FO4 wont even start up

[icladel]

So FO4 running F4SE 1.10.163 (game .exe is pre-next gen) was working perfectly for the last few weeks. I was playing it last night with no issues. Closed it, went to bed, went to work, came home and started it up. 

 

Steam > MO2 > Run F4SE loader.

 

The game wont even load the menu screen.

It gets stuck on a black screen

After a while it just closes.

When I try to close steam and restart steam (from system tray) Steam is unresponsive. I have to go to task manager and kill steam from there.

 

To clarify, I have auto updates on games by steam disabled. There is no way in hell the base game files were updated - confirmed I am still using the old base Fallout4.exe.

I haven't touched the F4SE files at all. No load order changes or new mods were installed for a week. The game was running with mods perfectly for over 2 months. 

 

I am absolutely stumped as to why this is happening. Between last night and now, absolutely nothing changed. Nothing. Zilch. The only action was pressing the power button on my computer.

Has anyone had this issue before and can shed some light please?

[jeandelavigne]

I am in your same situation.

First time black screen, second time the game seems to play but when I press any key to start the screen freeze and the music continue to play.

[nufndash]

18 hours ago, icladel said:

So FO4 running F4SE 1.10.163 (game .exe is pre-next gen) was working perfectly for the last few weeks. I was playing it last night with no issues. Closed it, went to bed, went to work, came home and started it up. 

 

Steam > MO2 > Run F4SE loader.

 

The game wont even load the menu screen.

It gets stuck on a black screen

After a while it just closes.

When I try to close steam and restart steam (from system tray) Steam is unresponsive. I have to go to task manager and kill steam from there.

 

To clarify, I have auto updates on games by steam disabled. There is no way in hell the base game files were updated - confirmed I am still using the old base Fallout4.exe.

I haven't touched the F4SE files at all. No load order changes or new mods were installed for a week. The game was running with mods perfectly for over 2 months. 

 

I am absolutely stumped as to why this is happening. Between last night and now, absolutely nothing changed. Nothing. Zilch. The only action was pressing the power button on my computer.

Has anyone had this issue before and can shed some light please?

Yes this is happening to me. I also have updates dissabled but steam is trying to update Fallout and will not let me open it.  I have always been able to work around it and for some reason today, it will not let me. I have stopped the update and it just says that Fallout4.exe cannot be found. So frustrating.

[Miauzi]

You don't start your game directly via steam but use a shortcut with the script extender

 

[izzyknows]

21 hours ago, nufndash said:

Yes this is happening to me. I also have updates dissabled but steam is trying to update Fallout and will not let me open it.  I have always been able to work around it and for some reason today, it will not let me. I have stopped the update and it just says that Fallout4.exe cannot be found. So frustrating.

Well ya forked up bud. Now you need to downgrade the game.

Then NEVER launch via the vanilla launcher or Steam. Create a shortcut to the f4se_loader.exe and only use it to launch the game. Whatever mod manager you use can also be set to use the f4se_loader.exe

that way you don't fork up again and use the wrong method.
Oh, and if you have any vanilla Fallout 4 shortcuts, DELETE em. But after fixing the mess I'm sure a lesson will be very well learned.

 

[izzyknows]

On 6/18/2024 at 6:35 AM, icladel said:

So FO4 running F4SE 1.10.163 (game .exe is pre-next gen) was working perfectly for the last few weeks. I was playing it last night with no issues. Closed it, went to bed, went to work, came home and started it up. 

 

Steam > MO2 > Run F4SE loader.

 

The game wont even load the menu screen.

It gets stuck on a black screen

After a while it just closes.

When I try to close steam and restart steam (from system tray) Steam is unresponsive. I have to go to task manager and kill steam from there.

 

To clarify, I have auto updates on games by steam disabled. There is no way in hell the base game files were updated - confirmed I am still using the old base Fallout4.exe.

I haven't touched the F4SE files at all. No load order changes or new mods were installed for a week. The game was running with mods perfectly for over 2 months. 

 

I am absolutely stumped as to why this is happening. Between last night and now, absolutely nothing changed. Nothing. Zilch. The only action was pressing the power button on my computer.

Has anyone had this issue before and can shed some light please?

Almost seems like Steam tried to update the game and failed.
But you could disable all your mods and see what happens. If it does launch, then do the 50>50 method to find out which one/s is corrupt.

[Diziet]

OK, I'm hung over, but I feel I have something to add to this one...

 

Hi all,

So, I had the same happening to me two days ago: perfectly fine game, some 150 mods, went to bed tuesday having played all evening, fired up the PC wednesday, launched the game, : nothing,

I would get to the first screen that says "push any button"..., and it would just freeze for about a minute, then MO2 would shut down, and shortly after, steam would also shut down.

 

I tried all the usual troubleshooting I could think of, but nothing helped. The fact that steam closed as well led me to believe that the problem likely was with steam, so after some deliberation (and some G&T...) I decided to verify the game file integrity in steam. And lo and behold, 1 file had to be repaired. AAAnd of course, as a byproduct during the process of repairing that file, steam also updated the game to the latest version.

 

I then did some reading up on how to manually rollback, got some liquid courage, and "bit the bullet". Surprisingly, even with my limited IT knowledge, the rollback worked first time (as far as I can tell). and I've played all evening without any hickups.

 

My inkling is, as Izzyknows suggested, that Steam tried to update something that borked stuff, in my case a game file needed to be repaired

 

There ya have it, just mah 2 cents, Word of caution tho: While reading up on the rollback procedure, I saw plenty of cases where the attempt to roll back didn't work, or fucked things up for some users, so read up on the subject, prepare, so you have at least an idea of what you're doing I am NOT a computer genius, so I might just have been extremely lucky. But maybe my experience will help others make their minds up.

 

Cheers all

 

P.S.:  Interestingly, steam doesn't tell me that I need to update the game anymore...

[icladel]

Thanks for your responses everyone. I suspect Izzy is right in that Steam tried pulling some sneaky shit dodging permissions and my choice to not update the game. 

 

I have managed to fix this by updating the game and verifying the files. To make it compatible, I used FO4 downgrader to patch the .exe and .dll files. Its not ideal as I still had to fold and update the game, losing the pre-next gen files. But at least the game works. 

 

When I have time, I will be re-downloading the whole game pre-next gen. I'm happy the game works with the patch, I'm still not happy about Bethesda and Steam raping my game files.

[nufndash]

On 6/19/2024 at 11:34 PM, izzyknows said:

Well ya forked up bud. Now you need to downgrade the game.

Then NEVER launch via the vanilla launcher or Steam. Create a shortcut to the f4se_loader.exe and only use it to launch the game. Whatever mod manager you use can also be set to use the f4se_loader.exe

that way you don't fork up again and use the wrong method.
Oh, and if you have any vanilla Fallout 4 shortcuts, DELETE em. But after fixing the mess I'm sure a lesson will be very well learned.

 

Well yes and no. I did take all the necessary steps to stop the automatic update, at least I thought I did by following the Steam community tutorial on downgrading Fallout 4. After downloading all the Depots last time, I didn't ever want to have to do it again. Something happened though when my PC was re-booting from a Windows update, Steam itself was doing an update and just by chance I checked Fallout and it was updating as well. I paused it immediately but it was too late I guess. Everytime I started from my f4se loader as an administrator like I always do...I got the error Fallout4.exe could not be found.  Luckily I kept all the downloaded Depots in a nice tidy file and all I had to do once again is copy them over to the Fallout 4 file and I was up and running again.  For the life of me I don't understand why Bethesda just doesn't have a ..."Fallout 4 has a new update ...would you like to update yes or no". 

[izzyknows]

2 hours ago, nufndash said:

For the life of me I don't understand why Bethesda just doesn't have a ..."Fallout 4 has a new update ...would you like to update yes or no". 

No shite!

Hey this works really well to prevent updates. I've even safely launch via steam and the vanilla fallut4.exe with 0 issues. Well, other than a hell of butt pucker moment.

Make sure you track the mod, as every time Bugthesda puts out an update, you'll need a new file.

It just tells Steam you already have the latest version, even though you don't. 😈

[nufndash]

7 hours ago, izzyknows said:

No shite!

Hey this works really well to prevent updates. I've even safely launch via steam and the vanilla fallut4.exe with 0 issues. Well, other than a hell of butt pucker moment.

Make sure you track the mod, as every time Bugthesda puts out an update, you'll need a new file.

It just tells Steam you already have the latest version, even though you don't. 😈

I will give it a shot...Thanks! It is silly we have to go through all of this though. 

[adoiad]

I had this same thing happen to me a like a week ago with skyrim AE and have resolved it, when I went to launch skse it crashed, I loaded skyrim thru steam to see what would happen and it wouldn't even launch because of a disk write error at appmanifest. A week later I'm now having the same thing happen on FO4. Both instances it completely happened at random without me adding or removing any mods or files. As I said, I fixed it for skyrim but now when I updated FO4 to fix the disk write error and then downgrade my fallout game version it crashes at starup. I'll post my crashlog incase anyone can spot what is wrong.

 

crash-2024-06-24-20-51-41.log - Pastebin.com

[adoiad]

On 6/21/2024 at 3:26 PM, nufndash said:

Something happened though when my PC was re-booting from a Windows update, Steam itself was doing an update and just by chance I checked Fallout and it was updating as well. I paused it immediately but it was too late I guess. Everytime I started from my f4se loader as an administrator like I always do...I got the error Fallout4.exe could not be found

Yes this exact thing happened to me with both skyrim ae and fallout 4 but at different times, although fallout never started the update as far as I know but skyrim did. I had both auto updates off and ALWAYS launch thru script extender but for whatever reason one morning about a week ago skyrim started ctd at startup, at the time fallout 4 was working fine. Now a week later, I fixed skyrim and now fallout 4 is having the same issue. I swear, I HATE steam sometimes and how things can f up out of the blue even when doing everything correctly.

Edited June 24, 2024 by adoiad