Diagnosing (and preventing) a game freeze

[thirstydovahkiin]

I've been running into an issue occasionally where if I open an inventory with a particular item in it, my game will completely freeze. The task manager lists Skyrim as "not responding," and the only way to exit is to end the task.  Using Quickloot EE, I'm able to see what's in the inventory without actually opening it up, and the few times its happened it's always been "Black Robes of <something>" that causes the issue.

 

Most of my googling has only shown how to fix things like CTDs and the like, not freezes. And the logging I've looked at has been no help either. What should I do to figure out why this freeze is happening and what I can do to prevent it?

[traison]

A debugger is the only way I know of to debug a freeze. The reason why you're probably not finding anything on that subject is that it requires a rare skillset.

[coolfreaky]

On 2/21/2023 at 8:42 AM, thirstydovahkiin said:

"Black Robes of <something>" that causes the issue.

you have already found the issue !  why not delete that mod and see if it is the reel culprit ?

[traison]

I think the question here may have been a bit more generic like "what to do when/if the game freezes". But yes, if a mod is causing an issue you obviously have 2 options, fix it or remove it.

[DeathApproaches]

No don't do that! That is a stock item! Don't break it worse.

 

Its sounds like something in-game is looking for something to be returned and it isn't, and the pex that controls what it does is encountering a condition that wasn't accommodated for, this is why if/then decision trees must always have else clauses, that's just structured logic 101. The fact it's not crashing out is amazing and probably down to a branching situation of a function or class, it called something correctly, but the code can't generate the value it's supposed to return, and it's being "protected" by the OS watchdog vs C'ingTD.

 

I would definitely make sure you have the CrashLogger.dll SKSE plugin installed.

 

Black robes is a stock item, so what mod(s) do you have that would change it? Do you have one of those "skimpy npc clothes/bikinis" things? Most are just texture changes and leave the form itself alone/make it invisible as it "shortens", but not everyone is a capable modder are they? Also it has a magical effect if it's got an "of <blah>" appended to it, so did you do something to the sprite effects, add some shit like "brighter glowy-ier magic spells v.0.0.1" or something? Also if you added any new magic spells that can be used for enchanting clothing? That could be it. If you cheated the enchant system and use a mod that lets you put 20 enchants on something, that too could be it. (what really sucks is, it could just be a load order issue, putting the thing that modifies something before the item itself is defined - things like LOOT watch out for this, but it's not an A.I. it's maintained by user submissions.)

 

The black robes by itself? Very unlikely it's the cause.

 

Anyway. those are the kinds of things I would start with.

 

[thirstydovahkiin]

I do have crash logger installed, but it doesn't do me any good because this issue never really causes Skyrim to crash per se.  Running AE so .net script framework isn't available.

 

The hint about load order is pretty useful, though. I took a peek at SSEEdit to see what else is modifying Black Robes, and found that WACCF definitely does some edits. Took a look at the bugs page for WACCF on Nexus, and someone else has reported the exact same symptoms that I'm seeing!  The solution offered in that thread (just reinstall WACCF) didn't seem to work. But on a hunch I disabled my Bashed Patch (I have a save right next to an item on the ground that causes the same freeze) and things work fine.

 

I don't want to go through the rest of this playthrough without a bashed patch, though, so the next step is figuring out how and why the bashed patch causes this particular issue.