Skyrim AE 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 FO4's forum as well)

[traison]

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/59818

 

3 hours ago, C5Kev said:

Again, what would cause a vanilla game from starting correctly?

 

This is the worst case scenario:

 

3 hours ago, C5Kev said:

After building a new rig... Maybe a week afterward...

 

The first week of computer tech is the most "exciting" one. If your new HDD is going to break, its likely going to happen during the first week of use. If a component is going bad from thermal stress, it's going to do it during the first week of use etc. Obviously the "first week" could be "weeks" depending on your use - if you don't use your computer, it's not going to set itself on fire.

 

Knowing nothing else about this issue other than that new installs of games are crashing, I'd be pointing my finger at one of these:

1. For whatever reason, new computer components usually require a few driver patches before they become stable - that is if they ever become stable. For instance, when was that "Super Suprim" released? If it was half a year ago or less it's probably still got so called infancy issues.
2. RAM timings are no longer viable, causing rare instability issues. For instance, if you're running an overclock, it could be one of the dimms you have can't function properly; and before you say "I haven't overclocked it": are you sure? XMP (Intel's memory presets; AMD no doubt have their own) counts as overclocking while being marketed as native clock speeds.

Also in case you're thinking "how could my RAM be bad when X and Y work just fine?" and the answer to that is simply: trust me bro, RAM issues can make you believe in ghosts; and not all ghosts show up in memtest.

[Grey Cloud]

Have you got a non-Bethesda game you can install just to see if it is a Bethesda issue?

[C5Kev]

14 hours ago, traison said:

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/59818

 

13 hours ago, Grey Cloud said:

Have you got a non-Bethesda game you can install just to see if it is a Bethesda issue?

 

Thanks folks (Hey GC) for your input.   I hadn't got Crash Logger installed yet, but again, a vanilla game won't run, so Crash Logger is rather moot at this point.  And I forgot to mention the RAM is running at 6000Mhz...although timing (I know nothing about) seemed kinda weird as it's 28-32-...  vs like 30-32-...  . 

 

Only games I have currently installed are Cyber2077, Resident Evil 4 Remake & Nightingale.

 

I just can't think of anything that would prevent FO4 or SSE to run vanilla ... just makes no sense.

 

 

Edited January 6, 2025 by C5Kev

[traison]

7 hours ago, C5Kev said:

a vanilla game won't run, so Crash Logger is rather moot at this point

 

 A crash is a crash, regardless of whether mods are installed or not. Get a log, otherwise all we can do is guess.

 

7 hours ago, C5Kev said:

6000Mhz...although timing seemed kinda weird as it's 28-32-...  vs like 30-32-

 

Timings is were they get ya.

[Grey Cloud]

Hi pal.

9 hours ago, C5Kev said:

Only games I have currently installed are Cyber2077, Resident Evil 4 Remake & Nightingale.

And these work okay?

 

(Sound straws being clutched ...)

Do you have the correct versions of MS .Net and MS Visual C++ ?

[yorpers]

21 hours ago, C5Kev said:

I hadn't got Crash Logger installed yet, but again, a vanilla game won't run, so Crash Logger is rather moot at this point.

It isn't moot at all. It could tell us a lot depending on what .dll or exe is at fault. It might even point to the exact problem with a bit of luck. Here are some examples. 

 

Spoiler

Unhandled native exception occurred at 0x7FF86DDAF1F9 (SchlongsOfSkyrim.dll+F1F9) on thread 9532! (not applicable here, but this is the classic remove SoS.dll start game, save, and add the .DLL back.)

 

Unhandled native exception occurred at 0x7FF8E24C156D (VCRUNTIME140.dll+1156D) on thread 18488! (User error messing with .ini settings, at least fixing my .ini settings resulted in no more crashing. Essentially I created a hardware issue unintentionally.)

 

Unhandled native exception occurred at 0x7FF6C7218D38 (SkyrimSE.exe+A88D38) on thread 14260! (Unlikely applicable here, seemed to have been a bad animation or mesh)

 

Unhandled native exception occurred at 0x7FFA9B0885CA (XAudio2_7.dll+285CA) on thread 12884! (Audio bug obviously. Also not applicable. happens with binaural sound mods in specific circumstances.)

 

Unhandled native exception occurred at 0x7FF715F7DD00 (SkyrimSE.exe+12FDD00) on thread 18340! (bad mesh in this case.)

 

I've also had crashes with various .dxXX.dll's that were due to a bad ENB install.

 

Being able to see if it's a crash coming from a specific .dll, like VCRUNTIME140.dll, could help a lot... or potentially tell us nothing. 

 

In my 18-20 years of modding bethesda games, crashing with a completely new and fresh install has always been my fault. Either I somehow missed deleting a folder, even after checking a few times; or back when I used NMM it left all kinds of files behind when I did the "uninstall all" option. Even last month I had this happen when I left hearthfire unchecked and then had missing master crashes.

 

Something else to consider... I have read some people playing Path of Exile 2 have had problems with the latest drivers paired with the latest windows 11 update. Obviously anecdotes from another game are unlikely to be helpful. I also doubt it would cause repeatable crashes at the exact same spot. However, since your GPU is brand new it is something to think about since your crashes seemed to start at about the same time. Therefore, I find it worth mentioning.

 

As someone with a similar PC, I hope you get this fixed. Running heavily modded skyrim on this kind of rig is a real treat. 

 

 

[C5Kev]

On 1/6/2025 at 4:06 AM, traison said:

 

 A crash is a crash, regardless of whether mods are installed or not. Get a log, otherwise all we can do is guess. Timings is were they get ya.

 

On 1/6/2025 at 6:23 AM, Grey Cloud said:

Hi pal.

And these work okay?

 

(Sound straws being clutched ...)

Do you have the correct versions of MS .Net and MS Visual C++ ?

 

Yes & Yes

 

On 1/6/2025 at 7:13 PM, yorpers said:

It isn't moot at all. It could tell us a lot depending on what .dll or exe is at fault. It might even point to the exact problem with a bit of luck. Here are some examples. 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Unhandled native exception occurred at 0x7FF86DDAF1F9 (SchlongsOfSkyrim.dll+F1F9) on thread 9532! (not applicable here, but this is the classic remove SoS.dll start game, save, and add the .DLL back.)

 

Unhandled native exception occurred at 0x7FF8E24C156D (VCRUNTIME140.dll+1156D) on thread 18488! (User error messing with .ini settings, at least fixing my .ini settings resulted in no more crashing. Essentially I created a hardware issue unintentionally.)

 

Unhandled native exception occurred at 0x7FF6C7218D38 (SkyrimSE.exe+A88D38) on thread 14260! (Unlikely applicable here, seemed to have been a bad animation or mesh)

 

Unhandled native exception occurred at 0x7FFA9B0885CA (XAudio2_7.dll+285CA) on thread 12884! (Audio bug obviously. Also not applicable. happens with binaural sound mods in specific circumstances.)

 

Unhandled native exception occurred at 0x7FF715F7DD00 (SkyrimSE.exe+12FDD00) on thread 18340! (bad mesh in this case.)

 

I've also had crashes with various .dxXX.dll's that were due to a bad ENB install.

 

Being able to see if it's a crash coming from a specific .dll, like VCRUNTIME140.dll, could help a lot... or potentially tell us nothing. 

 

In my 18-20 years of modding bethesda games, crashing with a completely new and fresh install has always been my fault. Either I somehow missed deleting a folder, even after checking a few times; or back when I used NMM it left all kinds of files behind when I did the "uninstall all" option. Even last month I had this happen when I left hearthfire unchecked and then had missing master crashes.

 

Something else to consider... I have read some people playing Path of Exile 2 have had problems with the latest drivers paired with the latest windows 11 update. Obviously anecdotes from another game are unlikely to be helpful. I also doubt it would cause repeatable crashes at the exact same spot. However, since your GPU is brand new it is something to think about since your crashes seemed to start at about the same time. Therefore, I find it worth mentioning.

 

As someone with a similar PC, I hope you get this fixed. Running heavily modded skyrim on this kind of rig is a real treat. 

 

 

 

"...It isn't moot at all."  As you may know, "Crash Logger" has been superseded by "Trainwreck", which requires SKSE  ...a mod and therefore, moot (but should have installed it in hindsight) since I can't even get the base game to run. But I'm a firm believer in "Operator Error" and know that I hadn't provided much in the way of information.

 

Now with that said, for grins I decided to DL the game again (already did 3 or 4 times with 'files verified').  This time, the game fired off.  What??  I've done nothing (that I can think of) that has changed since posting this topic. Seems all rather odd.  So I've been installing mods / starting the game to see if anything is amiss and so far everything seems alright (knock on wood).

 

At this point, I still have no idea as to what the Hell was going on, but want to thank everything for their two cents. At least the game's running...until it breaks    and have Trainwreck installed.  Thanks again everyone.

 

[traison]

53 minutes ago, C5Kev said:

"Crash Logger" has been superseded by "Trainwreck"

 

No longer true. Trainwreck was useful when Crash Logger was behind in updates. Crash Logger is still the only tool viable for remote assistance; anything else and you DIY.

 

54 minutes ago, C5Kev said:

I can't even get the base game to run.

 

SKSE loads before the game. Not sure when it injects and calls its plugins, but I would still try it to see if it loads in time for the CTD.

 

59 minutes ago, C5Kev said:

Now with that said, for grins I decided to DL the game again (already did 3 or 4 times with 'files verified').  This time, the game fired off.  What??  I've done nothing (that I can think of) that has changed since posting this topic. Seems all rather odd.

 

Considering FO4 was also affected, that sort of excludes leftover files in Skyrim; unless you happened to get the exact same issue in both games - like a leftover ini file in your user profile. Happy you got it sorted though.

[C5Kev]

10 minutes ago, traison said:

 

No longer true. Trainwreck was useful when Crash Logger was behind in updates. Crash Logger is still the only tool viable for remote assistance; anything else and you DIY.

 

SKSE loads before the game. Not sure when it injects and calls its plugins, but I would still try it to see if it loads in time for the CTD.

 

Considering FO4 was also affected, that sort of excludes leftover files in Skyrim; unless you happened to get the exact same issue in both games - like a leftover ini file in your user profile. Happy you got it sorted though.

 

"...No longer true. Trainwreck was useful when Crash Logger was behind..."  Ah geez, how would anyone know that?  That's why I come here.   "Happy you got it sorted though."  Thanks. It seems to work in the meantime, guess I'll see how it goes. This whole ordeal has been quite odd though.  FO4?  Still dunno what's up with that. In time I guess...

 

Thanks for your help, it's appreciated.  K.

 

 

 

 

[belegost]

I've been watching this thread but not posting, since I had nothing to contribute. But I'm happy you got stuff working. I miss Papa Kev's bedtime stories and hope you will grace us all with another one soon.

[C5Kev]

1 hour ago, belegost said:

I've been watching this thread but not posting, since I had nothing to contribute. But I'm happy you got stuff working. I miss Papa Kev's bedtime stories and hope you will grace us all with another one soon.

 

Thanks B, I appreciate the kind words.