[Solved] Early CTD when any ENB dll is used on clean system

[DanielCoffey]

I am setting up a clean Win8.1 build here for Skyrim and am getting a CTD very early in the game loading process when an ENB wrapper DLL is present. I need help tracking down the culprit. I can reproduce the issue on Vanilla Skyrim loaded from Steam with only the 0.251 ENB dll and inis present.

 

Symptom - CTD immediately after the Bethesda logo fades out when ENB dll is present.

 

Skyrim - vanilla, no mods, launched via Steam. Also does it launched via SKSE through MO.

SKSE - CTD occurs with both SKSE 1.07.00 and 1.06.16

ENB - Wrapper version - CTD occurs with both  0.236 and 0.251. Does not occur if ENB is disabled through ENB Manager

Hardware - ASUS ROG Maximus VI Formula, Intel 4770K, 16GB RAM, nVidia 780 Ti 3Gb at 2560x1440, drivers 334.89

Software - Win8.1, Kaspersky Pure 3.0 (still crashes when AV and Firewall disabled), some ASUS ROG tools

 

The sequence of events is this... I start Steam, I click Play and get the Launcher. I click Play and the fullscreen goes black. The Bethesda logo appears along with the ENB white status messages for 0.251 and the GPU is correctly identified. The Bethesda logo fades out and the game immediately crashes.

 

I have posted my enblocal.ini over on the ENBSeries forum on the 0.251 thread but folks seem to think it is a background task messing with the ENB.

 

Any clues to start diagnosing this?

Edited March 5, 2014 by DanielCoffey

[DanielCoffey]

RESOLVED - a clean install of both Win7 and Win8.1 is missing the DirectX9 Runtime Library. The instant I installed it, voila - Skyrim logo and a full glorious cart ride with ENB present!

[DanielCoffey]

Using the Injector version rather than the wrapper does not change the CTD at all.

[CJ2311]

It might be the [Memory] section of your enblocal.ini, I get similar crashes whenever I forget to update that to the values required for my GPU.

Mind posting the contents of the ini?

[DanielCoffey]

Here we go... attached for you.

Edited March 5, 2014 by DanielCoffey

[CJ2311]

Well I don't see anything wrong with it :/

 

The only suggestions I have would be to try and change "ReservedMemorySizeMb=128" to 256 or 64

 

Of course it could be simply that you're running some program that tries to hook into the game itself, like MSI afterburner's FPS counter, Fraps, or DXTory. I had to disable DXtory's fps counter for the game to work with ENB.

[DanielCoffey]

I disabled everything except Kaspersky that was in the Win8.1 Task manager Startup list and it still crashed in the same way.

[CJ2311]

Well sorry then, I wish I could help but that's all I can think of :|

[DanielCoffey]

Tomorrow I will do a totally clean 8.1 install with no addons and see how it behaves. Even though I have stopped tasks in the Startup list I can still see them in task manager after a reboot so something is up.

[phazer11]

I don't think you should install Windows 8.1 again.

I know this is probably a stupid question but you have tried to remake all of your patches (Skyproc, Bashed Patch, etc) and reorder your plugins with BOSS yeah?

[Kuldebar]

Well, other than ExpandSystemMemoryX64=true and the SKSE 1.7 "issue" -it's not really been sorted out from what I have seen, please correct me if that's not the case...the whole things been somewhat confusing...

 

But all that aside, I have no experience with Win8.1 and am not certain how it reacts/deals with things like wrappers/injectors.

 

Highly unlikely that installing Windows 8.1 again would help.

 

Looks like the latest version of Windows 8 may not be playing well with DX9...discussion on Nexus SSME page...

Edited March 6, 2014 by Kuldebar

[DanielCoffey]

A clean install of Win8.1 didn't help and surprisingly neither did going back to Win7 either.

 

I have now tried both Win7 and Win8.1 clean with no anti-virus or other fluff. I have tried the nVidia 332.21 and 334.89 drivers with no change. I have made sure I am running on a clean copy of Skyrim and the result is totally consistent through all testing.

 

I have run the Heaven and Valley benchmarks to stress the system and have run MemTest86+ for an hour to check the memory and all hardware tests pass.

 

It must be down to how I am trying to use the ENB so I will go back to basics and try it again on my Win7 install.

[CJ2311]

But doesn't Steam automatically install the DirectX redistributables on launch? :o

[phazer11]

Probably not the full and latest packages ENB does.

[Neovalen]

This is a good thread for future reference. Will need to write a note in SR:LE setup.

 

Makes me wonder how many enb "issues" are really directx issues. :)

 

Sent from my XT907 using Tapatalk

[DoubleYou]

Whenever you install Windows, always run the latest DirectX runtime for your system, as most of the time it is missing some of the files. I wish Microsoft would include the full package by default.