Guide Talk:Troubleshooting

Some additions to the troubleshooting guide. Some of the tweaks/ fixes still need to be tested/ verified.

Mods and Savegames

Potentially add to Mods and Savegames section - This is no longer WIP and is complete. Could someone proofread/ double check? (MadWizard25)

As previously stated, in same cases it is better to attempt to "clean" a savegame once a mod has been uninstalled. Although the previous steps will sometimes work, there are certain mods, such as Warzones - Civil Unrest or SkyTEST - Realistic Animals and Predators, that modify spawns, and as such, a more thorough cleaning must be attempted. These modified actors can cause CTDs and freezes if they remain in the world space after the mod has been uninstalled. A modified cleaning procedure is required because these actors will not despawn and be replaced with uninstalling the mod and performing the basic cleaning steps stated above. These advanced cleaning steps will force exterior and interior cells to reset, despawning and respawning almost all actors in the game, among other things. For a more complete description of what a cell reset will do, visit this UESP wiki page.

To make sure almost all cells reset, its is necessary to wait for 31 days. Some cells will never reset, as they are flagged as "Never Resets" by Bethesda. These mostly include player homes and other important locations. See here for the complete list.

WARNING: Forcing cell resets will clear almost all containers and respawn random or the original objects contained therein, while deleting anything else, such as player added items. Therefore do not store any objects that you may wish to keep in these containers. Instead, place these objects within a container in a cell that is flagged "Never Resets". A good place is a chest or sack in a player owned home.

First Note: These steps can also be applied when installing mods that modify many cells and actors. In most cases, these mods will install correctly and modify all relevant actors. However, in some cases, not all actors will be properly modified when installing the mod. These steps will force these actors to respawn with the correct modifications.

Second Note: When uninstalling a mod that uses scripts, sometimes the scripts will continue to be present in your game. These steps may also purge these redundant scripts from your game. However, this has not been verified.

1. Download and install the No Boring Sleep-Wait Menu mod from Skyrim Nexus. This mod will allow you to wait for 31 days without having to wait 24 hours 31 times, due to the limitations of the default vanilla wait menu. This mod was created with mod cleaning in mind.
2. Deactivate or uninstall any mods that require you to eat, sleep, drink, stay warm, etc, to survive, such as Total Realism - Basic Needs. If you do not disable these, your character will die instantly after following these steps due to starvation, dehydration, etc.
3. Uninstall the mod you wish to clean Skyrim for. Or, install the mod you would like to have in Skyrim.
4. Load your savegame. Ignore the notice that the savegame is missing content if it appears.
5. Travel to another world space that IS NOT classed as the Skyrim world space. The best option is the Skyrim Testing Hall. See the Testing Hall notes below step 16 as to how to travel there, and how to exit it.
6. Once in the Testing Hall, open the command console and type "pcb" (without quotes).
7. Next, in the command console, type "tfc" (without quotes). This will enable free camera mode, and will help reduce the waiting time required for 31 days to pass.
8. Exit the command console, and press "T" on your keyboard to enable the waiting menu. The change in appearance is due to the No Boring Sleep-Wait Menu mod you installed.
9. Move the slider all the way to the right until 31 days appears.
10. Press "Enter" on your keyboard. You will need to wait for 2-3 minutes if you toggled free camera mode with the "tfc" command, or 12 minutes if you did not.
11. Make a new save.
12. Exit Skyrim.
13. Play Skyrim and load your save that is in the Testing Hall.
14. Open the command console and type "pcb" again (without quotes).
15. Travel to your preferred destination using the command console "coc <cellname>, as discussed in step 5.
16. Play! (Thanks to apoJake, on the WATER forum, for the basic steps, and MontyMM for adding them to the Wiki).

Testing Hall Notes: The best place to travel to for cleaning is the Skyrim Testing Hall, a cell that is totally divorced from the Skyrim world space. It was created for QA testing by Bethesda developers. To travel to this Hall, type "coc qasmoke" in the command console (without quotes). Note that should you wish to exit from this testing hall, you will need to travel out using the console command "coc <cellname>". The <cellname> must be replaced with the name of the cell you would wish to travel to. Before traveling to the Testing Hall, it is a good idea to know the cell name of where you would wish to return to. To discover the cell name of this place, be present at that location and type "help <location> 0" (without quotes) in the command console. The <location> must be replaced with name of the location. I.e. "help breezehome 0" (without quotes) will tell you that the correct code is WhiterunBreezehome or that Sovngarde can be reached with Sovngarde01.

Papyrus Tweaks

An issue with installing many mods, especially script heavy ones, is that the default Papyrus ini settings are not fully capable of handling the additional stress. This tweak should increase stability, and needs to be added to the Skyrim.ini file under the [Papyrus] section. Your Skyrim.ini can be found in Windows 7 under the \Documents\My Games\Skyrim directory.

[code] [Papyrus] fUpdateBudgetMS=1.6 fExtraTaskletBudgetMS=1.6 fPostLoadUpdateTimeMS=1000.0 bEnableLogging=0 bEnableTrace=0 bLoadDebugInformation=0 iMaxMemoryPageSize=8192 iMinMemoryPageSize=256 iMaxAllocatedMemoryBytes=8388608 [/code]

Thanks go to Lumaan on the S.T.E.P. Community forums finding these.

Esmfy .esp Mods

Some mods, especially those that modify navmesh, and/or add new cells are buggy as of the latest (1.5.26) patch. Converting the .esp to a .esm may fix these problems.

Quad Core Fix

Force Skyrim to use 2 cores, can fix stability issues sometimes.

Skyrim Stability Mods

64hz stutter removal

TESVAL

Stability Software

gamebooster/ defraggler/ ccleaner, turn off notifications for antivrus/ firewall.

FPS Background Booster

Skyrim Extended Launcher

This is a modified launcher the acts a pre-launcher to either the default skyrim launcher or for the SKSE. The advantage of using this launcher is that you can increase the priority of Skyrim as well as modify its CPU affinity. Both of these tweaks can imporve stability. In addition to these tweaks, the launcher can also launch specific saves immediately.

You can get the launcher here on Skyrim Nexus.

Steam

Steam has been known to also decrease stability. Below are some tips to reduce Steams potential instability when running Skyrim.

1. Turn off Steam Cloud Synchronization. This can be done by right clicking on the Steam icon in your taskbar, selecting settings, and then choosing to disable steam cloud synchronization. However, you should be aware that by turning off this feature, steam will no longer create backups of you Skyrim saves.
2. Turn off Steam Overlay. Steam overlay is a in game overlay that allows access to steam communities in game, as well as the ability to take steam based screenshots. This can be disabled by right clicking on the steam icon in your taskbar, navigating to Libraries, right clicking on Skyrim, navigating to settings, and then

Turn off cloud sync, turn off overlay, run in offline mode.