Fallout 4 start up crashing

[Izumichan995]

Hey, so, I got a bit of an issue. When Bethesda (and their great wisdom) decided to update Fallout 4, it broke quite a few important mods. The main ones for me were "Address Library", "LooksMenu", and "MCM". Now with them updated, I tried playing the game but the game has been crashing. What's happening is I'm running the game through Vortex and F4SE. When I run F4SE to play, the black pre-screen comes up, my mouse gets the blue spinning loading icon then for a split second, Fallouts green loading icon appears in the bottom right corner of my screen then the game crashes on me. I don't get a crash log or anything.

I thought it was F4SE and nearly everywhere I look when looking it up says that F4SE needs to be updated to match the game. However, the uploader of F4SE says that its not F4SE, it's my load order. Can anyone confirm or deny this and then help me?

[dav42]

3 hours ago, Izumichan995 said:

Hey, so, I got a bit of an issue. When Bethesda (and their great wisdom) decided to update Fallout 4, it broke quite a few important mods. The main ones for me were "Address Library", "LooksMenu", and "MCM". Now with them updated, I tried playing the game but the game has been crashing. What's happening is I'm running the game through Vortex and F4SE. When I run F4SE to play, the black pre-screen comes up, my mouse gets the blue spinning loading icon then for a split second, Fallouts green loading icon appears in the bottom right corner of my screen then the game crashes on me. I don't get a crash log or anything.

I thought it was F4SE and nearly everywhere I look when looking it up says that F4SE needs to be updated to match the game. However, the uploader of F4SE says that its not F4SE, it's my load order. Can anyone confirm or deny this and then help me?

 

The simplest thing to do is disable all mods and just run it with F4SE, does it work?  If yes, then it's your load order.

 

If you want help you should indicate what version of the game your on, what you tried, what version of F4SE, mods you have installed, etc.  If your using the Addictol plugin, then you should disable bArchiveLimits in Addictol.toml, that's broken in the latest version of the game until Addictol team delivers their update (should be 1.6 sometime soon).

 

bArchiveLimits patch is broken because after 10 years of people bitching about archive limits Bethesda actually addressed it, but of course it took the colossal blunder of pushing 150 CC plugins + 150 archives to make it happen, and their deep desire to monetize on Creations, especially on console platforms.  They didn't increase console storage because they were altruistic.  In any case the latest update is truly the only useful update in years because it natively increases archive limits.

[Oldwolf58]

4 hours ago, Izumichan995 said:

Hey, so, I got a bit of an issue. When Bethesda (and their great wisdom) decided to update Fallout 4, it broke quite a few important mods. The main ones for me were "Address Library", "LooksMenu", and "MCM". Now with them updated, I tried playing the game but the game has been crashing. What's happening is I'm running the game through Vortex and F4SE. When I run F4SE to play, the black pre-screen comes up, my mouse gets the blue spinning loading icon then for a split second, Fallouts green loading icon appears in the bottom right corner of my screen then the game crashes on me. I don't get a crash log or anything.

I thought it was F4SE and nearly everywhere I look when looking it up says that F4SE needs to be updated to match the game. However, the uploader of F4SE says that its not F4SE, it's my load order. Can anyone confirm or deny this and then help me?

 

Hydra will replace Addictol if you use addictol. I had the problem you have except Fallout wouldn't start even with NO mods installed. I had to do a full uninstall and reinstall to get the game to simply run on it's own. Then replaced addictol with hydra and if you use CBBE then OpenCBP physics works, although I had to use the cbp-ae ini from nexus and rename it ocbp.ini to get good breast movement.(as well as adjust the firmness settings).

[judge007]

8 hours ago, Izumichan995 said:

Hey, so, I got a bit of an issue. When Bethesda (and their great wisdom) decided to update Fallout 4, it broke quite a few important mods. The main ones for me were "Address Library", "LooksMenu", and "MCM". Now with them updated, I tried playing the game but the game has been crashing. What's happening is I'm running the game through Vortex and F4SE. When I run F4SE to play, the black pre-screen comes up, my mouse gets the blue spinning loading icon then for a split second, Fallouts green loading icon appears in the bottom right corner of my screen then the game crashes on me. I don't get a crash log or anything.

I thought it was F4SE and nearly everywhere I look when looking it up says that F4SE needs to be updated to match the game. However, the uploader of F4SE says that its not F4SE, it's my load order. Can anyone confirm or deny this and then help me?

If you are running Addictol, you need to disable "Archives" in it's .ini

[dav42]

6 hours ago, Oldwolf58 said:

 

Hydra will replace Addictol if you use addictol. I had the problem you have except Fallout wouldn't start even with NO mods installed. I had to do a full uninstall and reinstall to get the game to simply run on it's own. Then replaced addictol with hydra and if you use CBBE then OpenCBP physics works, although I had to use the cbp-ae ini from nexus and rename it ocbp.ini to get good breast movement.(as well as adjust the firmness settings).

 

Hydra is a Papyrus Extender and Addictol is an Engine Fix mod.  I run them both without any issues.  They don't replace each other.

 

Addictol requires AVX instructions, so if your running on shit hardware from before ~2011 then yeah your going to have crashes with Addictol, for potato hardware you can use the unsupported Calmex (which is compiled with SSE4.2 instead of AVX) but if that's your issue then you should do yourself a favor and buy a new computer.  If you don't know what your CPU supports then use CPU-Z and look for the instructions section:

 

[Oldwolf58]

On 9/3/2026 at 7:15 AM, dav42 said:

 

Hydra is a Papyrus Extender and Addictol is an Engine Fix mod.  I run them both without any issues.  They don't replace each other.

 

Addictol requires AVX instructions, so if your running on shit hardware from before ~2011 then yeah your going to have crashes with Addictol, for potato hardware you can use the unsupported Calmex (which is compiled with SSE4.2 instead of AVX) but if that's your issue then you should do yourself a favor and buy a new computer.  If you don't know what your CPU supports then use CPU-Z and look for the instructions section:

 

If you read the Hydra page it incorporates engine fixes also although he does recommend Addictol as a good addition since addictol is not playing nice with the current Fallout 4 build and needs to be disabled until it's fixed Hydra is the best option. My rig is less than a year old and I built it, since I've been a computer tech for over 30 years I'm pretty sure I don't have an AVX problem.

[dav42]

34 minutes ago, Oldwolf58 said:

If you read the Hydra page it incorporates engine fixes also although he does recommend Addictol as a good addition since addictol is not playing nice with the current Fallout 4 build and needs to be disabled until it's fixed Hydra is the best option. My rig is less than a year old and I built it, since I've been a computer tech for over 30 years I'm pretty sure I don't have an AVX problem.

 

Hydra isn't even close to an engine fix mod, it has a few engine fixes in it's own self interest centered around Papyrus.  If you bothered to read my post in this thread or the sticky posts on the Addictol mod you would know you have to disable a single option for it to work with the latest game version.

 

It works fine with the latest game version and works fine with Hydra, just turn off bArchiveLimits.  Or don't, I don't particularly care.

[Izumichan995]

Hey guys, work was stressful for me the past week but now I was able to try and work on my load order but I'm still a bit stumped. I deleted and redownloaded all my mods so the pictures show box standard load order. I have little knowledge on how to mod so any help is appreciated.

[Izumichan995]

On 9/2/2026 at 10:35 PM, dav42 said:

 

The simplest thing to do is disable all mods and just run it with F4SE, does it work?  If yes, then it's your load order.

 

If you want help you should indicate what version of the game your on, what you tried, what version of F4SE, mods you have installed, etc.  If your using the Addictol plugin, then you should disable bArchiveLimits in Addictol.toml, that's broken in the latest version of the game until Addictol team delivers their update (should be 1.6 sometime soon).

 

bArchiveLimits patch is broken because after 10 years of people bitching about archive limits Bethesda actually addressed it, but of course it took the colossal blunder of pushing 150 CC plugins + 150 archives to make it happen, and their deep desire to monetize on Creations, especially on console platforms.  They didn't increase console storage because they were altruistic.  In any case the latest update is truly the only useful update in years because it natively increases archive limits.

Howdy,

So, I've been trying to work on my load order as you recommended. Everything is up to date, game, F4SE, all mods, yet the game still quits on me. I've tried my best but since I just started modding a few months ago, I'm stumped. Last week I uploaded screen shots of my load order. If you have the time, could you take a look please? It's still the load order I have now. If you can't no harm done.

[dav42]

17 hours ago, Izumichan995 said:

So, I've been trying to work on my load order as you recommended. Everything is up to date, game, F4SE, all mods, yet the game still quits on me. I've tried my best but since I just started modding a few months ago, I'm stumped. Last week I uploaded screen shots of my load order. If you have the time, could you take a look please? It's still the load order I have now. If you can't no harm done.

 

I think the same advice earlier is still recommended, that is to disable all of your mods, since your using Vortex you need to deploy or purge (? I don't use Vortex), make sure the game folder is clean and run it from Steam.  If it works then enable F4SE, deploy, and run F4SE via vortex or whatever you do, if it works then repeat the process probably the next thing is address library and your most necessary F4SE plugins.  Fundamentally you need to do some process of elimination.

 

The issue isn't F4SE itself, even if you didn't update F4SE it would tell you to do so with a pop-up warning before starting the game.  The issue is likely an F4SE plugin needs to be updated if your load order was working (was it?) before the update.  F4SE plugins can certainly cause the game to crash and they likely would do it in early loading like this.

 

The fact that your not getting a crash log suggests you didn't install the crash logger, if your using Addictol then it is a separate download.  If the game is crashing before that then the crash would be logged in Event Viewer in the Application log.  If you have a crash logger installed then it's probably something with how the F4SE plugin is written (i.e. defining a DllMain, which is something they shouldn't do).  If your load order never worked, then yes it can be load order, lack of masters, etc.  You can try plugging in your screenshot to AI and see if it can help.