(v1.4.3) Mod Organizer 2 & Other tools - From zero to "Hey Sexlab is working!"

[TokayGris]

12 minutes ago, dontknowdontcaredontask said:

For resolution: I think you mean resolution in game. You can set that with BethINI (it usually takes your native resolution by default), that information is stored in the skyrimprefs.ini file. If you need to change it later remember to do it in the ini files inside MO2 (it's located in "Mod Organizer 2\profiles\default\skyrimprefs.ini"). There you can open the ini and edit these lines

H=height ; W=width.

Yes, I did that in BethINI, but some menues are below the lower border of the screen. To be exact, I tried upgrading a dagger and could not reach that part.

 

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For the antivirus warning: as I commented in a couple of places on the guide, I recommend to make a folder exclusion for your Skyrim install (Steam\steamapps\common\Skyrim...) and for your working folder (the folder where you have MO2 and every other tool you installed during this guide).

Yep, that's the way I solved that problem.

I suppose, the /documents/My Games/Skyrim SE could be included in that list.

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For your last problem, make sure you have selected SKSE as the current executable to run (check the screenshot in step 10.1). If you see other executable in there just click over it to open the list and select SKSE instead. Most likely you opened that list and changed it without noticing. If you went into the Skyrim Launcher to change your resolution please don't.

I did check that about umpteen times. So that's not it. I even checked in some other files and Skyrim SE.exe was supposed to launch and not the launcher.

I suspect some program "flawless widescreen" messed it up. I uninstalled it, but I think it f....ed up some ini-file or other beyond repair.

 

So, to cut to the chase: I am starting over... using your really helpfull guide!

 

 

[Just Don't]

43 minutes ago, TokayGris said:

I did check that about umpteen times. So that's not it. I even checked in some other files and Skyrim SE.exe was supposed to launch and not the launcher.

I suspect some program "flawless widescreen" messed it up. I uninstalled it, but I think it f....ed up some ini-file or other beyond repair.

I'm not sure I understand how this could happen. Another program messed up the ini files? that doesn't seem right. I can't see why MO would't be able to launch SKSE or other executables. The only thing that comes to my mind is if your antivirus deleted some executables (like the skse loader), so even if you're selecting them in MO and pressing run the file is no longer there. You could check if the skse files you installed in step 4.2 are still there (the dll and exe files that go into the actual Skyrim folder). As you say you'll try starting all over, check that your AV has exclusion for all the Skyrim folders before you unzip and start moving these files.

 

But about the resolution thing, now that I look into it, mods that come with menus need some tweaks to work in 4k or higher resolutions (or different aspect ratios). Check Complete Widescreen Fix. I wasn't aware of this as I stick to just 2k resolution and 16:9 aspect ratio for now. 4k resolutions will need this mod to fix SkyUI and other mod's interfaces. And remember that you should have two sets of ini files:

1. the ones in your Documents\My games, created by BethINI should stay there and not be edited
2. then you have the ones in MO2\profiles\default. you need to copy the ones from your Documents to this MO2 folder, and edit these as you see fit.

If you ever need to go back to a clean set of ini files just copy the ones from your Documents into the MO2\profiles\default folder.

[TokayGris]

On 4/26/2020 at 4:21 PM, dontknowdontcaredontask said:

That's a browser thing. You should see a message the first time you try to use the "mod manager download" button asking about to handle nxm links (similar to how you see a message about handling torrent magnet links). I don't know which browser are you using, but I know for sure it works with the most common ones (chrome, firefox, opera). Make sure you completed step 3.4 successfully (your MO2 shows your nexus account name in the window tittle, as shown in the screenshot below).

I am going bananas over here. New day new problem.

NOW it works up to the part where MO2 should do it. I started new, but now MO2 doesn't ask me. In the browser I get a "want to open nmx-something" and THEN I get a message from MO2 that no application is registered and that I should go to Settings-Nexus and click "associate with...links". But that doesn't do anything. So, it doesn't seem to be a browser thing anymore (was the first time, but I think not this time.

 

What was different this time was that I did not have to log into the Nexus, it already did that on its own. So, my guess: I left some data somewhere and that messed it up.

 

Oh well. 4th start... ^^

 

[Just Don't]

26 minutes ago, TokayGris said:

What was different this time was that I did not have to log into the Nexus, it already did that on its own. So, my guess: I left some data somewhere and that messed it up.

Yep, if you had MO previously there are some files stored on your system. If you go to Settings -> Nexus you'll see a "Disconnect from Nexus" button, there is also an "Associate with "Download with manager" links and a "Clear cache" button. Try disconnecting from Nexus and Clear cache, that should give you a clean start.

[TokayGris]

21 minutes ago, dontknowdontcaredontask said:

Yep, if you had MO previously there are some files stored on your system. If you go to Settings -> Nexus you'll see a "Disconnect from Nexus" button, there is also an "Associate with "Download with manager" links and a "Clear cache" button. Try disconnecting from Nexus and Clear cache, that should give you a clean start.

Nope, doesn't help. I still get this message:

 

 

I don't have NMM.

 

And these are the requested Buttons and links:

 

But clicking on them changes nothing.

I don't get it. It DID work the second time. But not anymore.

 

Thanks for your time.

 

[Just Don't]

14 minutes ago, TokayGris said:

I don't get it. It DID work the second time. But not anymore.

Go into the Mod Organizer 2 folder and open "nxmhandler.exe", you should see a list of the registered applications to handle nxm links. As you've done multiple tries removing and adding MO in the process, your current MO instance might not be in there. Hit the "Register active" button you'll see near the bottom of the nxmhandler.exe window and press "Yes" if you see a message asking for confirmation. You should have your current MO instance in that list now (check the folder path for the executable, it should be pointing to your current MO2 folder and it should say "skyrimse" in the Supported Games column).

 

[TokayGris]

1 hour ago, dontknowdontcaredontask said:

Go into the Mod Organizer 2 folder and open "nxmhandler.exe", you should see a list of the registered applications to handle nxm links. As you've done multiple tries removing and adding MO in the process, your current MO instance might not be in there. Hit the "Register active" button you'll see near the bottom of the nxmhandler.exe window and press "Yes" if you see a message asking for confirmation. You should have your current MO instance in that list now (check the folder path for the executable, it should be pointing to your current MO2 folder and it should say "skyrimse" in the Supported Games column).

 

 

Did this. List is empty. Before and after.

 

Five minutes later: WTF? Now it works. I just started over and used a different foldername for the Modfiles.

Ok.... so now lets see how far I get this time.

 

 

[Just Don't]

16 minutes ago, TokayGris said:

Did this. List is empty. Before and after.

With MO closed, go to C:\Users\<your user name>\AppData\Local and delete the ModOrganizer folder you'll see there. That will remove the cache and some ini files that store your Nexus account info for MO, it should be created when you use MO again (and you'll be able to connect to Nexus and associtate nxm links with the buttons in Settings->Nexus).

 

You might need to enable Hidden items to see AppData, check the screenshot below (reference taken from somewhere somewhere, the Internet).

 

If you can't solve it after that I'm really out of ideas. I've never had to even touch nxmhandler.exe or the ModOrganizer folder in appdata. So if it's something beyond this I'm truly out of clues.

[TokayGris]

13 minutes ago, dontknowdontcaredontask said:

If you can't solve it after that I'm really out of ideas. I've never had to even touch nxmhandler.exe or the ModOrganizer folder in appdata. So if it's something beyond this I'm truly out of clues.

I really do thank you for your time an patience!

My solution was somewhat silly, but for now it did work. (Naming the folder a bit different)

 

But thanks to you, now I know where MO2 stores it's data.

 

I will see how far I get this time. But without you, I would be pretty much left in the dark. Your guide is pretty much the only one I found that seems to have hands and feet.

(Is that even a saying in english?)

AND I did get it to work once. Until I messed it up, of course.

 

Thanks!

[TokayGris]

It works!

 

I owe you one!

 

Now to mess it up again...^^

[TokayGris]

And you know what?

I did.

I also know what I did. But I don't know how to solve it.

 

So, it was working. All. All mods.

 

Only I started in windowed mode, Which I did not want.

 

So I closed it, ran BethINI, changed it. Copied - here it comes - the two inifiles from Skyrim to /profiles/default.

 

So, who spots the error?

 

Right. Skyrim. Period.

Not Skyrim SE.

 

Ok, but that should be not that bad, right? Just copy the right ones over. The old ones get deleted anyway, right?

 

Well, don't know if it is related, but NOW i get this message when starting:

 

(Yeah, I know. Untidy foldername. This is the fifth round, so my reasoning is "Don't change anything that does not have to be changed".)

 

Thats the bad part. The good part is, that's not really true. The file is there.

 

And THAT was actually the reason why I switched to Apple a few years back and only bought this rig to play games. Because that FRIGGIN windows machine (as I found out after my bloodpressure almost made my ears drip blood) for some reason switched the MO2 from "run as admin" back to normal.

 

AND my otherwise cool virus scanner is not only a virusscanner. Just found out it also checks for ransomware. And if it finds some (or thinks it found some), it not only blocks it. It DELETES it. Thats why LOOT kept on going missing. Because Bitdefender (otherwise I really like it) just blasts it into oblivion.

 

Ah, I still remember when I powered my (now old) Mac up for the first time. I actually had a few hours time to get it running the way I wanted it to. I was used to endless fiddling with windows machines. I build and rebuild them countless times. I think the last one had four harddrives in the end, a boot menu, could launch SUSE and UBUNTU as well as windows. That is so far back, I think it was 98 (not the year... the OS).

So, I boot the Mac, expecting to spend a few hours tweaking.

Yeah, well. Nope.

Starts up and runs. Just runs. Smoothly. Flawlessly. Within 2 minutes what I thought would be two hours at least was done.

 

And now I am - for games - back with windows. And get high blood pressure, because that DAMN thing changes ONE friggin box.

 

Keep your fingers cross, MO2 did start, now lets see if Skyrim does...

 

 

 

 

[TokayGris]

So much for that. But now I know the path this crap takes.

 

MO2 starts Steam, Steam tries to start some synchronisation and THEN starts the launcher.

 

So, the way I see it, this box should be unchecked. It is checked by default.

 

 

 

Maybe that could earn a place in your guide?

 

(This german, but it says "Steam Cloud-synchronisation")

 

Because after I unchecked it, it all started to work like it was supposed to.

 

Even the display, as you suggested. I am happy. And drunk by now.

 

[Just Don't]

33 minutes ago, TokayGris said:

(Yeah, I know. Untidy foldername. This is the fifth round, so my reasoning is "Don't change anything that does not have to be changed".)

The folder name for MO2 is too long and it might be the issue here. Your rant is on point because there is a name length limit in Windows which can't be solved, only avoided. I'd change it to just "Mod Organizer 2" (as per the guide instructions), but if you made it work now better not change things.

 

33 minutes ago, TokayGris said:

AND my otherwise cool virus scanner is not only a virusscanner. Just found out it also checks for ransomware. And if it finds some (or thinks it found some), it not only blocks it. It DELETES it. Thats why LOOT kept on going missing. Because Bitdefender (otherwise I really like it) just blasts it into oblivion.

 Ah so it was some antivirus/malware software. Yeah, better make sure these leave all your Skyrim related files alone. Most of the stuff you'll download should be from safe places (Nexus has almost every file scanned, on this site people are really quick to report and take down dangerous files and so on).

 

22 minutes ago, TokayGris said:

Maybe that could earn a place in your guide?

Steam Cloud hmm I have it disabled by default (don't use that feature at all) so I didn't take it into account. I'll look into it and see if others have reported issues with it enabled. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

I hope everything works fine for you now.

[TokayGris]

6 minutes ago, dontknowdontcaredontask said:

 but if you made it work now better not change things.

That's currently my modus of operating. ?

And besides some mods that do not work (not ones from your guide) it works.

 

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Ah so it was some antivirus/malware software. Yeah, better make sure these leave all your Skyrim related files alone.

Yes, well. I didn't really know HOW good Bitdefender is. It not only checks for viruses, it also checks for ransomware AND - that was the trouble with LOOT - has some "advanced protection". And you have to exclude files such as LOOT in all three seperately in ADMIN mode. Just didn't expect that.

 

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Steam Cloud hmm I have it disabled by default (don't use that feature at all) so I didn't take it into account. I'll look into it and see if others have reported issues with it enabled. Thanks for the suggestion.

For "normal" games I use it. I am frequently "on the road" with a laptop, so this way I can play without having to transfer savefiles by hand. But in this case it is definetly better to leave it unchecked.

 

It is of course your decision, but since it proved to be my problem in round 2 and at the start in the fifth inning, it mighty be worth considering adding a half sentence in 01.1.

 

Your guide is so good and conclusive and so much help for newbs to Skyrim modding like me that such a tiny box can cause acute mycardial infarction. But, as I said, that is your choice.

 

The last time I did something like this tweaking and stuff it was Descent on a 486 with SCSI drive. The drive (SCSI drivers) needed about 50kb, the game needed 590, IIRC. And those engines only ran programs in the first 640kb. Not enough memory -> no game.

So, SCSI and the game would be fine. But you want sound. And a joystick. And network for LAN-parties.

I had to heavily edit the autoexec.bat and config.sys to get it to work (these were 3.1 days, so DOS basically ^^).

In the end, I had a boot menu that at first started everything, loaded every driver. Then a soft reset and then another option that only loaded the SCSI and the network drivers (and those where COAX days). Soundcard (and with that the joystick) somehow remained initialized.

 

 

I do hope you know that my rant was in no way whatsoever targeted at you or your guide. Quite the contrary! Your constant help and your really beautiful guide made me pull through. Without that I would have given up yesterday.

 

Again, I owe you one.

 

 

 

 

[Just Don't]

2 hours ago, TokayGris said:

I do hope you know that my rant was in no way whatsoever targeted at you or your guide. Quite the contrary! Your constant help and your really beautiful guide made me pull through. Without that I would have given up yesterday.

Yeah, I understood you were ranting about Windows, don't worry. I'm glad you could make it work. Go slowly if you start adding other mods. Then go crazy.

[YouArePoetry]

hi there, 0.6.1 I don't have the SKSE as shown in the screenshot and im unaware of what I did wrong, I followed all instructions up to this point

[TokayGris]

Aaaaaand the problems continue.

 

This night it worked. I played a little, just doing some quests or other. Died. Could not reload. Apparently there was no save file. (There are savefiles, but whatever)

This morning, I wanted to see if I could fix that.

 

Started game aaaaaand:

 

 

Back to the friggin' Steam loader.

 

I haven't even switched off my computer since it worked.

 

 

[TokayGris]

Ah. Well. Solved that problem. It was - again! - the virus scanner.

 

Now I am back to the savegame problem.

 

Is there a possibility to let MO2 keep the savefiles? Or a way to change the savefile location?

 

EDIT: a few minutes later: Back to the loader problem... Oh well...

 

EDIT2: I think I found it. Again, the virus scanner. It does even more! It specialy protects the /documents folder. And even with the respective programs set as exceptions, at least the skyrim ones weren't allowed to write in there... I think it works now...

[Xamdir]

I have a bit of a problem with bodyslide. I specified the path - BodySlide Output - an empty mod. But it refuses to save it there after it is done.
gives an error message that looks like this:

 

[TokayGris]

Just noticed another thing and/or problem.

 

Maybe something for your guide?

 

I noticed that papyrus extender didn't work properly. Or at all. At least MO2 says in crashed:

 

 

(With everything else, I just saw that now and not before.)

 

While looking for a solution, I found this:

 

 

With that installed, everything was good.

[jaeos]

20 hours ago, Xamdir said:

I have a bit of a problem with bodyslide. I specified the path - BodySlide Output - an empty mod. But it refuses to save it there after it is done.
gives an error message that looks like this:

 

That is saying those particular .nifs (looks like only 3) cannot be saved (looks like 1 outfit) failures are usually bad nif files in the beginning. pull up one of those files in the top left drop down bar where it says outfit/body and click preview, does it look normal? yes/no. if it does then there is an issue with the output path, if it does not look normal there is an issue with those particular nifs or mod. Devious Devices (pre AIO) had a shoe nif that was bad. it would pop up the same box saying it failed. Since you have Remodeled armor for uunp (it's not just one outfit) i am leaning towards those 3  nifs being bad and not output folder. (if you don't specify an output folder it saves it all to overwrite. right click overwrite and create mod. (mine is named bodyslide-output), mod is created and afterwards if you change the body preset and rerun MO2 will put it into bodyslide-output on it's own. New outfits will need to be added manually (left click overwrite and drag the meshes to bodyslide-output).

[jaeos]

20 hours ago, TokayGris said:

Just noticed another thing and/or problem.

 

Maybe something for your guide?

 

I noticed that papyrus extender didn't work properly. Or at all. At least MO2 says in crashed:

 

 

(With everything else, I just saw that now and not before.)

 

While looking for a solution, I found this:

 

 

With that installed, everything was good.

papyrus extender is skse dependent. if its the wrong mod version is where you will get the incompatible plugin warning. looks like you downloaded and got the "right" version for the skse you are using.

Open Bitdefender. Under the protection tab it shows all the modules. click the blue radio button that is at the top of Safe files (so it turns grey) and advanced threat defense. Retry skyrim as is. 

[Xamdir]

Saves BodySlide files somewhere if not ctrl +
I'm trying to save with a Batch Build combination,
and use these in the game too, but I don't know where. The path
: as I described earlier, I have already defined a
In Mod Organizer. But he refuses to save here.

[jaeos]

@Xamdir what does the paths look like? It needs to be in the same base directory. if you make it look like this 

Spoiler

it will revert it back to original and will allow you to find the batch builds. If at a complete loss you could always do a search for "meshs" and look at where they shouldn't be. they should be in skyrim, they should be in bodyslide, if you made a new folder but can't find anything other than those, reinstall bodyslide and fix the file system. Doing a search is what i would do if i was at  a premium for hard drive space.

[Just Don't]

On 4/28/2020 at 6:33 AM, TokayGris said:

EDIT2: I think I found it. Again, the virus scanner. It does even more! It specialy protects the /documents folder. And even with the respective programs set as exceptions, at least the skyrim ones weren't allowed to write in there... I think it works now...

Wow, your AV seems to be really inconvenient. I've been using some online version of Panda Dome and it works fine (not that I make a lot of use for an AV, i have it enabled almost as a placebo thing IMO). I hope you figure it out how to setup it to prevent future issues with Skyrim/SKSE.

 

On 4/28/2020 at 9:32 AM, TokayGris said:

I noticed that papyrus extender didn't work properly. Or at all. At least MO2 says in crashed:

As jaeos said, PapyrusUtil is version dependant, unless you install meh321's Address Library which is a recent addition (and it's actually covered in this guide, check step 13.5).

 

 

On 4/28/2020 at 8:18 AM, Xamdir said:

I have a bit of a problem with bodyslide. I specified the path - BodySlide Output - an empty mod. But it refuses to save it there after it is done.

You're using UNP as your selected body. This guide covers CBBE SE only, and for a good reason: I haven't used UNP at all on SE. You might need to find another mod to add UNP sliders to Bodyslide (most likely the ones you have aren't made for SE). I'd recommend you to look BHUNP for UNP-like bodies for SE, I'm not sure AiO HDT Anim Pussy is SE compatible.