Bizarre Mod Organizer problem: can't select items on start menu

[hoyao]

I've had this recurring problem which has been bugging me again these past couple days where starting up Skyrim through MO causes me to get stuck at the start menu. The "continue"， "new", and "load" options are all there, but I can't click on them with my mouse, and I'm unable to scroll or select them using either my keyboard or Xbox controller. So I'm totally unable to start any kind of game.

 

The game works fine when I run it outside of MO, and here's the weird thing: Skyrim still won't work using MO, even after I disable all mods and plugins. When this happens, Wrye Bash won't be able to detect my MO mods, but BOSS can. TES5Edit will display my plugins, but when I try to clean one, it will say something like "Could not find the file specified".

 

This is so bizarre, I spent the last two days trying to fix this issue, and nothing worked. But then the issue magically resolved itself literally as I was writing this post! My game was working just a few minutes ago, and now it does work even though I made absolutely ZERO changes. What the heck is going on?

 

Any ideas on how to prevent this issue from happening? Or is there at least a way to fix it right away when it happens? It's really annoying, and when it happens, it seems like there's nothing I can do but wait it out.

[hoyao]

The same problem is happening again. Last night my game was working. After I finished playing I did absolutely nothing to my game at all， but when I loaded up my game today my start menu wasn't working again. What's going on?

 

Edit: I ran the Skyrim Launcher through MO, and it looks like the launcher isn't detecting my data files. And using the game configuration utility doesn't help in that regard. Not sure what to do.

Edited October 2, 2014 by hoyao

[DoubleYou]

Alt-Tab back into the window should fix the problem of not being able to use the options. I'm guessing you're on Windows 8, and because of some of the ways it does things, you can find yourself in a state where the program window is shown, but your controls are still not directed to the app (not sure if this is a bug or something, just something I've noticed). Alt-tab fixes it.

 

As to your other issues, I really don't have enough information to diagnose the issue. Perhaps Steam isn't running when you launch Skyrim?

[GrantSP]

Edit: Deleted this post.

 

Sorry, wrong train of thought. (missed my station)  

Edited October 2, 2014 by GrantSP

[hoyao]

Alt-Tab back into the window should fix the problem of not being able to use the options. I'm guessing you're on Windows 8, and because of some of the ways it does things, you can find yourself in a state where the program window is shown, but your controls are still not directed to the app (not sure if this is a bug or something, just something I've noticed). Alt-tab fixes it.

 

As to your other issues, I really don't have enough information to diagnose the issue. Perhaps Steam isn't running when you launch Skyrim?

Thanks for the reply. The issue with Windows 8 that you mentioned doesn't seem to be causing the problem I'm experiencing. I think it has something to do with Skyrim not detecting my mods through MO. Alt-Tab doesn't work for me, and the game runs fine when I launch vanilla Skyrim outside of MO. And again, even when I disable all my mods, the game still only works when run outside of MO, and not from within it.

 

This is an issue that is basically popping up every other day now. The issue resolved itself again two days ago. But I just loaded up the game  a minute ago and the problem is back. I haven't touched any of the settings in the game or in MO at all since I last played, so there's seemingly no reason for my game to be acting up like this. Is it possible that I have some kind of virus that's changing my settings without my knowledge? Or maybe just browsing the internet affects my settings some how? Otherwise, it just doesn't make sense for my game to constantly stop working on its own, and then magically fix itself after a day or two.

Edited October 4, 2014 by hoyao

[GrantSP]

Some of your 'bizarre' issues do sound a bit like conflicting installations of your mods. ie. you at one time were using Wrye Bash or another manager and now you have installed MO but the previously installed mods are still existing in your Skyrim data folder. Certain tools like TES5Edit appear to see them, depending on where you started that tool from, but they aren't really there since MO hasn't "installed" them into its virtual file system.

 

MO and all other mod managers are completely different with regards to mod installation. MO should have two folder that have a great deal of importance to your setup.

Downloads & Mods. The downloads folder contains the archives you probably got from Nexus and the Mods folder is setup by MO when you "install" them. There should be no mods existing in your data folder other than the vanilla. If there are then they are from your previous setup and need to be removed.