing else), Win10
Steam overlay is disabled
No AV, just Windows Defender
MO, SKSE_loader, etc all set to run as Administrator
ParkControl active on max performance (all cores unparked)
I sincerely hope someone can spot something I haven't because I really need to get some sleep some time soon...
Question
dunc001
I say very strange for several reasons, not least because for the past three months I have been building, refining and testing a huge build based off SRLE and SRLE Extended plus many worlds/quests/locations mods plus Legacy of the Dragonborn and a lot more besides. Skyrim Unbound has been in there from the start and I have never once had a CTD on start. I have had the occasional one during play testing at various stages entirely down to VRAM overload but nothing like what is happening now. I am reaching out in the hope that someone far more clever than me and more well versed in dealing with CTD issues can at least point me in the direction of what might be happening.
THE CRASH
The crash now occurs every time I try to start a new game (I have no saves as I am still testing and tweaking so I delete all saves before each start). Skyrim loads up fine, I wait patiently on the ridge above Helgen in ruins for a few minutes to let all of the MCM menus initialise, etc and once the final message disappears from the top left I enter the MCM menu > Skyrim Unbound > Start your adventure (it makes absolutely no difference what Unbound options I select, or if I pick a completely random start). This then takes me to RaceMenu and again it makes no difference what character I create or whether I just leave it all at default and click done. I name my character (or leave it as Prisoner/Adenturer, makes no difference) and click Accept. Camera pans back round to the brazier, I see one or two items/spells being added in the top left and then I am firmly back on my desktop. Every time.
NOW HERE'S WHERE IT GETS WEIRD
So I know what you're thinking. You're looking at my modwatch and going to tell me it's script overload or an out of memory crash. Think again. Up until two nights ago everything was loading fine, I could start anywhere with any character - no issue. What did I do in between times? I edited Enhanced Landscapes Merged.esp to completely remove three worldspace blocks outside Solitude to revert them back to Vanilla in game to fix major clipping issues with Solitude Expansion. I installed Play Random Idle, reinstalled XPMSE, reinstalled Realistic Animation Project Idles for random idle support, added CR for the Player NPC record to carry the Skyrim Unbound record forward to ensure it wasn't being overwritten by anything, added CR for the child races from RS Children to fix the shiny potato head issue caused by Height Adjusted Races, updated Crash Fixes, removed Revenge of the Enemies and all associated patches and CR, added AAE instead and added the relevant AAE patches and CR. Reran LOOT, reran FNIS/Bashed Patch/ASIS/DSR, loaded everything up in xEdit and sorted masters on everything. So nothing fundamental changed from the last successful start, yet now as described above it crashes every time.
NOW HERE's WHERE IT GETS EVEN WEIRDER
So after wasting an entire day removing Play Random Idle, reinstalling XPMSE again with just the options as detailed in SRLE, reinstalling RAP Idles without random support, downloading and reinstalling USLEEP, Unbound, SKSE, RaceMenu, Crash Fixes and anything else I thought might have been corrupted still with no change I decided to try unbound on a Vanilla with essentials profile. And with absolutely NOTHING ELSE loaded I am getting exactly the same crash, every time. This is on just the core files with USLEEP, SKSE, FISS, SkyUI, Crash Fixes, Bug Fixes, RaceMenu and Skyrim Unbound, nothing else, and all of these are fresh installs. WTF?
So some more tests:
Vanilla esms only - Helgen>Character Creation>No crash
Vanilla esms, USLEEP, SKSE, SkyUI, Crash Fixes, etc - ...>No crash
As above with RaceMenu - ...>No crash
As above with Skyrim Unbound - ...>CRASH!
Also then tried Unbound without RaceMenu - ...>CRASH!
Remember this is with fresh downloads/installation of all the aforementioned files.
NOW THIS IS WHERE IT GETS EVEN WEIRDERER
So as a last resort I decided to completely delete my entire steamapps Skyrim folder and restore my Vanilla backup (yes I followed every letter of the SRLE guide so I have a backup - thanks NEO). I then reinstalled SKSE and ENBoost (No ENB for now) and rechecked all of the ini files to ensure the correct settings. I left the SKSE memory patch in there, the correct settings in enblocal.ini as per the Crash Fixes instructions, Crash Fixes settings as per guide. These were Vanilla esms, so recleaned them all as per SRLE. So all is now back to a completely fresh clean setup.
So I load up the Vanilla Essentials profile - SKSE, USLEEP, FISS, SkyUI, Crash Fixes, Bug Fixes, RaceMenu, Skyrim Unbound - and start a new game. This time it runs through everything and starts without a hitch, no crash. Skyrim Unbound Completed. All great I think breathing a huge sigh of relief. I open up my full profile (which obviously now also benefits from the fresh reinstall of Skyrim and all of the aforementioned core files) and start a new game. And there's my desktop again. FFS :(
So I switch immediately back to the Vanilla Essentials profile without changing anything, start a new game, and the crash is there again as well. How can this be happening? Can something in the main profile be causing some sort of corruption in one of the core files which once it's happened in the main profile then affects the Vanilla profile as well?
OTHER STUFF
I am not seeing any Crash Fixes popup messages when the crash occurs, it is instant. Crash Fixes installed is currently 12 Beta 3.
I have papyrus logging enabled to try and catch it but I can't see anything in there at all that might give a clue (unless I'm missing something). I am at work right now but I will upload a log to pastebin this evening.
My modwatch (in my signature) is up to date as of this morning.
There are many merged plugins in the build which obviously won't mean anything to you so I have created a Dropbox folder with screenshots of what is contained within each merge. Each merge has been individually CR'd if required, and load order optimised pre-merge. I like to think I know what I'm doing. There are no errors on any of the merges when checked in xEdit with the complete load order loaded in. Some of the merges have changed slightly since I took the screenshots but nothing fundamental.
The CR on the build is a merge of the prebuilt SRLE and SRLEX CR files with any records from plugins I'm not using removed, plus a my own CR on all of the additional stuff which took me about two weeks. I'm fairly confident it is robust even if it's not perfect.
My system is i5 4440 @ 3.2Ghz, 16Gb RAM, GTX970 4Gb, 2x250Gb SSD (Skyrim on a dedicated SSD, nothing else), Win10
Steam overlay is disabled
No AV, just Windows Defender
MO, SKSE_loader, etc all set to run as Administrator
ParkControl active on max performance (all cores unparked)
I sincerely hope someone can spot something I haven't because I really need to get some sleep some time soon...
Edited by dunc001Link to comment
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