CTD at Skyrim Logo with no Mods Activated?

[Cheetor]

So as it usually goes, I installed a few additional mods and after some esp merging, I get a CTD trying to load Skyrim.

 

So I decided to go through and disable everything and re-enable all the mods one by one to see which is the problem one.

 

Except now it crashes after the Skyrim logo comes up. My guess is it crashes right before it would pull up the menu to start a new game, load, etc.

 

I've tried re-verifying files. Cleaned ITMs. Double checked there are NO mods activated except for Skyrim and the DLC. Yet nothing.

 

The papryus log is pretty short given the lack of mods. Am I missing something that is causing the CTD?

 

 

Log:

[08/26/2019 - 12:53:14PM] Papyrus log opened (PC)
[08/26/2019 - 12:53:14PM] Function GetEffectMagnitudes in the empty state on type Ingredient does not exist. Function will not be flagged as callable from tasklets.
[08/26/2019 - 12:53:14PM] Update budget: 1.200000ms (Extra tasklet budget: 1.200000ms, Load screen budget: 500.000000ms)
[08/26/2019 - 12:53:14PM] Memory page: 128 (min) 512 (max) 76800 (max total)

[Grey Cloud]

Crashing there suggests that you are missing a master. Nothing to do with Papyrus.

You can't just reactivate mods one at a time, you have to make sure that a master is active before you reactivate any of the mods depending upon it.

You shouldn't just clean files willy-nilly. Some are meant to be like that.

[Psalam]

1 hour ago, Cheetor said:

So as it usually goes, I installed a few additional mods and after some esp merging, I get a CTD trying to load Skyrim.

 

So I decided to go through and disable everything and re-enable all the mods one by one to see which is the problem one.

 

Except now it crashes after the Skyrim logo comes up. My guess is it crashes right before it would pull up the menu to start a new game, load, etc.

 

I've tried re-verifying files. Cleaned ITMs. Double checked there are NO mods activated except for Skyrim and the DLC. Yet nothing.

 

The papryus log is pretty short given the lack of mods. Am I missing something that is causing the CTD?

 

 

Log:

[08/26/2019 - 12:53:14PM] Papyrus log opened (PC)
[08/26/2019 - 12:53:14PM] Function GetEffectMagnitudes in the empty state on type Ingredient does not exist. Function will not be flagged as callable from tasklets.
[08/26/2019 - 12:53:14PM] Update budget: 1.200000ms (Extra tasklet budget: 1.200000ms, Load screen budget: 500.000000ms)
[08/26/2019 - 12:53:14PM] Memory page: 128 (min) 512 (max) 76800 (max total)

Grey Cloud is almost certainly correct. The only other thing that would do that is too many animations which, from your description, shouldn't be an issue.

[bandygirl1]

 

39 minutes ago, Psalam said:

Grey Cloud is almost certainly correct. The only other thing that would do that is too many animations which, from your description, shouldn't be an issue.

I've also seen it happen on Windows 10 when trying to run ENBoost without making sure you have DirectX End-User Runtimes ( June 2010 ) installed.

 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8109

 

Not saying the OP is doing that, but...just in case.

[Cheetor]

3 hours ago, Grey Cloud said:

Crashing there suggests that you are missing a master. Nothing to do with Papyrus.

You can't just reactivate mods one at a time, you have to make sure that a master is active before you reactivate any of the mods depending upon it.

You shouldn't just clean files willy-nilly. Some are meant to be like that.

I've deactivated all mods. I was reactivating esms first but even with just Skyrim and the DLC activated the same thing happens. Cleaned them, didn't work. Revalidated back to original, didn't work.

 

Edit: Even tried with just Skyrim.esm and Update.esm and it still CTDs before the menu appears.

[Cheetor]

1 hour ago, bandygirl1 said:

 

I've also seen it happen on Windows 10 when trying to run ENBoost without making sure you have DirectX End-User Runtimes ( June 2010 ) installed.

 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8109

 

Not saying the OP is doing that, but...just in case.

Downloaded the SDK but it was a little confusing. I extracted to a folder in downloads than ran the setup. That should do it, right?

 

Tried it since that did sort of apply to me but no change.

[Cheetor]

2 hours ago, Psalam said:

Grey Cloud is almost certainly correct. The only other thing that would do that is too many animations which, from your description, shouldn't be an issue.

I do have FNIS installed but, without anything activated, it shouldn't matter, right?

 

It's acting as if it's missing a master when I just have Skyrim, Update, Hearthfire, Dawnguard, and Dragonborn activated.

 

I'm wondering if some tool (such as ENB that bandygirl mentioned) that I have installed is still affecting it.

[HentaiGnome]

When in doubt, uninstall. Make sure any directories pertaining to Skyrim are deleted as well. Heck, run CCleaner just to be on the safe side. Then when you're sure everything's gone, re-install Skyrim.

 

On a side note, would it be problematic to play on SSE instead? Ever since I've switched I never ran into CTD's anymore. Also using Vortex now, which so far has been a cakewalk lol.

[Cheetor]

13 minutes ago, HentaiGnome said:

When in doubt, uninstall. Make sure any directories pertaining to Skyrim are deleted as well. Heck, run CCleaner just to be on the safe side. Then when you're sure everything's gone, re-install Skyrim.

 

On a side note, would it be problematic to play on SSE instead? Ever since I've switched I never ran into CTD's anymore. Also using Vortex now, which so far has been a cakewalk lol.

If I uninstall wouldn't I have to redo all my mods? T_T

 

Is it worth it going to SSE? I thought there were less options.

 

I tried vortex but it confuses me. Does it still do those "virtual installs" where it doesn't actually move the files over? That's given me problems with Nexus Mod Manager.

[HentaiGnome]

5 hours ago, Cheetor said:

If I uninstall wouldn't I have to redo all my mods? T_T

 

Is it worth it going to SSE? I thought there were less options.

 

I tried vortex but it confuses me. Does it still do those "virtual installs" where it doesn't actually move the files over? That's given me problems with Nexus Mod Manager.

Uninstalling is a worse-case scenario, but at this point it seems like it may be the only viable option, so if your mod organizer lets you reinstall your current mods (or takes a snapshot of your current setup) then you may as well risk it. For me, when I start encountering major issues like what you're going through then I just take the long haul of reinstalling everything manually. At some point, you may actually find the culprit of your woes, and therefore it was worth the hassle imo. But it's up to you!

 

I personally think it's worth going to SSE just for stability alone. True, there are less mods for it, but I personally found most of the important mods are already ported or recreated for SSE. And more ports are coming along the way! Besides, I'm more of a less-is-more/quality-over-quantity kinda guy, so no complaints on my end as far as the mods that are available for SSE

 

Vortex can look confusing if you're coming from MO2 and even NMM. The irony is that Vortex does a little bit more hand-holding and so you're gonna see more prompts notifying you about the changes that you're making, but you get used to it after a while. If you're not comfortable with Vortex then that's fine, stick with the mod organizer that you prefer lol. But as far as virtual installs, the best way I can put it is yes-and-no. Unlike MO2 where it makes your Skyrim directory look clean by not touching it at all, Vortex actually does put files there similar to NMM. The difference between NMM and Vortex though is that Vortex only installs "links" of your mods to your Skyrim directory while NMM actually placed the mods there. In short, with Vortex the mods LOOK like they're in the Skyrim directory, but they actually are not. I'm not programmer-savvy to explain the technicalities, but I hope you get what I'm saying lol. If anything, Vortex is primarly designed and coded by the man behind MO2 so you can safely say the guy knows what he's doing and he's got our best interests in mind  

[Cheetor]

18 minutes ago, HentaiGnome said:

Uninstalling is a worse-case scenario, but at this point it seems like it may be the only viable option, so if your mod organizer lets you reinstall your current mods (or takes a snapshot of your current setup) then you may as well risk it. For me, when I start encountering major issues like what you're going through then I just take the long haul of reinstalling everything manually. At some point, you may actually find the culprit of your woes, and therefore it was worth the hassle imo. But it's up to you!

 

I personally think it's worth going to SSE just for stability alone. True, there are less mods for it, but I personally found most of the important mods are already ported or recreated for SSE. And more ports are coming along the way! Besides, I'm more of a less-is-more/quality-over-quantity kinda guy, so no complaints on my end as far as the mods that are available for SSE

 

Vortex can look confusing if you're coming from MO2 and even NMM. The irony is that Vortex does a little bit more hand-holding and so you're gonna see more prompts notifying you about the changes that you're making, but you get used to it after a while. If you're not comfortable with Vortex then that's fine, stick with the mod organizer that you prefer lol. But as far as virtual installs, the best way I can put it is yes-and-no. Unlike MO2 where it makes your Skyrim directory look clean by not touching it at all, Vortex actually does put files there similar to NMM. The difference between NMM and Vortex though is that Vortex only installs "links" of your mods to your Skyrim directory while NMM actually placed the mods there. In short, with Vortex the mods LOOK like they're in the Skyrim directory, but they actually are not. I'm not programmer-savvy to explain the technicalities, but I hope you get what I'm saying lol. If anything, Vortex is primarly designed and coded by the man behind MO2 so you can safely say the guy knows what he's doing and he's got our best interests in mind  

I may casually try to mod up SSE and if that works out I'll clean install Skyrim.

 

I remember when NMM did it I would have problems that if I googled would be attributed to the virtual installs that have links rather than the actual files.

[Grey Cloud]

The first thing to do is to stop jumping about from one thing to another.

Ignore SSE and Vortex. You are using LE and NMM and there is nothing to stop you getting a stable, heavily-modded game with these.

 

15 hours ago, Cheetor said:

I installed a few additional mods and after some esp merging, I get a CTD trying to load Skyrim.

Get rid of the merges and revert to the original esps just to remove them from the equation. If you know which mods you added then uninstall them (don't just deactivate). Try to get your game back to how it was before you made the changes. i.e. re-activate all your regular mods. Start a new game.

 

NMM will tell you if you are missing master. In the plug-in tab any plug-in missing a master will be in red or orange text (red for missing master; orange for deactivated master)

 

 

If none of that works then you will have to start from scratch.

 

Uninstall all your mods.

Verify that vanilla Skyrim works, i.e. Skyrim plus DLCs.

Read up on and carefully install and configure - ENBoost, Crash Fixes and SKSE Plug-in Preloader.

Install a handful of mods.

Verify that the game stills works okay.

Continue doing that until you have all your mods installed.

Run LOOT and FNIS after every group of mods.

If at any stage there is a problem then fix the problem before moving on.

 

One of the first mods you install should be Alternate Start so you can quickly start new games and can try different locations, e.g. busy towns or empty wilderness.

 

 

[Cheetor]

4 hours ago, Grey Cloud said:

The first thing to do is to stop jumping about from one thing to another.

Ignore SSE and Vortex. You are using LE and NMM and there is nothing to stop you getting a stable, heavily-modded game with these.

 

Get rid of the merges and revert to the original esps just to remove them from the equation. If you know which mods you added then uninstall them (don't just deactivate). Try to get your game back to how it was before you made the changes. i.e. re-activate all your regular mods. Start a new game.

 

NMM will tell you if you are missing master. In the plug-in tab any plug-in missing a master will be in red or orange text (red for missing master; orange for deactivated master)

 

 

If none of that works then you will have to start from scratch.

 

Uninstall all your mods.

Verify that vanilla Skyrim works, i.e. Skyrim plus DLCs.

Read up on and carefully install and configure - ENBoost, Crash Fixes and SKSE Plug-in Preloader.

Install a handful of mods.

Verify that the game stills works okay.

Continue doing that until you have all your mods installed.

Run LOOT and FNIS after every group of mods.

If at any stage there is a problem then fix the problem before moving on.

 

One of the first mods you install should be Alternate Start so you can quickly start new games and can try different locations, e.g. busy towns or empty wilderness.

 

 

I wasn't actually jumping around, just talking about them.

 

I was using Mod Organizer and LE. Virtual installs give me too many problems funny enough.

 

All I had merged were Armor or Clothes mods. Nothing too crazy in terms of what they do with the game.

 

I may have to just do a clean install. No mods are showing missing dependencies and that shouldn't stop Skyrim from starting vanilla?

[Psalam]

5 minutes ago, Cheetor said:

I wasn't actually jumping around, just talking about them.

 

I was using Mod Organizer and LE. Virtual installs give me too many problems funny enough.

 

All I had merged were Armor or Clothes mods. Nothing too crazy in terms of what they do with the game.

 

I may have to just do a clean install. No mods are showing missing dependencies and that shouldn't stop Skyrim from starting vanilla?

There is nothing wrong with starting over certainly. If you don't want virtual installs then use NMM (found on GitHub, not Nexus).

 

You also might want to look at this if you are starting over:

 

 

This is a description by a veteran mod user on how he got his game up and stable. His load order is currently full and includes merged mods to "exceed the limit." My point is that, if you want a stable game, you can have it.

[Cheetor]

28 minutes ago, Psalam said:

There is nothing wrong with starting over certainly. If you don't want virtual installs then use NMM (found on GitHub, not Nexus).

 

You also might want to look at this if you are starting over:

 

 

This is a description by a veteran mod user on how he got his game up and stable. His load order is currently full and includes merged mods to "exceed the limit." My point is that, if you want a stable game, you can have it.

Is there a NMM on github that has the old actual installations and not the virtual ones?

 

I'll definitely take a look at it, thanks! I think it's too far gone to try to fix at this point even though it was stable beforehand. If I can't even get Skyrim vanilla to run I'd have to pretty much clean it out anyway. Maybe I'll try SE as suggested.

[Grey Cloud]

7 minutes ago, Cheetor said:

Maybe I'll try SE as suggested

And make the same mistakes with SE.

[fore]

17 hours ago, Cheetor said:

I do have FNIS installed but, without anything activated, it shouldn't matter, right?

 

Wrong. Nothing aactivaed doesn't mean that you uninstalled it, and FNIS will find the animations anyway. In case running FNIS was one of the things you did before CTD started.

 

Another possible reason for getting a GENERAL Load CTD is when you have just one files inside of Skyrim Data with a path length of 260+ characters. Can easily happen for example when you unzip another mod file at the wrong place.

[Cheetor]

4 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

And make the same mistakes with SE.

Well I have to clean install anyways. May as well go for a more stable build and follow the guide Psalam posted.

 

Glad you have faith in me. ?

[Cheetor]

1 minute ago, fore said:

 

Wrong. Nothing aactivaed doesn't mean that you uninstalled it, and FNIS will find the animations anyway. In case running FNIS was one of the things you did before CTD started.

 

Another possible reason for getting a GENERAL Load CTD is when you have just one files inside of Skyrim Data with a path length of 260+ characters. Can easily happen for example when you unzip another mod file at the wrong place.

Oh snap it's Fore.

 

Love your mod btw.

 

Is there any way to disable FNIS or is a matter of just disabling the esps?

 

I could see the path length problem occurring, especially given how long some modders make their folder names. Is there a way to check this without going through folder by folder manually?

[donttouchmethere]

45 minutes ago, fore said:

Another possible reason for getting a GENERAL Load CTD is when you have just one files inside of Skyrim Data with a path length of 260+ characters. Can easily happen for example when you unzip another mod file at the wrong place.

???

[Grey Cloud]

1 hour ago, Cheetor said:

May as well go for a more stable build and follow the guide Psalam posted.

That guide is for LE.

[Cheetor]

1 hour ago, Grey Cloud said:

That guide is for LE.

Drat. Didn't know SE doesn't have SKSE, TESEdit, LOOT, etc.

[fore]

10 hours ago, Cheetor said:

Is there any way to disable FNIS or is a matter of just disabling the esps?

 

No. You have to actually uninstall mods that you don't want to appear in FNIS

 

10 hours ago, Cheetor said:

I could see the path length problem occurring, especially given how long some modders make their folder names. Is there a way to check this without going through folder by folder manually?

 

 

Unfortunately not. But there is a "work-around". Look into eventvwr.msc, if Skyrim has created an error. I don't know if there are other cases, but "simple" Load CTD do not create errors. They only cause a quiet stop of Skyrim.

 

I found that problem the hard way. I always downloaded animarion mods directly in my Animations folder in order to grep the animation for testing from there. And after I had done this with 260+ path length for both LE and SE, couldn't start neither one any more, and saw the different error messages (one of them inside a .NET dll) I was absolutly sure I had a virus, or .NET bug. And completely re-installed Windows. Only to see after retrieving my test data right away where this bug has come from. What an anger. 

 

MO2 atleas gives you this "Could not find part of the path". But Skyrim is rock-hard. After all, Bethesda has really earned its title as "CTD Champions".

[pjktrpr]

On 8/26/2019 at 11:32 AM, Grey Cloud said:

Crashing there suggests that you are missing a master. Nothing to do with Papyrus.

You can't just reactivate mods one at a time, you have to make sure that a master is active before you reactivate any of the mods depending upon it.

You shouldn't just clean files willy-nilly. Some are meant to be like that.

I also just started having this issue, but my circumstances lead me to believe maybe it isn't an issue with missing masters. I was able to boot the game fine, and even was playing with no issues, but it randomly crashed and I have not been able to get back in. I've made no changes to loaded mods since the crash happened. I could be wrong about the masters missing though, so I'm going to go look into that further in the meantime.

 

*update* I thought maybe the save file itself somehow caused it, but deleting it did not fix the issue, so I'm still stumped.

[Grey Cloud]

5 hours ago, ugrena said:

I was able to boot the game fine, and even was playing with no issues, but it randomly crashed and I have not been able to get back in.

If you can get into the game it is not a missing master or too many animations.

 

You should start another thread as your problem is nothing like the one here.