Infinite loading screen, but no flags for any missing plugins, and no issues in LOOT. (Mod Organizer 2)

[Rambunctious]

This is a bit complicated and open-ended, so I'll try to give as much info as I can.

For context, yesterday I was forced to do a keep-files system reset on my PC, which wiped my Mod Organizer 2. I managed to find the complete Mods file in Windows.old (up to date, just 2 days before the reset), and I copied the entirety of its contents into the newly created Instance's Mods folder. The game boots up perfectly fine, even showing the usual additional on-screen text, like ENB update and Open Animation Replacer keybind reminders. When I boot into the game, it gets stuck on the loading screen, but I can still hear the modded additional music continually playing and cycling between tracks, and I can smoothly move whatever 3D model appears on screen. I've even seen the Dev Aveza appear, so I know it recognizes Legacy of the Dragonborn.

- My character had ~190 hours on it over 4,541 saves, and a lot of varied progress, including probably >1000 items displayed in the Dragonborn Gallery, and thousands of items sorted into the Dev Aveza's storage, so it's possible that this file is just taking a very long time to initialize again, but I've already waited on the loading screen for ~10+ minutes, so I just wanna cover my bases.

- When hovering over the most recent save in the "Saves" tab in MO2, there are no missing ESPs or ESLs.

- The "Notifications" triangle in the top right, shows nothing except the typical "there are files in your overwrite mod directory" alert.

- All my "external" mod tools (ex : BethINI, Nemesis Behavior Engine, SSEEdit, KiLoader, MCM, all the usual ENB inis and configs, etc.) are still intact and in the exact places I left them.

- The overwrite directory even still contains my "Cleaned DLC Masters" that were done with SSEEdit.

- LOOT acknowledges every single Plugin (411 currently, though the list was 383 before the reset) and sorts them no problem. No dirty plugins, no errors, no warnings.

- The only unusual message within LOOT, is that I'm missing some compatibility patches for 2 different ESPs from the JK's Interiors Patch Collection, but when I try to reinstall the collection in question, it says "Installation file no longer exists". To remedy this, I tried to also copy the full contents of the Mods folder into the "Downloads" folder, but this does not seem to have resolved the issue.

- All mods still seem to be config'd and FOMOD'd the way that I left them, indicated by the varying overwrite lightning symbols next to a bunch of mods.

- Although the loading screen remains functional, task manager describes Skyrim as "not responding".

-----------------------------------------

Modlist from before the PC reset, dated 5/4/25 : https://pastebin.com/V6iQTtU8

Current modlist, dated 5/7/25 : https://pastebin.com/RZGmpDQZ

Both modlists have the same amount of lines and mods, just ordered differently for some reason. The only difference between now and then, is which plugins from this same set of mods I have active.

[z929669]

6 hours ago, Rambunctious said:

This is a bit complicated and open-ended, so I'll try to give as much info as I can.

For context, yesterday I was forced to do a keep-files system reset on my PC, which wiped my Mod Organizer 2. I managed to find the complete Mods file in Windows.old (up to date, just 2 days before the reset), and I copied the entirety of its contents into the newly created Instance's Mods folder. The game boots up perfectly fine, even showing the usual additional on-screen text, like ENB update and Open Animation Replacer keybind reminders. When I boot into the game, it gets stuck on the loading screen, but I can still hear the modded additional music continually playing and cycling between tracks, and I can smoothly move whatever 3D model appears on screen. I've even seen the Dev Aveza appear, so I know it recognizes Legacy of the Dragonborn.

- My character had ~190 hours on it over 4,541 saves, and a lot of varied progress, including probably >1000 items displayed in the Dragonborn Gallery, and thousands of items sorted into the Dev Aveza's storage, so it's possible that this file is just taking a very long time to initialize again, but I've already waited on the loading screen for ~10+ minutes, so I just wanna cover my bases.

- When hovering over the most recent save in the "Saves" tab in MO2, there are no missing ESPs or ESLs.

- The "Notifications" triangle in the top right, shows nothing except the typical "there are files in your overwrite mod directory" alert.

- All my "external" mod tools (ex : BethINI, Nemesis Behavior Engine, SSEEdit, KiLoader, MCM, all the usual ENB inis and configs, etc.) are still intact and in the exact places I left them.

- The overwrite directory even still contains my "Cleaned DLC Masters" that were done with SSEEdit.

- LOOT acknowledges every single Plugin (411 currently, though the list was 383 before the reset) and sorts them no problem. No dirty plugins, no errors, no warnings.

- The only unusual message within LOOT, is that I'm missing some compatibility patches for 2 different ESPs from the JK's Interiors Patch Collection, but when I try to reinstall the collection in question, it says "Installation file no longer exists". To remedy this, I tried to also copy the full contents of the Mods folder into the "Downloads" folder, but this does not seem to have resolved the issue.

- All mods still seem to be config'd and FOMOD'd the way that I left them, indicated by the varying overwrite lightning symbols next to a bunch of mods.

- Although the loading screen remains functional, task manager describes Skyrim as "not responding".

-----------------------------------------

Modlist from before the PC reset, dated 5/4/25 : https://pastebin.com/V6iQTtU8

Current modlist, dated 5/7/25 : https://pastebin.com/RZGmpDQZ

Both modlists have the same amount of lines and mods, just ordered differently for some reason. The only difference between now and then, is which plugins from this same set of mods I have active.

See this post for where your old files need to be moved from and where they should be placed. You can copy over the modorganizer.ini file from your root directory as well to get back all of your original MO themes and other defaults. Same goes for the game INIs under Profiles. After moving these files properly, you can reinstall any mod again from MO Downloads, assuming you never deleted them.

You will need to reinstall SKSE and SSE Engine Fixes into the game \Data directory.

[Rambunctious]

9 hours ago, z929669 said:

See this post for where your old files need to be moved from and where they should be placed. You can copy over the modorganizer.ini file from your root directory as well to get back all of your original MO themes and other defaults. Same goes for the game INIs under Profiles. After moving these files properly, you can reinstall any mod again from MO Downloads, assuming you never deleted them.

You will need to reinstall SKSE and SSE Engine Fixes into the game \Data directory.

I reinstalled SKSE and SSE Engine Fixes, replaced the current ModOrganizer.ini with the one from windows.old, and double checked each instance folder mentioned in the post you linked. Turns out that even though the MO2 interface was showing my list of saves, the saves folder itself had nothing in it. I added the saves, but that unfortunately has not remedied the infinite load screen yet. 

The main thing that seems amiss is my Downloads folder. When I looked through my old Downloads folder (from windows.old, pre-PC reset), all it had left was the data from a single mod. I'm assuming I had manually emptied that folder a while ago to save space, so I'm not sure exactly what the contents of Downloads should look like to begin with. I remember it being a whole mess of Zip folders and what looked like documents, so I just copied the contents of Mods into Downloads as well. Is that the wrong move?

[z929669]

3 hours ago, Rambunctious said:

I remember it being a whole mess of Zip folders and what looked like documents, so I just copied the contents of Mods into Downloads as well. Is that the wrong move?

Yes, wrong move. The mods folder consists of the end result of installing the mods. It is not the source. The downloads folder consists of 7z, rar, and/or zip archives with metadata text files. In order to restore it, you will need to re-download each mod.

That is not the reason your game won't load though. That is most likely caused by a missing or invalid runtime mod like SKSE, Engine Fixes, Address Lib, etc.

I suggest that you disable all mods in your MO left pane except SKSE and Engine Fixes and try to launch the game via MO. If you still have issues, follow the Step 2.3 guide through 02-Extenders to get everything in working order. That includes the SSG.

[Rambunctious]

1 hour ago, z929669 said:

Yes, wrong move. The mods folder consists of the end result of installing the mods. It is not the source. The downloads folder consists of 7z, rar, and/or zip archives with metadata text files. In order to restore it, you will need to re-download each mod.

That is not the reason your game won't load though. That is most likely caused by a missing or invalid runtime mod like SKSE, Engine Fixes, Address Lib, etc.

I suggest that you disable all mods in your MO left pane except SKSE and Engine Fixes and try to launch the game via MO. If you still have issues, follow the Step 2.3 guide through 02-Extenders to get everything in working order. That includes the SSG.

Is there any way to quickly filter or identify what a "runtime" mod is? I've freshly reinstalled SKSE and Engine Fixes, and I also reinstalled Address Library the other day.

I also tried running the game after disabling the entire mod section except for SKSE and EF, and it got to the main menu, though the background was covered in red text, and it crashed after about 15 seconds of attempting to load.

[z929669]

28 minutes ago, Rambunctious said:

Is there any way to quickly filter or identify what a "runtime" mod is? I've freshly reinstalled SKSE and Engine Fixes, and I also reinstalled Address Library the other day.

I also tried running the game after disabling the entire mod section except for SKSE and EF, and it got to the main menu, though the background was covered in red text, and it crashed after about 15 seconds of attempting to load.

At this point, test with a new game and not from a save. We're taking broad strokes now to verify the source of the problem.

02-Extenders are the baseline mods that are executed at runtime in addition to SKSE and are all related to SKSE. Begin at Step 1, and take special note of reverting the game to vanilla, verifying integrity of game files, and initializing the game. Following the Step guide trough the Extenders group on a clean new instance will give you a foundation from which to investigate further.

Once that is done, it's easy to move over the mods and begin testing those individually or by using binary iterations beginning with half of them. Just about any SSE build will work on the Step foundation as long as the correct versions of the runtime mods are installed to match your specific version of the game. Our guide assume 1.6.70 (and with the AU being necessary for many mods installed later the guide).

[Rambunctious]

2 hours ago, z929669 said:

At this point, test with a new game and not from a save. We're taking broad strokes now to verify the source of the problem.

02-Extenders are the baseline mods that are executed at runtime in addition to SKSE and are all related to SKSE. Begin at Step 1, and take special note of reverting the game to vanilla, verifying integrity of game files, and initializing the game. Following the Step guide trough the Extenders group on a clean new instance will give you a foundation from which to investigate further.

Once that is done, it's easy to move over the mods and begin testing those individually or by using binary iterations beginning with half of them. Just about any SSE build will work on the Step foundation as long as the correct versions of the runtime mods are installed to match your specific version of the game. Our guide assume 1.6.70 (and with the AU being necessary for many mods installed later the guide).

Ok, so, I haven't dove into the guide yet, but I went through and verified that all my 02-Extenders were newly installed and up-to-date, then tried loading a new save with all mods installed, and I've got some interesting progress.

The brand new save booted up perfectly smooth and quickly. Loaded me into the Alternate Start prison cell, and I was even able to teleport all of my modded followers to me (Lucifer, Inigo, Ma'kara [KWF], and Nebarra) using another mod called Where Are You? I was able to use the Alternate Start, as well as fast travel around the map, and even found the Dragonborn Gallery, so it seems that everything is perfectly functional.

After that, I attempted to load the latest pre-existing save again, waiting ~30 minutes, but to no avail.

So THEN, I went to test this character's other saves. To reiterate, this character has 4,541 saves and >190 hours, but I kept some from far earlier points in the game. I was able to smoothly load Save 150, which had ~32 hours, and everything was intact where it should be. Then I went to Save 382, which had ~40 hours, and it also loaded perfectly smooth. The next available save was 4289, with ~167 hours, and THERE was where the game refused to load again. This is obviously a huge jump in progress, and possibly data. Namely, before the huge save jump, I hadn't even unlocked the Dragonborn Gallery. After the jump, the Gallery had already gained hundreds of displays, and I'd stored multiple thousands of items on the Dev Aveza airship, which is also from Legacy of the Dragonborn. The only thing that the earlier saves had, which the later saves didn't, was the Embers XD Fire Magick Add-on.

Is it posssible that this save just has such a massive amount of info to load, that it genuinely is just taking an extremely long time to load in?

[z929669]

6 hours ago, Rambunctious said:

Ok, so, I haven't dove into the guide yet, but I went through and verified that all my 02-Extenders were newly installed and up-to-date, then tried loading a new save with all mods installed, and I've got some interesting progress.

The brand new save booted up perfectly smooth and quickly. Loaded me into the Alternate Start prison cell, and I was even able to teleport all of my modded followers to me (Lucifer, Inigo, Ma'kara [KWF], and Nebarra) using another mod called Where Are You? I was able to use the Alternate Start, as well as fast travel around the map, and even found the Dragonborn Gallery, so it seems that everything is perfectly functional.

After that, I attempted to load the latest pre-existing save again, waiting ~30 minutes, but to no avail.

So THEN, I went to test this character's other saves. To reiterate, this character has 4,541 saves and >190 hours, but I kept some from far earlier points in the game. I was able to smoothly load Save 150, which had ~32 hours, and everything was intact where it should be. Then I went to Save 382, which had ~40 hours, and it also loaded perfectly smooth. The next available save was 4289, with ~167 hours, and THERE was where the game refused to load again. This is obviously a huge jump in progress, and possibly data. Namely, before the huge save jump, I hadn't even unlocked the Dragonborn Gallery. After the jump, the Gallery had already gained hundreds of displays, and I'd stored multiple thousands of items on the Dev Aveza airship, which is also from Legacy of the Dragonborn. The only thing that the earlier saves had, which the later saves didn't, was the Embers XD Fire Magick Add-on.

Is it posssible that this save just has such a massive amount of info to load, that it genuinely is just taking an extremely long time to load in?

You've determined that your issue is save-game related, yes. It's probably papyrus related.

This save likely would have had the same issues before you rebuilt your OS. You can try save-game fixes like ReSaver, but I can't really provide much guidance beyond that: https://dyndolod.info/Help/Clean-Save

[Rambunctious]

7 hours ago, z929669 said:

You've determined that your issue is save-game related, yes. It's probably papyrus related.

This save likely would have had the same issues before you rebuilt your OS. You can try save-game fixes like ReSaver, but I can't really provide much guidance beyond that: https://dyndolod.info/Help/Clean-Save

Thank you so much for your help so far. ReSaver has found 405 unattached instances and 4 undefined elements in each of my "late-game" saves, but unfortunately, cleaning them has not managed to make them load yet.

However, I did find another potentially interesting issue. I haven't had any actual crashes yet (rather, manual end-tasks in task manager), but Crash Logger was still generating logs. When I put any of the post-reset logs into Phostwood's Skyrim Crash Log Analyzer, it says no game plugins were detected, and sure enough, when I manually check them, the logs are missing like 95% of what past logs showed. This doesn't seem to make sense considering the mods are still present and functioning on newer saves. Anything worth looking into there?

[z929669]

1 hour ago, Rambunctious said:

Thank you so much for your help so far. ReSaver has found 405 unattached instances and 4 undefined elements in each of my "late-game" saves, but unfortunately, cleaning them has not managed to make them load yet.

However, I did find another potentially interesting issue. I haven't had any actual crashes yet (rather, manual end-tasks in task manager), but Crash Logger was still generating logs. When I put any of the post-reset logs into Phostwood's Skyrim Crash Log Analyzer, it says no game plugins were detected, and sure enough, when I manually check them, the logs are missing like 95% of what past logs showed. This doesn't seem to make sense considering the mods are still present and functioning on newer saves. Anything worth looking into there?

Update MO.

Ensure your plugins are enabled in the MO right pane, and sort them with LOOT stand-alone.

Are you running the latest version of the game? Is that what you were running before you reinstalled your OS? Assuming you are running 1.6.1170 version of the game, my advice is still to follow the SSG and all instructions in the Step guide through 02-Extenders.

You may also want to check your SKSE and Papyrus logs.