Extreme AE loading time

[monsta88]

Hi there,

 

I went from SE to AE this week and built my 1st load order, 600+ plugins. However, it takes 5-7 minutes to load into the Main Menu (Continue, New game, etc).

 

I was experimenting a lot and it seems the load time is related to the amount of plugins. When I disabled hundreds of plugins, the load was proportionally faster. I was also googling for solutions to load faster, nothing has helped so far. I tried:

 

- Disk Cache Enabler mod - zero difference.

- Private Profile Redirector (+ Engine Fixes) - it was in the load order from start

- Latest ENB - Shader Cache Enabled - zero difference

- Reinstall + clean AE - zero difference

- Reinstall ENB - zero difference

 

All mods and AE are on SSD. Every SKSE plugin is updated to Skyrim 1170 (SKSE64 too, v2.2.6). 
W10 64 Pro, 32GB RAM, nVidia 3080Ti, Steam AE.

 

I have read in various posts that some of the above methods drastically sped up the load times. I wonder why none of them are working for me, even a small amount.

 

I'm open for suggestions.

[traison]

7 minutes ago, monsta88 said:

W10 64 Pro

 

I was about to say "Are you on Linux?", but I guess not. Just ran into this issue myself on Mint 21.3 and MO 2.4.4.

 

8 minutes ago, monsta88 said:

I tried:

<things>

 

...but not your anti-virus? Temporarily disable that and test again. If this doesn't change anything, I'd have a look at what Process Monitor from Sysinternals (Microsoft) has to say about this.

[monsta88]

35 minutes ago, traison said:

.but not your anti-virus?

 

I didn't think it was doing anything, as I am using Skyrim since years with AV on. Still, I tried it, same result without AV.

 

 

35 minutes ago, traison said:

I'd have a look at what Process Monitor from Sysinternals (Microsoft) has to say about this.

 

After loading the assets, it seems it is querying the Registry for control devices?

 

13:29:14.2464114    SkyrimSE.exe    14076    RegOpenKey    HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\DeviceClasses\{ec87f1e3-c13b-4100-b5f7-8b84d54260cb}    SUCCESS    Desired Access: All Access
13:29:14.2464293    SkyrimSE.exe    14076    RegOpenKey    HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\DeviceClasses\{ec87f1e3-c13b-4100-b5f7-8b84d54260cb}\Properties    NAME NOT FOUND    Desired Access: Query Value
13:29:14.2464462    SkyrimSE.exe    14076    RegCloseKey    HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\DeviceClasses\{ec87f1e3-c13b-4100-b5f7-8b84d54260cb}    SUCCESS    
13:29:14.2464566    SkyrimSE.exe    14076    RegEnumKey    HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\DeviceClasses    SUCCESS    Index: 102, Name: {ef66a56f-88d1-4cd8-98c4-49faf57ad8af}

 

 

I have hundreds of similar lines for minutes.

 

 

Edited April 26, 2025 by monsta88

[traison]

For me that is pointing to a Microsoft (045E) HID device. Not sure yet what exactly that might be, as I have no Microsoft peripherals here.

 

Edit: It's a USB device. Id 02ff. Also, you should verify that you're seeing the same numbers I am, if you intend to pursue this approach:

 

USB\VID_045E&PID_02FF

Edited April 26, 2025 by traison

[traison]

If you currently have (or have had at any time in past) an xbox -compliant controller connected to your computer, then what you might be seeing is SDL spamming the registry. I noticed some earlier versions of SDL would spam the registry with a couple of hundered lines per second when a controller had been connected to the system. Steam used to have this version, so it was spamming it 24/7 basically. I remember I wrote a patch for it ages ago to stop it from doing it. I believe the issue went away with SDL2, but I'm not sure.

 

And yes I know spamming the registry like this doesn't really mean or cost anything, as it's just querying RAM. I just hate badly made software.

 

Edit: This is assuming SkyrimSE.exe is using SDL. It probably is. Seems like everyone is. You can spot its dll in SkyrimSE.exe with something like Process Explorer from Sysinternals (Microsoft). I believe its sdl.dll and sdl2.dll, but I could be wrong - again, it's been ages.

 

Edit again: USB\VID_045E&PID_02FF is an xbox -compliant controller. So most likely SDL spam. Can be ignored.

Edited April 26, 2025 by traison

[monsta88]

40 minutes ago, traison said:

USB\VID_045E&PID_02FF is an xbox -compliant controller. So most likely SDL spam. Can be ignored.

 

In other words, not the reason for the slow load? I do have a Xbox-1 controller, but it is usually switched off, I play Skyrim with Keyboard/Mouse. I now totally disconnected it, it didn't help with the load time.

[traison]

14 minutes ago, monsta88 said:

In other words, not the reason for the slow load?

 

Nope.

 

16 minutes ago, monsta88 said:

I do have a Xbox-1 controller, but it is usually switched off

 

Irrelevant. The spam starts when you connect it the first time, and it never ends after that. Its entirely possible the spam is always there in newer Windows versions. My tests are from Windows 7; from an era when Windows was not a spyware/ransomware infested Xbox/MAC-wannabe.

[Fotogen]

In my case, it is Windows Defender. Every time I load Skyrim (or Oblivion) it blocks it, CPU for MsMpEng.exe goes through the roof and then it sits there for minutes.

After minutes everything works normaly.

 

If I put Skyrim (or Oblivion) on exclude list, everything starts, loads in seconds.

 

Note: this was not the case a couple of months ago. One of the last WIn patches did something. Maybe the one that now nonstop triggers "upgrade to W11 coz you have W10" (even tho it also says that my HW is not W11 compatible).

 

 

[traison]

8 minutes ago, Fotogen said:

CPU for MsMpEng.exe goes through the roof and then it sits there for minutes.

 

This was sort of my thinking too. This may or may not show up in Process Monitor, thus it would be worth taking a peek.

 

8 minutes ago, Fotogen said:

Maybe the one that now nonstop triggers "upgrade to W11 coz you have W10" (even tho it also says that my HW is not W11 compatible).

 

Hehe that's Microsoft for ya. I had a screenshot from the early days of Windows 10, which I'm not 100% certain of whether its real or not but lets put it this way: they've done far more stupid things, so this looks very much plausible. The screenshot showed Windows Update saying a driver couldn't be installed because the driver currently installed is better. Then it continues with a "we will try again later". This in my ears can be translated to "we failed to brick your computer, so we will try to break it later when you're not watching".

Edited April 26, 2025 by traison

[traison]

I have a feeling this might be tricky issue to solve remotely so I'll drop this here for you to ponder on. We do a remote desktop session. I use your computer for a few hours (if its required), I bring my tools, poke around. Maybe I can find where the time is being wasted. Since there's nothing I can say to prove I'm trustworthy I'm not even going to try, except maybe my post history on LL carries some merit.

Edited April 26, 2025 by traison

[monsta88]

On 4/26/2025 at 7:13 PM, traison said:

I have a feeling this might be tricky issue to solve remotely so I'll drop this here for you to ponder on. We do a remote desktop session. I use your computer for a few hours (if its required), I bring my tools, poke around. Maybe I can find where the time is being wasted. Since there's nothing I can say to prove I'm trustworthy I'm not even going to try, except maybe my post history on LL carries some merit.

 

Thank you, I absolutely appreciate the offer, but I think I figured it out.

 

The issue is with Leveled Lists. A long time ago I made 2 patches with ALLA (Automated Leveled List Addition, an xEdit script). Those are together 150ish MB (if interested, check my signature, I uploaded them here). Now I started to experiment with a Synthesis script and created a couple of million leveled items (Enchanted Armor and Weapon variants). This patch ended up being 600 MB, I couldn't even load it in SSEEdit 32, it ran out of memory (I switched to the 64 bit one now).

 

Anyway, with this mega patch, the load time went up to 15 minutes. So I reined in my inner eternal hamster, and I made a new patch, it is 66 MB now. I also removed all other leveled list mods/patches from the load order. 

 

Now the load time is about 3-4 minutes, which is still very long, especially compared to the SE load times (on SE, with the aforementioned ALLA patches I loaded in less then half time).

 

I wonder if there is an SKSE plugin which can speed up the leveled list loading/handling.

Edited April 27, 2025 by monsta88