SSE: Crash at main menu. No crash logs, No error reports.

[ChiefChubyChaser]

Okay so I was playing my game with a working mod list (using vortex) with no errors. I enter a load screen when fast traveling, and this time the loading was taking forever (I've seen this happen every once in a while, and I'd close and reload the game and everything would be fine) so I hit the restart button on my PC because I couldn't close out the game (probably a better way to do that? But thats what I did.)

 

Anyway, fired back up the computer. Launched SSE through the skse as usual. Bethesda pops up, I look at the Skyrim logo while the little load wheel in the bottom right hand corner spins and JUST as the menu loads, it crashes to desktop.

 

Vortex does not give me an error report. And there are no crash logs of the crash in the game folder.

 

I have made NO changes to my working mod list.

 

I try deploying the mod list again to see if that fixes anything. Start again, and the same exact thing happens. It crashes just as the main menu loads, and there are no crash logs, and no errors on vortex.

 

Any ideas what I fucked up when I reset the game?

[Uncle64]

Tried to load one old save?

There can be many reasons why the game acts like it does.

 

When you did crash your PC you may have ruined gamefiles or any other important file, I suggest you do one diskscan of your drive:s

And do one fileverify on the game on Steam

[Gukahn]

29 minutes ago, ChiefChubyChaser said:

 (probably a better way to do that? But thats what I did.)

 

 

Everything what Uncle64 said but i would start with the last suggestion, and:

a better way of doing it would be setting taskmanager to always be in front so if you freez you can just tab to it and end skyrim with it

[osculim]

I am not very experienced with vortex. But I had situations like this a few times where pc restarts was needed. It can cause all kinds of problems. First It can mess up your load order. So I would suggest to just try and rebuild that. I know with MO2 You can save your LO so in case it get messed up you can just load that file have a look see if Vortex have a function like that. I doubt that the actual save can be damaged as you have not accessed the save file yet. It could be either skyrim files that got corrupted during the restart or a mod file that was being loaded as you restarted. You could try and run a repair through steam. Let it check if there are broken files. If you are lucky and it is a steam file it will be redownloaded. If it is a mod that got corrupted you will have to go through each one to find the culprit.

[Grey Cloud]

9 hours ago, ChiefChubyChaser said:

Any ideas what I fucked up when I reset the game?

Yup. This:

9 hours ago, ChiefChubyChaser said:

so I hit the restart button on my PC

Jeezus.

 

If you need to kill the game then use the three-fingered salute: CTRL + ALT + DEL and choose 'Sign Out'. This will close all open programs gracefully.

 

8 hours ago, osculim said:

But I had situations like this a few times where pc restarts was needed

Like what? The game locking? Nothing to do with your mod manager. Things screwed up after resetting the PC? That will do it, no need to blame the mod manager.

The first time you run Vortex afterwards it would autosort your load order.

[ChiefChubyChaser]

Okay, so the game launches and runs with no mods active, so I don't think the game files are messed up.

 

But if it's a mod, it's strange that there is no crash report, or errors detected by Vortex. Maybe it's the skse that's fucked up?

 

Also, as long as I don't change the load order, is it safe to reinstall all the mods on vortex to see if that helps any?

[jfraser]

19 minutes ago, ChiefChubyChaser said:

Okay, so the game launches and runs with no mods active, so I don't think the game files are messed up.

 

But if it's a mod, it's strange that there is no crash report, or errors detected by Vortex. Maybe it's the skse that's fucked up?

 

Also, as long as I don't change the load order, is it safe to reinstall all the mods on vortex to see if that helps any?

You shouldn't need to do that. I'd recommend going into Steam and refreshing the download to replace any core files that went bad, then just do the usual things you would do after installing (FNIS, LOOT, etc).

[ChiefChubyChaser]

I've solved a lot of problems from searching and reading forums. I'm terrible about using them myself, but I do like to come back when the problem is resolved, just in case some other poor fool who made the same mistake I had can in someway benefit from my mistake.

 

Unfortunately, the problem has... solved itself? I did nothing. NOTHING. Not a god damn thing. I got home from work ready to start trying to trouble shoot. Just for the hell of it, I decided to just try and launch one more time, fully expecting it not to work, as it had not the day before.

 

But, I fired it up, made it to the main menu without crashing. Then I just watched the screen, waiting for it to crash, but it did not. I loaded up my last save, and everything was dandy. Played for a bit. Made some fresh saves. Back to normal, and I didn't do shit.

 

Fools luck I suppose. Wish I knew what the cause of the crashes were, even if the issue did seem to fix itself. Oh well. Lesson learned. Thanks to everyone who commented to help.

[Mlynch]

On 3/7/2021 at 5:00 AM, ChiefChubyChaser said:

I've solved a lot of problems from searching and reading forums. I'm terrible about using them myself, but I do like to come back when the problem is resolved, just in case some other poor fool who made the same mistake I had can in someway benefit from my mistake.

 

Unfortunately, the problem has... solved itself? I did nothing. NOTHING. Not a god damn thing. I got home from work ready to start trying to trouble shoot. Just for the hell of it, I decided to just try and launch one more time, fully expecting it not to work, as it had not the day before.

 

But, I fired it up, made it to the main menu without crashing. Then I just watched the screen, waiting for it to crash, but it did not. I loaded up my last save, and everything was dandy. Played for a bit. Made some fresh saves. Back to normal, and I didn't do shit.

 

Fools luck I suppose. Wish I knew what the cause of the crashes were, even if the issue did seem to fix itself. Oh well. Lesson learned. Thanks to everyone who commented to help.

 

Dude, I was having a strikingly similar issue.

 

It was weird, and I'm still not 100% sure what the root problem was. To my understanding, CTD at main menu is caused by two main factors. 1) A missing master plugin; 2) The 255 hard plugin limit has been exceeded (aside from ESPfe bypass for SSE). Other stuff, as well, but those are the main ones I'm aware of.

 

This most recent bout of main menu crashing was inconsistent. Like, it'll load just fine 1 out of 5 times, but the other 4 times would just crash at the main menu. No Net Script crash logs or MO2 warnings. Nothing to indicate WTH was happening. The only possible thing I can think of that might have turned out to be the solution from the dozen different routine fixes I simultaneously tried was to briefly start a new, totally unmodded game on Skyrim SE through Steam instead of MO2. If that was what actually solved my issue, then hell — maybe some sort of INI problem that required regenerating?

 

But of course, I'm still not certain if INIs were the cause of my particular issue, because the INIs in my My Games folder remain unchanged (as launched through Steam instead of MO2). For all I know, it was some inconspicuously added info clutter that was auto-generated into one of my AppData folders at some point. Anyways, my underlined suggestion is just something to throw out there for anybody else experiencing similar issues.

 

EDIT [03/12/2021]: Irrelevant wording omitted to prevent spread of misinformation by me. See Grey Cloud's quote below for my previous wrong info.

 

EDIT EDIT [08/20/2021]: May as well update how I eventually figured out my crashes. In my specific case, I'm using No Grass In Objects + DynDOLOD 3.0, so what was causing my crashing was the "DynDOLODGrassMode" setting in the INI file in No Grass In Objects not matching with the INI file for DynDOLOD. So, I made them match, regenerated Grass Precache, and boom. Fixed. Always user error, amirite?

[Tlam99]

Swap file, bad segment, out of memory.

Power down with running programs is the worst thing you can do.

The OS probably fixed the problem and you might have now some clutter on the disk

which is no more accessible.

 

[Grey Cloud]

9 hours ago, Mlynch said:

We all know that crashing at the main menu is caused by three main factors. 1) A missing master plugin; 2) The 255 hard plugin limit has been exceeded; or 3) XMPSE isn't low enough in the load order.

Only you 'know' that. Your first option, yes; the second, not necessarily; the third is nonsense. Too many character animations are a common cause partly because the number varies from user to user. Animation Limit Crash Fix has removed this limitation.

 

10 hours ago, Mlynch said:

because the INIs in my My Games folder remain unchanged.

That's because you are using MO2 so the ini files being used are not those in the My Games folder. I've never used MO but I know that.

 

[Mlynch]

1 hour ago, Grey Cloud said:

Only you 'know' that. Your first option, yes; the second, not necessarily; the third is nonsense. Too many character animations are a common cause partly because the number varies from user to user. Animation Limit Crash Fix has removed this limitation.

 

That's because you are using MO2 so the ini files being used are not those in the My Games folder. I've never used MO but I know that.

 

 

Ah, forgive me for the XMPSE, then. I'd retract it, if it weren't already quoted (EDIT: Eh, I took it out, anyway, so I don't spread misinformation). The number 2 is more my understanding for the hard plugin limit. ESPfe plugins (and I believe full-on .esl plugins) ignore the 255 limit.

 

Anyways, you're totally right about the MO2 INI files. I only mentioned My Games since it's the one used for when you launch the game through Steam, right? Or BethINI, but I personally haven't used it yet. Not sure where BethINI saves its changes.

[Grey Cloud]

Many users, including myself, don't have the XPMSE esp activated so where it comes in the load order doesn't come in to it. It used to be the golden rule that nothing should overwrite XPMSE and so installing it last or nearly last meant you didn't accidentally overwrite it. Nowadays, MNC for example should overwrite XPMSE.

 

ESPfe I've never heard of but esl only take up one slot as far as I understand it. They are SE related so I don't have them.

 

6 hours ago, Mlynch said:

Not sure where BethINI saves its changes.

Neither am I off the top of my head. I use Bethini but I don't use MO/MO2 so I don't know what happens there.