A Modders Nightmare (Experienced Modders only)

[Test013]

Fair warning this post is long winded.

 

 

It's me again and the fact that I'm back on the forum means something catastrophic happened to my mod setup. I've had this happen a few times before and I've always managed to figure it out... Spend weeks if not months trying to come up with a workaround for a ctd loop or any of the other obstacles that make skyrim modding on the Ll side not for the faint of heart.

 

INB4 "start all over" : that's not an option, that's not why I enjoy modding this engine. Anything can be fixed if you try hard enough with the right resources and knowledge. I'm here to present an interesting problem to some of the more experienced and stubborn modders, brainstorm and share some of my experience as well learn. So if that's all the input you have I'd appreciate it if you would save it for the quitters. I understand its a longshot but im sure some of you feel the same way i do.

 

If you wish to help i may need refreshing on tools and means to access information you need, please bear with me.

If you want to skip the verbose and get straight to it jump down to the TL;DR.

 This time the one thing I had no solution for happened, I had to reformat my directory where my skyrim and MO was installed....... I spent so much time working on skyrim that I couldn't  have cared less about the other important personal things in that drive.

 We're talking almost 4 years straight the same setup run, over 550 mods, at least 350 active and either tweaked or merged into a T5merged package, over 900 hours spent modding and tinkering script scalping and troubleshooting... Even editing some mods via the sdk for compatibility when no patches available. I hardly ever ever actually play the game, I just get stuck in a cycle of pushing it to the limit then trying to work around or compromise and the constant tinkering is what i love. My mod setup was such a fluke of nature from a modders perspective that I absolutely refuse to let it go. It is the culmination of what I have learned from when I first started modding pc games until now, needless to say that's the reason why it's so hard to replicate. Instead of starting over while I was learning how to mod I just kept patching over myself. 

__

 I thought all hope was lost until I found a hdd that was disconnected during the corruption. with an auto backup image of my steam and mod organizer directory.  dated about two or so months before the crash so that's what I'm working with here, Everything relevant is in there; MO profiles, mod file resources, load orders, skyrim steam directory, Fnis directory, bash directory, T5... You get the idea. Everything I could possibly need to just plug this back into a steam directory and boot it back up right? Sounds too good to be true... and if you're reading this then you know from experience it is.

 

 here's how it went;

 I reloaded everything back into the directory I made by having steam dig the hole so to speak by reinstalling skyrim fresh, deleting everything except a empty data folder then drag and drop. Same thing with MO except I don't need to reinstall I can just drop the whole program files directory and MO works fine, even the shortcuts and backups. Problem is skyrim won't run, ctd a split second after the first drum of the intro. Without using MO as a launcher it just crashes when trying to start a new game and I knew that was coming.
 

 I scrapped that idea which I'm hoping to revisit if anyone has a suggestion on how to pull this off or could explain to me why this doesn't work. It would be the least labor intensive option. 

 

Second thing I did is try to build up one mod at a time textbook fashion but some of the proc launchers no longer have their 7z directory and cannot relaunch a mod install configuration. Can't find the right body meshes and enb doesn't shade quite right, huge load on gpu and crap framerate. This was so incredibly tedious that I've decided it's my last resort, I'd have to unpack hundreds of gb of archived 7zs and figure our which ones are even for skyrim. 

 

Moving forward. 

 

______________________________TL;DR_______________
(i had to reformat, found an old backup and i have been trying to recompile my heavily modded skyrim with much difficulty using my salvaged MO and Skyrim Directories from a couple months prior to the crash)

For the past week I've been trying to reassemble it to a similar state from a fresh install of both skyrim and MO and all its tools (like Fnis and bash) in a new SSD I got exclusively for skyrim. With down to about 190 mods I've tried one mod group (Char model, SL, devious) , at a time from the resources left behind in the backup minus a few heavy hitters like falskar/wrymstooth and script heavy overhauls. So far I'm running skyrim bugged to hell.  my newly merged assets wont load correctly and they need to be applied in t5 groups. (about 3 chunks of 10 or so armors to save on esm hard limits) I'm using the merge script 1.9 and only merging armors with no script dependence side of hdt heels.  I'm getting errors all over the place in texture loading because of vram issues* biggest one being all of my additional assets from mods have no textures, all purple.  extensive tweaks to enb core causes ctd on save load or new game, some models fail to load entirely and scripts are having mass meltdowns. for instance add item menu v10 or the latest  won't load any mod folders , just vanilla.  alternative start won't continue dialog past the initial prompt.

Im pretty rusty at installing all of these tools and considering im doing it all at once. There is a strong possibility i missed something important here so that textures could load properly. I also cannot get papyrus to generate a log, never could for some reason and i was hoping for some insight on that.

 

Perhaps I forgot a steam data folder side performance utility? Maybe one that's no longer posted, that's the only thing I can think of is steam directory side mods or frameworks/utilities stopping me. If so couldn't I copy said folders from the backup being careful to leave out certain files? Or maybe the merge patch script 1.9 does something much differently than the outdated one I used. 

My goal here is to get my personal core mod list of S. L. multiple devious mods, seven based body, hdt physics and enb running again so I can try to work from there and for some reason Im stumped. I'm thinking I added something to skyrim main directory and that's what's stopping me from loading the copy method and for the rebuild method I have literally no clue. Alot of what I'm trying to use are backdated mods that are only compatible in that version with others, getting new and updated versions isn't a option for some and others are not longer supported or even posted. But still that's no reason why a exact copy of its working state shouldn't run a new save at the least.

 

 

So in closing my questions to anyone interested are:

 

1. Have you ever built a unique but glass house mod setup before I'm a Bethesda engine and how long did you keep it alive? 
2. Have you attempted to move an entire directory with mods before and what are the common complications?
3. Why does a complex mirror image of a old mod setup refuse to load, where would unique interlaced dependence occur?
4. Have there been any updates to the core of skyrim or skse in the last 5 months that would affect a old asset rebuild?
5. What other utulites could i use to help the initial load of these mods and textures? I think i need a enb that will allow a large load of textures (i have SSME)
6. What values do i need to plugin to the /Documents/Mygames/Skyrim.ini or any other .ini that needs to have values changed or added for a heavy mod setup? (enb included)
7. What steps do you recommend to build up a SL and DD heavy mod set, are there any core tweaks or changes i need to make that im overlooking?

 

 

[Guest]

Point 5 answer: no.

 

If you are rebuilding, then do not add all the mods at the same time. The VM can go crazy doing all initializations at the same time.

[azoth1267]

1. Yes, every mod list is a glass house teetering on the edge of destruction

2. Twice, once without issue, and the other failed miserably.

3. Hardware of software changes, no matter how minor could do it let alone skyrim just being moody (its alive i tell you, and it hates everyone).

4. Cant say ive paid that much attention, but its very unlikely.

5. There is a long list of mods that come to mind, though they dont really help to force a load, that seems like a bad idea anyway.

6. Really that comes down more to your hardware/software though there are a few tweaks that most people use.

7. I would recommend having 2 separate builds one for sexy time and another for actual play... less work/frustration/errors that way.

[Test013]

Well now that I think of it I've changed video cards since, I had a old diamond Radeon 6970 and now I have a evga 750 ti. Might be my main problem with the main problem with the textures.

 

I could plug it back in and try to direct my gpu rendering from it to boot it but I feel like that might not be effective after I swap over.

 

I did my first setup on that card and windows 7 now I'm on 10

 

I've managed to get my biggest problem down to the textures right now with every additional asset loading purple. Is there a texture compiler or Optimizer? How would I run it through Mos directory

[Lodakai]

If you plan on rebuilding your glass house.. you should be aware of this limitation, if you are not yet familiar with it.  You probably are, but I've run into this a lot using heavily scripted mods... I am well over the 65k string limit and had to use crash fixes off nexus to address that issue.

 

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/3924850-corrupt-saves-strcount-0xffff-ctd-on-load/

 

(Be sure to take a look at the lovers lab thread linked on that page as well,  it has some references that I have found helpful)

[RW311]

I've had to do complete rebuild of the mod setup due to switching to a new pc or drive, but I have known working backups that include not only the data but all the ini and dll files. I have never had success with a rebuild and keep a mod organizer be it MO or nmm in place and it just added a ton of time and aggravation to the process. If the modlist was working and you don't intend to remove what is in the data files then it's just a waste of time, probably it's faster and easier to manually remove what is no longer in the MO registry if you don't want it anyway.

 

My two cents: Copy the data files directly, try to sort out what tools and dll files are missing, then install MO or NMM if you need them to go forward from there rather than trying to rebuild skyrim modlist to a working state and MO at the same time.

[valcon767]

a few things to consider

 

1 - as RW311 said if you do not have a copy of the Skyrim (including the data directory) and the MO directory, it will probably be waste of time

 

2 - when I switched laptops (form windows 7 to windows 8.1 {both pro 64}) I discovered that the new system REQUIRED MO to be INSIDE Skyrim for it to work.

     in Windows 7 I had Skyrim at C:\Steam\Steamapps\Common\Skyrim and MO at C:Mod Organizer

     in windows 8.1 Skyrim is at the same location, BUT I had to move MO to C:\Steam\Steamapps\Common\Skyrim\Mod Organizer for it to work.

 

3 - if you do in fact have a copy of the Skyrim (including the data) and MO directories and you want me to I will post what I did step by step so you can see what ended up working for me.

 

[Test013]

a few things to consider

 

1 - as RW311 said if you do not have a copy of the Skyrim (including the data directory) and the MO directory, it will probably be waste of time

 

 

well see thats the thing, i have a complete backup of my skyrim and MO file tree's but i dont have the documents/mygames/skyrim backup except the saves folder. I didnt edit much of anything at all in that time span between the backup and my crash as far as i can remember so i dont understand why just copying the old install to steam woudlnt work and it doesnt. I recall getting it to boot but i would get a CTD on loading or starting a new game. My understanding of ENB is pretty shotty in honestly so i think that may have caused the crash?

 

im also running on a different os and gpu. How could i tweak my old ENB settings to fit my new card? they worked perfectly back when, i dont quite remember the ins and outs of working on enb or gpu based utilities.

 

Thank you all so much for the help so far by the way, i thought everyone would just tell me im insane for even trying.

If you plan on rebuilding your glass house.. you should be aware of this limitation, if you are not yet familiar with it.  You probably are, but I've run into this a lot using heavily scripted mods... I am well over the 65k string limit and had to use crash fixes off nexus to address that issue.

 

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/3924850-corrupt-saves-strcount-0xffff-ctd-on-load/

 

(Be sure to take a look at the lovers lab thread linked on that page as well,  it has some references that I have found helpful)

 

For this i have completely given up on salvaging saves, im just trying to get my setup running at its bare minimum which is SL and DD based. Im close to getting SL and DD to work but all of my armor mods wont load textures and thats the most irritating thing.

 

but yes i have used a tool similar to this before but very outdated

[allsunday]

 

 

 

Fair warning this post is long winded.

It's me again and the fact that I'm back on the forum means something catastrophic happened to my mod setup. I've had this happen a few times before and I've always managed to figure it out... Spend weeks if not months trying to come up with a workaround for a ctd loop or any of the other obstacles that make skyrim modding on the Ll side not for the faint of heart.

 

 

 

INB4 "start all over" : that's not an option, that's not why I enjoy modding this engine. Anything can be fixed if you try hard enough with the right resources and knowledge. I'm here to present an interesting problem to some of the more experienced and stubborn modders, brainstorm and share some of my experience as well learn. So if that's all the input you have I'd appreciate it if you would save it for the quitters. I understand its a longshot but im sure some of you feel the same way i do.

If you wish to help i may need refreshing on tools and means to access information you need, please bear with me.

 

If you want to skip the verbose and get straight to it jump down to the TL;DR.

 

This time the one thing I had no solution for happened, I had to reformat my directory where my skyrim and MO was installed....... I spent so much time working on skyrim that I couldn't have cared less about the other important personal things in that drive.

 

We're talking almost 4 years straight the same setup run, over 550 mods, at least 350 active and either tweaked or merged into a T5merged package, over 900 hours spent modding and tinkering script scalping and troubleshooting... Even editing some mods via the sdk for compatibility when no patches available. I hardly ever ever actually play the game, I just get stuck in a cycle of pushing it to the limit then trying to work around or compromise and the constant tinkering is what i love. My mod setup was such a fluke of nature from a modders perspective that I absolutely refuse to let it go. It is the culmination of what I have learned from when I first started modding pc games until now, needless to say that's the reason why it's so hard to replicate. Instead of starting over while I was learning how to mod I just kept patching over myself.

 

__

 

I thought all hope was lost until I found a hdd that was disconnected during the corruption. with an auto backup image of my steam and mod organizer directory. dated about two or so months before the crash so that's what I'm working with here, Everything relevant is in there; MO profiles, mod file resources, load orders, skyrim steam directory, Fnis directory, bash directory, T5... You get the idea. Everything I could possibly need to just plug this back into a steam directory and boot it back up right? Sounds too good to be true... and if you're reading this then you know from experience it is.

 

here's how it went;

 

I reloaded everything back into the directory I made by having steam dig the hole so to speak by reinstalling skyrim fresh, deleting everything except a empty data folder then drag and drop. Same thing with MO except I don't need to reinstall I can just drop the whole program files directory and MO works fine, even the shortcuts and backups. Problem is skyrim won't run, ctd a split second after the first drum of the intro. Without using MO as a launcher it just crashes when trying to start a new game and I knew that was coming.

 

I scrapped that idea which I'm hoping to revisit if anyone has a suggestion on how to pull this off or could explain to me why this doesn't work. It would be the least labor intensive option.

 

Second thing I did is try to build up one mod at a time textbook fashion but some of the proc launchers no longer have their 7z directory and cannot relaunch a mod install configuration. Can't find the right body meshes and enb doesn't shade quite right, huge load on gpu and crap framerate. This was so incredibly tedious that I've decided it's my last resort, I'd have to unpack hundreds of gb of archived 7zs and figure our which ones are even for skyrim.

 

Moving forward.

 

______________________________TL;DR_______________

(i had to reformat, found an old backup and i have been trying to recompile my heavily modded skyrim with much difficulty using my salvaged MO and Skyrim Directories from a couple months prior to the crash)

 

For the past week I've been trying to reassemble it to a similar state from a fresh install of both skyrim and MO and all its tools (like Fnis and bash) in a new SSD I got exclusively for skyrim. With down to about 190 mods I've tried one mod group (Char model, SL, devious) , at a time from the resources left behind in the backup minus a few heavy hitters like falskar/wrymstooth and script heavy overhauls. So far I'm running skyrim bugged to hell. my newly merged assets wont load correctly and they need to be applied in t5 groups. (about 3 chunks of 10 or so armors to save on esm hard limits) I'm using the merge script 1.9 and only merging armors with no script dependence side of hdt heels. I'm getting errors all over the place in texture loading because of vram issues* biggest one being all of my additional assets from mods have no textures, all purple. extensive tweaks to enb core causes ctd on save load or new game, some models fail to load entirely and scripts are having mass meltdowns. for instance add item menu v10 or the latest won't load any mod folders , just vanilla. alternative start won't continue dialog past the initial prompt.

 

Im pretty rusty at installing all of these tools and considering im doing it all at once. There is a strong possibility i missed something important here so that textures could load properly. I also cannot get papyrus to generate a log, never could for some reason and i was hoping for some insight on that.

 

Perhaps I forgot a steam data folder side performance utility? Maybe one that's no longer posted, that's the only thing I can think of is steam directory side mods or frameworks/utilities stopping me. If so couldn't I copy said folders from the backup being careful to leave out certain files? Or maybe the merge patch script 1.9 does something much differently than the outdated one I used.

 

My goal here is to get my personal core mod list of S. L. multiple devious mods, seven based body, hdt physics and enb running again so I can try to work from there and for some reason Im stumped. I'm thinking I added something to skyrim main directory and that's what's stopping me from loading the copy method and for the rebuild method I have literally no clue. Alot of what I'm trying to use are backdated mods that are only compatible in that version with others, getting new and updated versions isn't a option for some and others are not longer supported or even posted. But still that's no reason why a exact copy of its working state shouldn't run a new save at the least.

 

 

So in closing my questions to anyone interested are:

• Have you ever built a unique but glass house mod setup before I'm a Bethesda engine and how long did you keep it alive?
• Have you attempted to move an entire directory with mods before and what are the common complications?
• Why does a complex mirror image of a old mod setup refuse to load, where would unique interlaced dependence occur?
• Have there been any updates to the core of skyrim or skse in the last 5 months that would affect a old asset rebuild?
• What other utulites could i use to help the initial load of these mods and textures? I think i need a enb that will allow a large load of textures (i have SSME)
• What values do i need to plugin to the /Documents/Mygames/Skyrim.ini or any other .ini that needs to have values changed or added for a heavy mod setup? (enb included)
• What steps do you recommend to build up a SL and DD heavy mod set, are there any core tweaks or changes i need to make that im overlooking?

 

 

When I was new to modding and had no idea what I was doing (I'm more of an advanced user now, as opposed to an expert or a master) I backed up my entire Skyrim installation and stored it in another HDD via the good ol' copy and paste method. Afterwards, when I inevitably modded my Skyrim to hell and it self-destructed, all I did was delete the entire contents of the Skyrim installation folder and copy & paste the backup back into the Skyrim foler. No Steam cache verification or anything like that needed. Game worked just fine. In the mod manager I simply uninstalled all the mods I had downloaded and installed AFTER making the backup. This ensured that I completely started right back where I was before I broke my Skyrim. The entire Skyrim backup was about 70gb in size, it definitely was heavily modded considering Skyrim with all its DLCs only amount to about 14gb.

So what you're proposing in theory does in fact work. However, the overall dysfunction you may be experiencing is the likelihood that your actual mod files are only remnants and not truly the complete files... if you know what I mean.

Here's my suggestion, re-download all the mods indicated by the plugins of your Data folder and physically ensure their contents are transferred/installed/present in your Data folder. Or if you use Mod Organizer then do it likewise.

Perhaps it may also be a good idea to redo a Steam cache verification to ensure the staple Skyrim files are also present -- this will definitely mean you need to re-clean those plugins with TESVedit.

Obviously rerun those FNIS, SkyProc Patchers, ensure you have the latest SKSE, and so on before initializing your game. Good luck.

[Test013]

When I was new to modding and had no idea what I was doing (I'm more of an advanced user now, as opposed to an expert or a master) I backed up my entire Skyrim installation and stored it in another HDD via the good ol' copy and paste method. Afterwards, when I inevitably modded my Skyrim to hell and it self-destructed, all I did was delete the entire contents of the Skyrim installation folder and copy & paste the backup back into the Skyrim foler. No Steam cache verification or anything like that needed. Game worked just fine. In the mod manager I simply uninstalled all the mods I had downloaded and installed AFTER making the backup. This ensured that I completely started right back where I was before I broke my Skyrim. The entire Skyrim backup was about 70gb in size, it definitely was heavily modded considering Skyrim with all its DLCs only amount to about 14gb.

So what you're proposing in theory does in fact work. However, the overall dysfunction you may be experiencing is the likelihood that your actual mod files are only remnants and not truly the complete files... if you know what I mean.

Here's my suggestion, re-download all the mods indicated by the plugins of your Data folder and physically ensure their contents are transferred/installed/present in your Data folder. Or if you use Mod Organizer then do it likewise.

Perhaps it may also be a good idea to redo a Steam cache verification to ensure the staple Skyrim files are also present -- this will definitely mean you need to re-clean those plugins with TESVedit.

Obviously rerun those FNIS, SkyProc Patchers, ensure you have the latest SKSE, and so on before initializing your game. Good luck.

 

This seems to be my best advice so far, the backup im working from is a windows backup which...as im combing through these files im noticing theyre severely fragmented. I found a solution to my texture issue and that being it didnt store any of the textures for any mods in the MO folder.

 

im working on a long process now and ill keep you all updated, so far still script issues so im trying to reinstall all mods by changing the MO meta.ini directory in each mod folder to the directory where my zip archives of mods are saved.

 

My skyrim backup with MO is about 300gb btw.

 

[allsunday]

 

 

 

When I was new to modding and had no idea what I was doing (I'm more of an advanced user now, as opposed to an expert or a master) I backed up my entire Skyrim installation and stored it in another HDD via the good ol' copy and paste method. Afterwards, when I inevitably modded my Skyrim to hell and it self-destructed, all I did was delete the entire contents of the Skyrim installation folder and copy & paste the backup back into the Skyrim foler. No Steam cache verification or anything like that needed. Game worked just fine. In the mod manager I simply uninstalled all the mods I had downloaded and installed AFTER making the backup. This ensured that I completely started right back where I was before I broke my Skyrim. The entire Skyrim backup was about 70gb in size, it definitely was heavily modded considering Skyrim with all its DLCs only amount to about 14gb.
So what you're proposing in theory does in fact work. However, the overall dysfunction you may be experiencing is the likelihood that your actual mod files are only remnants and not truly the complete files... if you know what I mean.
Here's my suggestion, re-download all the mods indicated by the plugins of your Data folder and physically ensure their contents are transferred/installed/present in your Data folder. Or if you use Mod Organizer then do it likewise.
Perhaps it may also be a good idea to redo a Steam cache verification to ensure the staple Skyrim files are also present -- this will definitely mean you need to re-clean those plugins with TESVedit.
Obviously rerun those FNIS, SkyProc Patchers, ensure you have the latest SKSE, and so on before initializing your game. Good luck.

 

This seems to be my best advice so far, the backup im working from is a windows backup which...as im combing through these files im noticing theyre severely fragmented. I found a solution to my texture issue and that being it didnt store any of the textures for any mods in the MO folder.

im working on a long process now and ill keep you all updated, so far still script issues so im trying to reinstall all mods by changing the MO meta.ini directory in each mod folder to the directory where my zip archives of mods are saved.

My skyrim backup with MO is about 300gb btw.
 

 

 

 

 

Thanks, I forgot to mention that this won't be possible to do with your textures, of course.  Those will have to be physically re-obtained through the normal means.  Fortunately, 98% of texture mods don't require scripts or a plugin in order to function, and this isn't Fallout 4 so textures very rarely, if ever, can break a Skyrim game.
Lol, how did you manage 300gb?!  Holy!  My current Skyrim game is only at 102gb with everything fully 4k or higher with only some 2k textures and 255 plugins with an additional 160 plugins merged together here and there.  
I secretly hope that good mods are not made anymore because I'm so tired of going through the long process of making room for them.

[valcon767]

@Sk1alpha - the reason just copying the old Steam install over to the new version does not work is the windows key (the thing that say your computer has a valid and legal

windows os) is different now.  every windows os has a unique key, and Steam (by connecting your system to your steam account) knows the key is valid for your steam account.

now with the new windows os the key does not match what Steam knows is valid (for your account). Steam should recognize the new key when you connect it to your steam account

(but it will treat it as a new computer, not a old one due to the key being different).  well that is the explanation that Steam gave me over the phone when I had a similar problem.

 

@allsunday - NODS 300GB is a lot, but I have a couple of ides that could account for it (my skyrim is currently at 168GB, and I have a single mod that is over 12GB by itself).

 

[allsunday]

@Sk1alpha - the reason just copying the old Steam install over to the new version does not work is the windows key (the thing that say your computer has a valid and legal

windows os) is different now. every windows os has a unique key, and Steam (by connecting your system to your steam account) knows the key is valid for your steam account.

now with the new windows os the key does not match what Steam knows is valid (for your account). Steam should recognize the new key when you connect it to your steam account

(but it will treat it as a new computer, not a old one due to the key being different). well that is the explanation that Steam gave me over the phone when I had a similar problem.

 

@allsunday - NODS 300GB is a lot, but I have a couple of ides that could account for it (my skyrim is currently at 168GB, and I have a single mod that is over 12GB by itself).

What? Lol. Which mod is that? Interesting.

[valcon767]

 

@Sk1alpha - the reason just copying the old Steam install over to the new version does not work is the windows key (the thing that say your computer has a valid and legal

windows os) is different now. every windows os has a unique key, and Steam (by connecting your system to your steam account) knows the key is valid for your steam account.

now with the new windows os the key does not match what Steam knows is valid (for your account). Steam should recognize the new key when you connect it to your steam account

(but it will treat it as a new computer, not a old one due to the key being different). well that is the explanation that Steam gave me over the phone when I had a similar problem.

 

@allsunday - NODS 300GB is a lot, but I have a couple of ides that could account for it (my skyrim is currently at 168GB, and I have a single mod that is over 12GB by itself).

What? Lol. Which mod is that? Interesting.

 

 

ok slight memory fault happened it is only 11.1 GB unzipped (versus 49.6MB zipped).

 

during the time of the server switch I made a post joking about not wanting to have to download a lot of individual packs for slavetats, so another user

sent me a "superpack" compilation of most of the packs then available.  the sad part is the post (and reply with the pack attached) were lost in the

server switch process.

 

I can upload it again if someone wants me to, but I do not have any clue who all should be credited (I do not know which packs are in it or even who sent it to me).

 

even if I upload it people who want to use it will still need to get the newest version of Slavetats (and possibly the Slavetats Event Bridge) for it to be fully useful now.

 

 

[Test013]

 

 

 

When I was new to modding and had no idea what I was doing (I'm more of an advanced user now, as opposed to an expert or a master) I backed up my entire Skyrim installation and stored it in another HDD via the good ol' copy and paste method. Afterwards, when I inevitably modded my Skyrim to hell and it self-destructed, all I did was delete the entire contents of the Skyrim installation folder and copy & paste the backup back into the Skyrim foler. No Steam cache verification or anything like that needed. Game worked just fine. In the mod manager I simply uninstalled all the mods I had downloaded and installed AFTER making the backup. This ensured that I completely started right back where I was before I broke my Skyrim. The entire Skyrim backup was about 70gb in size, it definitely was heavily modded considering Skyrim with all its DLCs only amount to about 14gb.

So what you're proposing in theory does in fact work. However, the overall dysfunction you may be experiencing is the likelihood that your actual mod files are only remnants and not truly the complete files... if you know what I mean.

Here's my suggestion, re-download all the mods indicated by the plugins of your Data folder and physically ensure their contents are transferred/installed/present in your Data folder. Or if you use Mod Organizer then do it likewise.

Perhaps it may also be a good idea to redo a Steam cache verification to ensure the staple Skyrim files are also present -- this will definitely mean you need to re-clean those plugins with TESVedit.

Obviously rerun those FNIS, SkyProc Patchers, ensure you have the latest SKSE, and so on before initializing your game. Good luck.

 

This seems to be my best advice so far, the backup im working from is a windows backup which...as im combing through these files im noticing theyre severely fragmented. I found a solution to my texture issue and that being it didnt store any of the textures for any mods in the MO folder.

 

im working on a long process now and ill keep you all updated, so far still script issues so im trying to reinstall all mods by changing the MO meta.ini directory in each mod folder to the directory where my zip archives of mods are saved.

 

My skyrim backup with MO is about 300gb btw.

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks, I forgot to mention that this won't be possible to do with your textures, of course.  Those will have to be physically re-obtained through the normal means.  Fortunately, 98% of texture mods don't require scripts or a plugin in order to function, and this isn't Fallout 4 so textures very rarely, if ever, can break a Skyrim game.

Lol, how did you manage 300gb?!  Holy!  My current Skyrim game is only at 102gb with everything fully 4k or higher with only some 2k textures and 255 plugins with an additional 160 plugins merged together here and there.  

I secretly hope that good mods are not made anymore because I'm so tired of going through the long process of making room for them.

 

 GOOD NEWS EVERYONE!

 

ive made it half way into whiterun with about 500 mods loaded......not sure whats wrong with me or how i ended up with more than i started. I found the old archives and unpacked each one by hand to fill in the missing files (mostly textures) into the old MO directory.

 

 its working.

 

Spitballing made me realize the way that windows saves its image backups in large chunks and fragments. It didnt save the ins and outs of each mod folder. Fortunately i keep all of my rars and 7zs in a seperate hdd. I have like 8 drives, i should really invest in raid.

 

[allsunday]

 

 

 

 

When I was new to modding and had no idea what I was doing (I'm more of an advanced user now, as opposed to an expert or a master) I backed up my entire Skyrim installation and stored it in another HDD via the good ol' copy and paste method. Afterwards, when I inevitably modded my Skyrim to hell and it self-destructed, all I did was delete the entire contents of the Skyrim installation folder and copy & paste the backup back into the Skyrim foler. No Steam cache verification or anything like that needed. Game worked just fine. In the mod manager I simply uninstalled all the mods I had downloaded and installed AFTER making the backup. This ensured that I completely started right back where I was before I broke my Skyrim. The entire Skyrim backup was about 70gb in size, it definitely was heavily modded considering Skyrim with all its DLCs only amount to about 14gb.

So what you're proposing in theory does in fact work. However, the overall dysfunction you may be experiencing is the likelihood that your actual mod files are only remnants and not truly the complete files... if you know what I mean.

Here's my suggestion, re-download all the mods indicated by the plugins of your Data folder and physically ensure their contents are transferred/installed/present in your Data folder. Or if you use Mod Organizer then do it likewise.

Perhaps it may also be a good idea to redo a Steam cache verification to ensure the staple Skyrim files are also present -- this will definitely mean you need to re-clean those plugins with TESVedit.

Obviously rerun those FNIS, SkyProc Patchers, ensure you have the latest SKSE, and so on before initializing your game. Good luck.

 

This seems to be my best advice so far, the backup im working from is a windows backup which...as im combing through these files im noticing theyre severely fragmented. I found a solution to my texture issue and that being it didnt store any of the textures for any mods in the MO folder.

 

im working on a long process now and ill keep you all updated, so far still script issues so im trying to reinstall all mods by changing the MO meta.ini directory in each mod folder to the directory where my zip archives of mods are saved.

 

My skyrim backup with MO is about 300gb btw.

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks, I forgot to mention that this won't be possible to do with your textures, of course.  Those will have to be physically re-obtained through the normal means.  Fortunately, 98% of texture mods don't require scripts or a plugin in order to function, and this isn't Fallout 4 so textures very rarely, if ever, can break a Skyrim game.

Lol, how did you manage 300gb?!  Holy!  My current Skyrim game is only at 102gb with everything fully 4k or higher with only some 2k textures and 255 plugins with an additional 160 plugins merged together here and there.  

I secretly hope that good mods are not made anymore because I'm so tired of going through the long process of making room for them.

 

 GOOD NEWS EVERYONE!

 

ive made it half way into whiterun with about 500 mods loaded......not sure whats wrong with me or how i ended up with more than i started. I found the old archives and unpacked each one by hand to fill in the missing files (mostly textures) into the old MO directory.

 

 its working.

 

Spitballing made me realize the way that windows saves its image backups in large chunks and fragments. It didnt save the ins and outs of each mod folder. Fortunately i keep all of my rars and 7zs in a seperate hdd. I have like 8 drives, i should really invest in raid.

 

 

Congrats, gangsta!