Shaydow's Guide to Troubleshooting CTDs

[Shaydow]

*Moderator, I was unsure where to put this guide. If it is better to have put it in Skyrim Technical support I apologize.*

 

 

 

"Help, I'm trying to ( go to a city, leave someplace, talk to someone, run around in the middle of nowhere, etc ) and I CTD every time!"

 

 

 

 

This is the biggest help request I've seen since Skyrim came out and people started to mod it. Troubleshooting a problem like this is more of a personal matter, there is very little someone else can do other than offer some advice. In this guide, I will teach you how SLOWLY alter your Skyrim  w / mods back to Vanilla, without the need to uninstall any of your mods ( until you find the trouble mod that is ) or reinstall Skyrim ( unless you NEED to as a last resort ). 

 

Note that this guide is only for CTD's that can be replicated EVERY TIME under the same set of conditions, such as if you try to walk into a house and ALWAYS crash. Random CTD's that do not always occur are outside the scope of this guide.

 

 

 

PART ONE: Finding the problem through activation and deactivation alone.

 

 

 

a ) The first thing you need to do is load up your mod managing program ( WRYE, NMM, vanilla launcher  ). For the purposes of this guide I will be using Nexus Mod Manager. Begin by highlighting the top most mod in your load order that is UNDER official Skyrim DLC, as shown in the picture below. ** IMPORTANT ** IF YOU HAVE ANY MODS UNCHECKED MOVE THEM ALL THE WAY TO THE BOTTOM OF THE LOAD ORDER FIRST, OTHERWISE YOU WILL TURN THESE MODS ON WHEN YOU GO TO TURN EVERYTHING OFF!!! ***

 

 

 

 

b ) now scroll down to the very last mod in your load order. HOLD DOWN SHIFT and click on it. This will select EVERY MOD in your load order.

 

 

 

 

c ) Deactivate every mod. Don't worry about what this will do to your save game, since you will NOT BE SAVING. We are only trying to see if the CTD is being caused by a specific mod(s). Now that your mods are all turned off load up your save game that you are ctd'ing with. If you are a custom race or are wearing any custom armors, that you just turned off, DON'T FREAK OUT when you load up. You're going to be naked and have NO FACE \ HEAD. This is fine. Now do whatever it is you are trying to do and keep CTD'ing. Did you CTD? If the answer is no, proceed to section d) of Part ONE, if the answer is yes you still CTD, move to Part TWO.

 

 

 

 

d ) We now know the issue is with one of the mods itself, since with all mods turned off, you longer CTD. Now we need to begin the process of finding WHAT mod is causing this issue. Shut down the game, and go back to your mod manager. We begin by turning on a handful of mods at a time, and we DON'T JUST TURN ON THE MODS WE LIKE THE MOST. We have to do them in order, from top to bottom, or with mods turned on all over the place, it becomes very hard to find the problem mod. The amount of mods you want to reactivate at one time is really up to you. If you only have say 20 mods installed, 2 or 4 at a time is fine, if you have well over 255 and bash, then you're going to want to turn on more at a time, just to lessen the amount of time you spend finding the problem. For the purposes of this guide I will be turning on 10 mods at a time, as shown in the picture below.

 

 

 

 

e ) With your now small handful of mods turned on load the game again. Go to the problem area / go do the thing / etc that you are CTD'ing on. Did you CTD? If the answer is no, you still have not CTD, go to step e2), if you DID CTD, go to step f).

 

e2 ) Shut the game back down and turn on a NEW set of mods, the exact same amount you turned on the last time, while leaving the other mods you already turned on ON, as shown in the picture below. Keep doing this until you CTD.

 

 

 

 

f ) I CTD! GOOD! Honestly, because we are now getting somewhere! Go back in to your load order and turn OFF HALF of the mods you last turned on in the previous step. Reload the game. If you CTD again, turn off ANOTHER half of those mods. 

 

 

 

 

g ) I stop CTD'ing! Great! We now know it's one of the few mods you just turned off, so now we start by turning them on JUST ONE AT A TIME. Since you narrowed it down already by following the previous steps, this should only mean loading the game 1 to 3 more times, depending on the number you decided to start with.

 

 

 

 

h ) CONGRATS, you found the cause of your CTD'S! If it's a mod you can live without, uninstall it. You could of course begin looking at the mod authors page for answers, move the mod around in your load order to see if it is conflicting with other mods, or of course ask for advice on what the problem might be here on LoversLab. Good luck and have fun modding your Skyrim!

 

 

 

 

PART TWO: Finding the problem When deactivation doesn't work.

 

 

In this section I will talk about how to troubleshoot the CTD even when you turn off every mod ( steps a - c of Part ONE ). This means your CTD is being caused by a loose file in your Skyrim installation and not by a direct mod itself. A loose file can be ANY NUMBER OF DIFFERENT THINGS, from a bad armor replacer, to a bad script, to a bad plugin. The following is a way to revert your skyrim to vanilla without having to delete anything.

 

a ) follow steps a - c in part one. Turn off every mod you have. Even though you already did this and are still CTD'ing, we need those mods OFF as we further troubleshoot, otherwise they will be trying to call on assets that are not there.

 

b ) ok so the first thing we need to do is find your skyrim installation ( usually found in Steam\steamapps\common\skyrim ). Open the Skyrim\Data folder. Find the MESHES folder. Highlight it and right click it. Select RENAME. Name it something simple like " meshes a " as shown in the picture below.

 

 

 

 

c ) load up the game. Did you CTD in the trouble spot? If the answer is yes go to step d). If the answer is no, see step f)

 

d ) Crap that didn't work. Ok so let's do the same thing for the textures folder. Rename it, again something very simple, such as " textures a ". Load up the game. If you still ctd, see the next step. If you DON'T CTD, see step f)

 

e ) now we are REALLY getting somewhere. My next suggestion is to just revert to Vanilla Skyrim. We do this by renaming the rest of the folders in the data folder **** EXCEPT THE VIDEO FOLDER  AND INTERFACE FOLDER AS VANILLA SKYRIM NEEDS THESE FOLDERS **** Load up the game. If you STILL crash, then there is something wrong with your vanilla skyrim installation, and has nothing to do with any mods. At this point you're going to want to verify the games cache through steam, and if that doesn't work, you're going to want to make a backup of your ENTIRE SKYRIM FOLDER someplace else. Then, uninstall Skyrim, reinstall it, and then copy paste your backup into the new installation. When you're asked to overwrite files say NO! You're only putting back all the things that are missing, and don't want to overwrite the Vanilla assets, otherwise you're right back where you started.

 

f ) HEY! I renamed a folder and I stopped crashing! Ok, so now we know the problem lies in that particular folder. This is where things can get time consuming, depending on the amount of mods you have installed. We can cut down on this time by using a bit of logic. For example, let's say you renamed the meshes folder to meshes a and stopped CTD'ing. So we know the problem is in that folder. Rename the folder BACK to meshes, and then go into it. Take a look at the folders inside. Any of them you can tie to a standalone mod you ALREADY deactivated can probably be ignored, as we know since the mod is deactivated, those assets are not being called on. Look for anything that is a REPLACER. So things in data\meshes\actors\character\character assets might be a problem, lets rename character assets character assets a, etc. Any replacer in the Armor or clothes folder may also be the culprit. I myself once followed these steps only to find the problem CTD was a bad replacer mesh in Data\meshes\clothes\yarlclothes03. Simply deleting / renaming this folder solved my CTD every time I tried to enter the blue palace in Solitude.

 

If the problem is a texture, follow the same advice, take a look at the folder names and ignore all the ones you know are not being called on from standalone mods ( since you deactivated them ). It could be something as simple as a grass texture replacer you have. Many don't think something simple could cause such problems, but Bethesda games are VERY picky, and a bad texture is a bad texture, and WILL cause problems.

 

REMEMBER: If you end up renaming the scripts folder or the SKSE folder during your troubleshooting, DO NOT TRY TO LAUNCH THE GAME THROUGH SKSE!  You need to use the normal TESV.EXE or SkyrimLauncher.exe found in the Skyrim folder.

 

I hope you found this guide useful if you're having problems with your Skyrim installation, and that it will help you find any issues you may have getting your game to run smoothly.

 

Peace,

Shay

[Yami X]

This will no doubt help a lot of people man thank you.

[Guest airdance]

Hello Shaydow

   I did have a problem of CTD, but I approached it a different way.  I unchecked all the modes, then simply added them back again to see where the problem was,

However, in the midst of my trouble shooting, a new and heretofore not experienced problem arose.

  I have the companion mod "Vilja in skyrim" and it has run glitch free since the beginning, and was running great until I installed the "Ebonville" mod. Actually it only happened when I took my companion with me to the village.  As soon as we entered the village Vilja went apeshit and started attacking the other NPCs.

   I immediately left the village and tried to go some place else, and again as soon as we enter a village or leave a residence she attacked others.  The Vilja program has a "reset" built into it in case it does glitch.  I used the spell and she was okay for about 20 seconds then started to do the same thing again.  So I have removed the Ebonville file and all is well.  As for the CTD well that turned out to be a corrupted save.  So now I have to go through the Ebonville mod and see why it affects my companion that way.

 

 I do like your method of finding the fault, much faster.   I hope I never need to, but if I do, I will give your method a try.