MO2 Error

[Incubusbul]

I was away from the game for a few months. Today I played for a while; all was well, no crashes or any other problems. Suddenly the sound disappeared. I continued playing for a bit, just to finish what I was doing, then left the game. Noticed that MO2 had an update. I hit the button to start the update, but simultaneously some error messages started to pop up. I ignored them. The installation finished, only when I tried to start MO2 after, received the following error:
 

 

 

I tried reinstalling MO2 to no change whatsoever, then in my despair, I installed an older version, and now all the mods are gone (I was hoping to downgrade and restore MO2).
Is there any way to get back my mod setup? It's the only one that lasted so long, and I was kinda happy with it.  

Edited March 30 by Incubusbul

[traison]

38 minutes ago, Incubusbul said:

The installation finished, only when I tried to start MO2 after, received the following error:

 

So that means the Qt6Gui.dll doesn't have a feature some other component is looking for. Considering you got errors while installing it, I'd say that's why - its probably the wrong dll.

 

40 minutes ago, Incubusbul said:

I tried reinstalling MO2 to no change whatsoever

 

Would have to verify that the installer actually tried to replace the affected dll. If all it did was verify your exe version and call it a successful install then, well, nothing relevant was done. Process Monitor from Sysinternals (Microsoft) could do this. Another way would be to take the Steam approach (or the sledgehammer approach) - that is to remove all MO files (except for profiles and the actual mod files) before attempting to install it.

 

42 minutes ago, Incubusbul said:

now all the mods are gone

 

I would start from the profiles directory in MO. See what condition its in. The files in there are all text based and human-readable so it should be possible to make some sense of them. Example from one of mine:

 

Spoiler

│   archives.txt
│   initweaks.ini
│   loadorder.txt
│   loadorder.txt.2023_04_04_19_03_38
│   lockedorder.txt
│   lockedorder.txt.2023_04_04_19_03_38
│   modlist.txt
│   plugins.txt
│   plugins.txt.2023_04_04_19_03_38
│   settings.ini
│   skyrim.ini
│   skyrimcustom.ini
│   skyrimprefs.ini
│
└───saves
          ...

 

[Incubusbul]

Thanks. I see similar files in my profiles directory, but not sure what I can do about that. At least I got my modlist.txt there, in case I have to start all over. After that I checked my Steam library, and it looks like Steam no longer recognizes the game installation, as it shows the Install button instead of Play button. I can only guess my impulsive and half-baked attempt to downgrade MO2 screwed the whole installation.

 

If I uninstall and reinstall MO2 it will wipe everything, right?

Edited March 30 by Incubusbul

[traison]

29 minutes ago, Incubusbul said:

I see similar files in my profiles directory, but not sure what I can do about that.

 

What I would personally be interested in in these files, were I in your shoes, is their contents. If the these files still contain listings of all your mods, all your plugins and their order seems correct then I would assume the reason for why "all mods are gone" is somewhere else - are you sure you installed MO2 in the same directory as the botched new/old installation? Are you sure you don't have 2 separate installations?

 

24 minutes ago, Incubusbul said:

If I uninstall and reinstall MO2 it will wipe everything, right?

 

I doubt that, but if you ask me, why take the risk? Move the profiles and mods directories out of the MO2 install directory before wiping it. Moving a directory on the same partition will not move the data, so it will be a quick operation even if you have hundereds of GiB in it.

 

As for other MO2 things. Here's my notes about the installer:

Spoiler

WARNING: Contains a mod installer that enables C# to be executed by mods.
Remove plugins\installer_fomod_csharp.dll before running.

 

WARNING: installer_ncc.dll may be dangerous too.

 

WARNING: The bain wizard script installer does not appear to be a plugin and
must be disabled from the Settings ui in MO2. It is NOT installer_bain.dll.

 

No portable versions are available at the time of writing. Sandboxing the
installer and then copying the installed files over works however.

 

There's a bug when upgrading from a previous version, or possibly the bug also
exists in a clean install of version 2.4.1. MO2 crashes on startup if
plugins\installer_omod.dll is present. Delete the file to fix the issue.

 

There's a bug when MO2 is used with directory junctions. For instance BodySlide
will not find any presets or outfits if it is run from a path containing a
directory junction. BodySlide will only work if executed from a fully reparsed
path.

 

Disclaimer: I like my security tight and prefer portable applications over apps that infest the Windows registry. In MO2's case its most likely only using the registry for the uninstall instructions - providing a valuable service to most users; at least for the ones that do not like the freedom of moving apps around or otherwise messing with them.

[Incubusbul]

Yeah, I did what you suggested, moved the two directories outside the MO2 folder, uninstalled and then reinstalled MO2, but I still get the same error when trying to start the manager.  

Edited March 30 by Incubusbul

[traison]

There's lots of threads about this issue in other software, and its all pointing at this function not being there when Qt6 is ran on older Windows versions, including some Win 10 versions. I'm 99% sure a dll can't change its exported functions on-the-fly so the whole thing about it going missing because of the OS version is BS if you ask me, however if you are running say Windows 8, its possible the MO2 installer gave you a dll that doesn't have that function - and someone at MO2 forgot to test that dll.

 

... so what version of Windows are you running?

[Incubusbul]

Windows 8.1 Pro

Edited March 30 by Incubusbul

[Incubusbul]

But how and why would this happen while I was playing the game (the sound suddenly stopped, something that never happened before, not once), and I kept playing for quite some time. And then, when I exit the game, MO2 started bombarding me with error messages, which, I admit, I ignored at first, and just kept trying to update MO2. It looks like whatever broke the whole thing happened during the play session, which is kinda odd to say the least. 

Edited March 30 by Incubusbul

[traison]

4 minutes ago, Incubusbul said:

Windows 8.1 Pro

 

So the trick then most likely would be to get the MO2 installer to extract the wrong version of Qt6 and hope that the Qt6 devs didn't know what they were doing and the SystemParametersInfoForDpi works on Windows 8.1. I already sniffed around in that exe but couldn't locate the payload. Process Monitor from Sysinternals (Microsoft) would most likely reveal where its getting its os version info from. You'd probably have to spoof your Windows version in the registry temporarily.

 

The less DIY approach would be to not install the latest MO2 as its not supported on your OS.

[Incubusbul]

Okay, some progress at last.

I installed an older version of MO2 (2.4.4) and I'm finally in, but the mods are not there with the default profile (under which was my last mod list). Just the basic stuff and the DLCs. I did cut/paste the folders mods and profiles outside the MO2 main folder before uninstalling it, and then cut/pasted them back, but that didn't do the trick.  

 

Update: I changed the directory within the MO2 to the one the actual mods are in (for some reason they are not in the default one) and they showed in MO2, but the order is gone and it's a total mess. I doubt it will work, but I'll try to restore the previous order, which I have saved in loadorder.txt and plugins.txt and see if the game will start at all.

Thanks a lot for your help.

Edited March 30 by Incubusbul