FO4 Simply Stopped Working, New Installs Too. Any Idea As To What's Up?

[C5Kev]

After building a new rig, I installed FO4 along with about 175 mods. Those were the 'must haves', some clothes mods and mainly visuals. The game ran great, no stuttering in downtown Boston, etc.  Maybe a week afterward (getting to ~ level 45), started up my rig and clicked 'F4SE_loader'. The screen went black (starting), then CTD'ed.  What?  Clicked again. Nothing. Wait a minute, I hadn't changed or done anything to my game (or rig) and positive I was never online so that Steam / Beth could DL an update (also set accordingly in Steam) and break everything.  The game simply wouldn't start, which made no sense.

 

I finally uninstalled the game, disabled all mods (still using NMM, but launch game via a F4SE shortcut) and deleted all Fallout folders and 'Saves'.  I then reinstalled a fresh game, clicked the FO4 Icon, got the helmet / launcher dialog and clicked play.  The screen went black (starting), then CTD'ed.   OK, this made no sense...a fresh, unmodded game just CTD'ing?  So I blew everything out again and reinstalled. Same scenario. Huh?  Blew everything out again and even removed all instances of Fallout in my registry. Again, reinstalled.  Same scenario.  What would cause the vanilla game from starting?

 

OK fine. So I installed Skyrim AE (0.6.1170, the latest I believe). Got that all set up and the game looked fantastic.  After playing about the same amount of time as FO4, Skyrim stopped working and I then did the same nonsense as FO4... reinstalls, etc.  Again, what would cause a vanilla game from starting correctly?

 

This seems to be a 'Beth Only' issue. My question is, what would cause this stuff these CTD's to happen...especially with a new vanilla install? I'm out of possible solutions, so I bring my question(s) here. Any assistance is surely appreciated.

 

Rig Info:

MSI Carbon 870E WIFI 7 w/ AMD 7800x3D, Samsung 990 2 TB, Lian Li Hydroshift TL 360 AIO, (3) TL Intake Fan & (1) Exhaust Fan, Corsair 32G Trident Z5 & 1000W PSU, MSI RTX4080 Super Suprim in a Hyte Y70.

 

(Posting this under Skyrim SE's forum as well)

 

Edited January 5, 2025 by C5Kev

[subaverage]

There are some thoughts that come into my mind. Your problem doesn't seem to be a specific FO4 or Skyrim problem as it occurs in both games. You could try to disable the Steam overlay in game, the Steam cloud snychronisation, the Steam handling of screenschots. Next step could be to check your antivirus software and try to make exclusions for your games. At last I could even think of a hardware, Windows or driver failure. You could try to run the following routines in a shell with admin rights:

"sfc /scannow" and "dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth". Both without the quotes. In case you don't know it already you can inform yourself before what these routines are supposed to do.

Edited January 5, 2025 by subaverage