Terminal Nexus Mod Manager problem?

[Codifer]

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Posted 12 minutes ago

I first posted this in Skyrim thread, sorry.

 

For several years I have played SSE 1.5.80 with fairly stable setup using NMM ver 0.72/3.

 

Two weeks ago that blew up. Since I had been wanting to upgrade to SSE ver 1.5.97 anyway so I finally decided to bite the bullet and do it. It was a long process of searching lists of mods in NMM until I thought I would go blind.

 

The result was satisfactory and I was ironing the occasional kink and play was fairly stable.

 

This morning SSE would not launch and I have spent most of the day trying to solve the problem. It seems that NMM no longer recognizes ESL mods as ESL and counts them as plugins. Yesterday the total active plugin count was 240, today that number 1s 358 so of course SSE would not launch.

 

Larger problem (Which may or may not be related to the above): Skyrim will not launch even with all plugins disabled except for the five basics.

 

I would appreciate any ideas that might help get back to my preferred world.

 

One request. I turned 78 a week or so ago so please keep the dialog simple. Tell it like you would explain ti to an idiot. I probably am.

 

Thanks for listening

[Codifer]

I am not sure what is happening, there was a response post and a supplemental post from me with load order but thet seem to have disappeared.

 

I was careful to update skse and other version sensitive mods to the appropriate version for sse version 1.5.97.

 

I am at a loss.

 

When the first catastrophic crash happened a week ago, it was the morning of a windows update but, although I was quick to suspect Windows, I doubt that that was the problem. When that crash happened, I was able to disable all mods in NMM and SSE would start and the total number of plugins was accurate. That is not the case now.

[Codifer]

I have made some progress.

 

I installed the NMM Community Edition (0.84.1) and now the bottom line shows 240 Plugins and 118 esl rather than 358 active plugins as it should.

 

SSE will  still not launch even if I disable all mods (except for five essential).

 

In the past few weeks since the first crash I have been carefully rebuilding SSE by activating a few mods at a time and saving backups of the stable setups. I have run loot, finis and wrye smash.

 

I would very much like to verify game files but that would result in updating involuntarily to AE which I do not want. I wish there were some other way.

 

I will keep trying.

 

 

 

 

Edited November 18, 2022 by Codifer
add version number for NMM

[traison]

The first thing to check when it appears that the game doesn't even start, is master plugin dependencies. The tool I use for this is xEdit, I'm sure LOOT can do it to if that's more your thing. I would assume NMM/Vortex would warn for missing masters but I'm not familiar with either of those.

 

The how-to for xEdit:

1. Grab xEdit.
2. Start xEdit through your mod manager, like you would Skyrim.
3. Do not change the selection in the list that pops up, simply hit OK to load your plugins as-is.
4. On the right side of xEdit it should show the "Messages", if not, check the tab pages at the bottom.
5. Go through the message log and look for errors/warnings.

If that does not help, my next assumption would be that it's just another CTD.

1. For that you'd need a crash logger such as this one.
2. Once it is installed, simply run Skyrim as you normally would.
3. Wait for Skyrim to fail to load up, and is no longer running (you can check the Windows Task Manager for the absence of SkyrimSE.exe to confirm).
4. Check the My Documents\My Games\Skyrim Special Edition\SKSE directory for the crash log (it will be named crash_<date>.txt).
5. Upload the log here if you need help reading it.

If they got no log and xEdit successfully loads your load order then... well I'm out of ideas for the moment anyways.

Edited November 18, 2022 by traison

[Codifer]

Thank you traison

 

I have begun downloading and installing these.

 

I did have a bit of a problem the night before the crash. I had trouble downloading a very large mod and it seemed to confuse and freeze NMM. Skyrim did load alright after that incident though and I thought nothing more of it. I am hoping that xEdit will find what I tore up.

 

Thank you for the clarity, I could follow your logic.

[Codifer]

xEdit did not indicate any problems as far as I could tell. I am still exploring that so that I can know what I am looking at. Last night I tracked down and disabled three plugins without masters as indicated by Wrye Bash.

 

It would seem that I had already installed some form of crashlogger as I found several entries under

"Documents/My Games/ skyrim special edition/skse".

 

Still trying to make sense of the entries and what they mean. At first glance there seems to a good deal of activity at 7:09 on the evening of 16 November, and one intriguing one at 7:05 which was:

 

"activationmenufixlog"

 

Unsupported runtime version 01050610.

 

I am wondering if this was somehow damaged though I can not imagine how as I am presuming that this pertains to C++.

 

Right after seven was when things went pear shaped. Although I did restart skyrim to make sure that all was ok I am thinking now that the problem would not manifest until computer was restarted.

 

and it did.

 

[traison]

Not all logs under the skse folder are crash logs. You'd have to look up the file name for the logger you're using but typically they start with crash_<something>. ActivationMenuFix.log is probably just the log of a mod called ActivationMenuFix, totally different.

[Codifer]

oh.

 

I will install the crashlogger and see what that indicates.

 

Hopefully it could detect some error even if SSE won't launch.

[traison]

If the crash logger is not creating a log file, you're probably not dealing with an unhandled crash; so don't waste time on actually trying to get it to create one. It either will or it won't.

[Codifer]

I am beginning to think that I need to start over in a way. I am looking at downgrade patcher and wondering if it really works. If I verified the game file integrity (at Steam) then I certainly would have an AE Edition. I would hope that the downgrade patcher would work to achieve a stable ver 1.5.97.

 

If that would run "bare bones" then I could install mods a few at a time to find the bad one. Assuming, of course, that the problem is a corrupt mod. If that were the case, I would expected it to launch with the present situation and plugins disabled.

 

My head hurts.

[traison]

If you use the downgrader, be absolutely sure you do all you can to block steam from updating the game. The way people normally do it is quite fragile, one mistake in steam and it bricks your setup. There are more reliable ways, none documented as far as I know, but they're far more complicated as well. What I mean is, be careful what you do after using the downgrader, or keep good backups.

[Codifer]

3 hours ago, traison said:

If you use the downgrader, be absolutely sure you do all you can to block steam from updating the game. The way people normally do it is quite fragile, one mistake in steam and it bricks your setup. There are more reliable ways, none documented as far as I know, but they're far more complicated as well. What I mean is, be careful what you do after using the downgrader, or keep good backups.

I plan to do this very carefully. I already have backup profiles in NMM so it would be not much to roll back (at least to my simple mind). I will disable all plugins and then go to steam to verify file integrity and get AE. I will then rebuild the wall so that steam cannot upgrade (has worked so far). Then I will apply the downgrade patcher, probably the total removal of AE rather than "The Best of Both Worlds" (sounds too good to be true anyways). I will also have backed up all the launch exe and dll files. Then I shall see what the result is. All the hype for the patcher sounds so easy and good.

 

It probably can't be.

 

Thank you very much for your guidance, it helps a lot.

[Codifer]

Just to close out.

 

Skyrim se is back. I steeled my nerve, subdued fear and ventured into steam. It seems odd that it took me longer to get into steam (I have played offline for a long while) than it did to verify the files, update to AE and get safely out and locking the door behind me. I am back to offline mode.

 

Using the downgrade patcher was so simple and quick that I did not hold much hope for success. But it seems to have worked like a charm.

 

I wish that I could end this by pointing to a particular simple glitch that I discovered using pure and geometric logic and solved with a clever fix. I can't. The cause of the original (and secondary) crashes will forever remain a mystery.

 

On a positive note, I have learned a few things about Skyrim SE structure and gained a few new tools. I have some new places to discover with the AE changes and places. I have decided to just stumble upon them rather than research. Pretty much the way I have lived my life so nothing to fret about.

 

Whenever, in the course of my early morning routine, Skyrim fails to launch I try to remember the first rule of "Hitchhiker's Guide"......... DON'T PANIC! Sometimes all it would take is to restart the computer. Sometimes not. It is then that I realize how much I am a creature of habit (addiction) and how much I need a chance to walk in the woods.

 

I wonder about that.

 

Thanks again for the help.