Help with CTD troubleshooting

[dravis85]

I completed the STEP guide, had everything running smoothly and added 4 more mods (Missives, Better Jumping, Immersive Patrols, Whose Quest Is it Anyway) to keep it started simple. Everything was running smoothly after that too, enough at least to get through bleak falls and back into Whiterun. I played several stats (as I often do) as well, so I was fairly confident it was good. Then, I forgot to open steam once, and mis-clicked to have MO open it. When that happened, I think steam might've updated the Skyrim files or verified them or something. Now, I get a CTD after random things, like world/door transitions, kill moves, or while in menu. Only thing I've done since the mishap, is run BethINI because I noticed vSync was back on. Here's my current plan to troubleshoot this.

1. I'm going to start a new game and see if it's isolated to the save
2. Remove the 4 added mods
3. Try to find crash or debug logs somewhere
4. Not sure.

Anyone got any advice on how to make this go better?

[z929669]

Install crash logger from nexus and follow it's instructions for finding logs after a crash. Then perform your steps, which seem reasonable. I would do both #2 and #1 before trying to reproduce the CTD.

You also may want to check that you have installed all 02-Extender mods correctly as well as certain 09-Fixes mods. Basically, anything related to SKSE.

[dravis85]

I double-checked my Extenders section, and I think they are alright. I checked each install from the guide and made sure they were exactly what the guide said. 

I have the Crash Logger already from the extenders section of the guide so I have the logs from the crashes. I looked them over, but all I can garner is the error "EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION", with 2 at 0x000000000000 and the other 2 with addresses. What is the methodology to reading the logs to determine what caused the error?  Can you trace it back to a root cause?

crash-2022-05-13-03-34-02.log crash-2022-05-13-03-35-01.log crash-2022-05-13-03-49-36.log crash-2022-05-13-04-02-01.log

I literally only just saw this in my screen shot....the custom INI I used for the SSE Display tweaks while I was testing 5760*1080. I doubt that should cause the CTD problem, but I'm removing it from the load order to see if it helps.

Edited May 13, 2022 by dravis85

[z929669]

Looks like it may be a Win 11 issue with runtime requirements. If it was working previously without those mods, then it's obviously a mod though. Does a new game work without those added mods or does it CTD at some point?

[dravis85]

Those mods say you can turn them on and off, and I really wanted to recover the crashing save, but it's no still good. I'm trying the new game now. I'll post the crash logs if it continues, and probably come ask about next steps from there. Is there a better approach to testing than just "Run Game -> New Game -> Run around till CTD"? I wish LAL had an option that would just give you the stupid dragonstone..... 

Edited May 13, 2022 by dravis85

[Mousetick]

The game's crashing doesn't imply that your save is necessarily effed. Once you've figured out the cause of the crashes and fixed it, you may be able to resume playing your save.

Better Jumping and Whose Quest Is It are SKSE plugins so have no impact on your save whatsoever. You can remove them whenever you like. With Missives, you should want to drop those that you picked if any, and/or complete any in-progress Missive quests, before removing the mod. Make a new save, remove Missives, load last save and make a new save again. I'm not familiar with Immersive Patrols.

But these 4 added mods may have nothing to do with your crashes.

Understanding what changed before/after the issue would help troubleshooting. So what exactly happened during your 'mishap'? If everything had been smooth and stable before, this is an indication that the 'mishap' broke something. There might been other changes at around the same time that you forgot about or didn't notice. Perhaps a Windows update? An antivirus update? A GPU driver update?

Out of the 4 crash logs you posted, 3 appear to have happened while saving or autosaving. The 4th one appear to have occurred while playing an animation. But don't take my word for it, it's just a rough guess. These crash logs are hard to decipher.

[dravis85]

I had it running just STEP for 1st benchmarking and then coc'ing into each city to run around. I tinkered with BethINI, SSE Display Tweaks, and the Complete Widescreen Fix mod for 5760*1080, but I reverted the changes. Then I added the 4 mods, did the "benchmarking," then started new games several times. During this time the game never CTD once. I did update a gpu driver, but game ran before and after. I accidentally let Steam open Skyrim (instead of SKSE), with the little updating popup and then game opening. I know it undid INI changes, but I haven't found anything else missing or off yet. Since then, I've fixed the INIs and removed the 4 mods. I got a windows update yesterday after wrapping up for the night.

Today I got a save to "work," but with what Mousetick said about Missives, I'll probably just start over anyway. No reason to take a risk something got caught in my save that isn't there now. He was also right about when the crashes happened: kill move animation, transition into Whiterun, transition out of Whiterun, autosave in menu

Edited May 13, 2022 by dravis85

[dravis85]

I have found that I had the "Dragon Voices with Location" optional esp that isn't upgraded to SE. During the STEP guide, I installed the Creation kit, opened that Dragon Voices esp, saved it, and then checked it out with xEdit. It still shows up as 43 instead of 44 to MO2. I removed the optional esp to clear another source of bugging out.

Edited May 13, 2022 by dravis85

[dravis85]

Happy to say I have it running stably with the better jumping. I've gotten a lot further and had no other issues with CTD