CTD while loading--but nothing changed!

[agrestial]

I am at my wit's end here after a few days of trying various fixes, so if anybody wants a challenge, and is able to help out here goes:

 

One day I played in the evening, making it through most of the Blackreach Railroad station opening stuff. During this session, I loaded save games a few times while playing, with no problems. I shut down my computer. The next day, I can't load any of the saves past the point where I first activated the train (including the saves I was able to load in game the night before). Every save I try to load shows the loading screen for a few seconds, then ctds, until I find a save about six hours prior that works. Not a huge problem, it happens some times with over 250 mods and hundreds of hours into a playthrough, although this setup has been stable for a very long time now with no new additions and nothing removed throughout. 

 

The problem is that every time I load from that save that works and play for a while then stop, the same thing happens where I can't load any of the new saves when I start up again. It's possible that after 11100 saves I have just hit the limit of what can be done in one playthrough, but the fact that I was able to load those saves before I shut down the game and restarted my computer but can't now really bothers me. Windows didn't update, Skyrim didn't update, nothing changed with my setup from one day to the next.

 

I use Mod Organizer and I have tried cleaning the save with Fallrim Save Game Cleaner and other tools, but there are no orphaned scripts. I have tried turning off antivirus, updating drivers, making sure that the plugins.txt file in my %appdata% skyrim folder matches the Mod Organizer plugins.txt, and nearly everything within reach of a google search but have hit a complete brick wall on this one. Hopefully a genius who wants a friend for life can help me rescue this mess?

 

Thanks!

plugins.txt

Save 11103 - Tryst Skyrim 235.44.02.ess

Save 11103 - Tryst Skyrim 235.44.02.skse

[TheMadCatter]

2 hours ago, agrestial said:

I am at my wit's end here after a few days of trying various fixes, so if anybody wants a challenge, and is able to help out here goes:

 

One day I played in the evening, making it through most of the Blackreach Railroad station opening stuff. During this session, I loaded save games a few times while playing, with no problems. I shut down my computer. The next day, I can't load any of the saves past the point where I first activated the train (including the saves I was able to load in game the night before). Every save I try to load shows the loading screen for a few seconds, then ctds, until I find a save about six hours prior that works. Not a huge problem, it happens some times with over 250 mods and hundreds of hours into a playthrough, although this setup has been stable for a very long time now with no new additions and nothing removed throughout. 

 

The problem is that every time I load from that save that works and play for a while then stop, the same thing happens where I can't load any of the new saves when I start up again. It's possible that after 11100 saves I have just hit the limit of what can be done in one playthrough, but the fact that I was able to load those saves before I shut down the game and restarted my computer but can't now really bothers me. Windows didn't update, Skyrim didn't update, nothing changed with my setup from one day to the next.

 

I use Mod Organizer and I have tried cleaning the save with Fallrim Save Game Cleaner and other tools, but there are no orphaned scripts. I have tried turning off antivirus, updating drivers, making sure that the plugins.txt file in my %appdata% skyrim folder matches the Mod Organizer plugins.txt, and nearly everything within reach of a google search but have hit a complete brick wall on this one. Hopefully a genius who wants a friend for life can help me rescue this mess?

 

Thanks!

plugins.txt

Save 11103 - Tryst Skyrim 235.44.02.ess

Save 11103 - Tryst Skyrim 235.44.02.skse

So often times CTDs like the ones you are describing are a data issue, especially if you aren't on special edition, which has a far superior data management system. So what I have to do now every time I play after a certain number of saves, is at the main menu right after startup I type in the console "coc qasmoke" that loads the dev smoke test cell, which is just a debug tool, but loading this tiny low-maintenance area up and then loading your desired save file from the pause menu can help to "loosen up" Skyrim's data or something along those lines. Try this and see if it works. Good luck!

[agrestial]

Thanks for the suggestion, MadCatter (love your hat)--I should have mentioned in the original that I keep a small interior save from way back when I started this character and sometimes have to use it as the first load to get Skyrim running before loading my playing save. That normally works as well as the qasmoke trick for me but both options are sadly ineffective in this case. I have tried going into qasmoke and leaving the game running for an hour just to make sure everything is "loosened up", as you say, then loading these saves, but no dice. 

 

My current hypotheses are:

1) The game has just reached its limit--I collect everything, never fast travel, and do everything as it comes to me in my path, so I have a bajillion quests running at any given time and multiple chests full of random stuff in my portable player homes

 

2) Something weird is going on with either Devious Devices or Blackreach Railroad--not necessarily the fault of the mods, more my fault for having so many. Potentially Devious Devices because I got a quest a while back (Sergius Experiment) that stopped giving me notifications at some point--I don't think it's this because there aren't orphaned scripts in the Fallrim Tools. Potentially Blackreach Railroad just because it adds a lot of new areas with all the new stations--I kind of understand the strings limit bug (although I thought this had been fixed by Sheson's Memory Patch), and think it might be adding a bunch of new strings all at once to do that quest at this point in the game.

 

Testing is tedious, though, because new saves load fine while I am playing as long as I start from the last working save but then won't load after I restart my computer. I am really leery of removing any mods at this point because that could easily break things even worse. I am mostly just curious because this is one bug that I haven't been able to find anybody else reporting in the way it happens to me, i.e. good saves going bad when the system/game restarts.

[valcon767]

2 hours ago, agrestial said:

Thanks for the suggestion, MadCatter (love your hat)--

I kind of understand the strings limit bug (although I thought this had been fixed by Sheson's Memory Patch), and think it might be adding a bunch of new strings all at once to do that quest at this point in the game.

side note i like that hat too

 

anyway Sheson's Memory Patch does not actually fix the string bug (it is actually a string limit). but Crash Fixes (https://www.loverslab.com/files/file/2551-crash-fixes/)

does fix the string limit (and some other stuff).  i learned this the HARD way. i went over the default string limit in the AS-LAL cell, and having Sheson's memory

patch in (thinking it fixed the string limit) took a loooooong time to figure out it actually does not fix it.  to check if this is in fact your problem you can use Resaver 

(from Fallrim Tools) to open the last save game and check the number of strings in it (the limit is between 60K and 65K) so if your strings are in this range (or

greater) that might be your problem.  solution that worked for me was simply installing Crash Fixes (i just left everything at default settings in it).

if you already have Crash Fixes installed i do not know what is wrong.

 

[Reesewow]

7 hours ago, agrestial said:

Testing is tedious, though, because new saves load fine while I am playing as long as I start from the last working save but then won't load after I restart my computer. I am really leery of removing any mods at this point because that could easily break things even worse. I am mostly just curious because this is one bug that I haven't been able to find anybody else reporting in the way it happens to me, i.e. good saves going bad when the system/game restarts.

Edit: Sounds like a string table bug.... but your save files are pretty big (your main save is over twice as large as my 240 mod level 80 file and your .skse files is 5 times as large).  You also must be running Crash Fixes already because your save has over 90k strings, which is 30k over mine and the string table bug line.  I'm going to go with "save file too big and is blowing up" more than anything else, unless there are any known issues with Blackreach Railroad.

[allsunday]

10 hours ago, agrestial said:

I am at my wit's end here after a few days of trying various fixes, so if anybody wants a challenge, and is able to help out here goes:

 

One day I played in the evening, making it through most of the Blackreach Railroad station opening stuff. During this session, I loaded save games a few times while playing, with no problems. I shut down my computer. The next day, I can't load any of the saves past the point where I first activated the train (including the saves I was able to load in game the night before). Every save I try to load shows the loading screen for a few seconds, then ctds, until I find a save about six hours prior that works. Not a huge problem, it happens some times with over 250 mods and hundreds of hours into a playthrough, although this setup has been stable for a very long time now with no new additions and nothing removed throughout. 

 

The problem is that every time I load from that save that works and play for a while then stop, the same thing happens where I can't load any of the new saves when I start up again. It's possible that after 11100 saves I have just hit the limit of what can be done in one playthrough, but the fact that I was able to load those saves before I shut down the game and restarted my computer but can't now really bothers me. Windows didn't update, Skyrim didn't update, nothing changed with my setup from one day to the next.

 

I use Mod Organizer and I have tried cleaning the save with Fallrim Save Game Cleaner and other tools, but there are no orphaned scripts. I have tried turning off antivirus, updating drivers, making sure that the plugins.txt file in my %appdata% skyrim folder matches the Mod Organizer plugins.txt, and nearly everything within reach of a google search but have hit a complete brick wall on this one. Hopefully a genius who wants a friend for life can help me rescue this mess?

 

Thanks!

plugins.txt

Save 11103 - Tryst Skyrim 235.44.02.ess

Save 11103 - Tryst Skyrim 235.44.02.skse

Are you seriously for sure you have not made any changes to your Skyrim at all but it just started crashing?  1 million percent sure?  If so, just rebuild you skyrim.ini and skyrimprefs.ini!  Obviously make a backup of these files before doing so. 
You should only worry about memory limitations crashing your game if and only if you actually installed a huge mod(s) or made actual changes to the files.  Note:  enblocal.ini settings can also crash the game if not set properly, and so can skse.ini.  But it's usually skyrim.ini and skyrimprefs.ini that gets corrupted due to Steam and it having access to your save files and your computer not shutting down properly and yadda yadda yadda.  Good luck!

[TheMadCatter]

15 hours ago, agrestial said:

Thanks for the suggestion, MadCatter (love your hat)--I should have mentioned in the original that I keep a small interior save from way back when I started this character and sometimes have to use it as the first load to get Skyrim running before loading my playing save. That normally works as well as the qasmoke trick for me but both options are sadly ineffective in this case. I have tried going into qasmoke and leaving the game running for an hour just to make sure everything is "loosened up", as you say, then loading these saves, but no dice. 

 

My current hypotheses are:

1) The game has just reached its limit--I collect everything, never fast travel, and do everything as it comes to me in my path, so I have a bajillion quests running at any given time and multiple chests full of random stuff in my portable player homes

 

2) Something weird is going on with either Devious Devices or Blackreach Railroad--not necessarily the fault of the mods, more my fault for having so many. Potentially Devious Devices because I got a quest a while back (Sergius Experiment) that stopped giving me notifications at some point--I don't think it's this because there aren't orphaned scripts in the Fallrim Tools. Potentially Blackreach Railroad just because it adds a lot of new areas with all the new stations--I kind of understand the strings limit bug (although I thought this had been fixed by Sheson's Memory Patch), and think it might be adding a bunch of new strings all at once to do that quest at this point in the game.

 

Testing is tedious, though, because new saves load fine while I am playing as long as I start from the last working save but then won't load after I restart my computer. I am really leery of removing any mods at this point because that could easily break things even worse. I am mostly just curious because this is one bug that I haven't been able to find anybody else reporting in the way it happens to me, i.e. good saves going bad when the system/game restarts.

If you've done that much in a single save file then there is a high chance of it being too big. Before you do anything I'm about to type make sure to make a nice big backup of the saves you care about. One thing you could try is deleting some old saves that you haven't touched in years. if you have too many save games in Skyrim it seems that it just shits itself, that has happened to some people before. So you could try clearing out the saves folder. After that you should try Hadoram's save game cleaner, which cleans up orphan scripts and can polish up an old dirty save in the way of optimization. If you install the crash fixes mod by meh321 (which you could also try) then make sure you use this script cleaner instead. DO NOT FORGET TO BACK UP.

[agrestial]

Thanks for all the suggestions, everyone! I really appreciate the help.

 

Good advice all round, but particularly Reesewow--it looks like it very well could be a string table issue.

 

Upon further testing, I have found that I am able to reload new saves as long as I don't travel to new stations with Blackreach Railroad. I shall have to give up one of my favorite immersive travelling modes.  Is it possible that adding the new world spaces pushes an already really high string count above what Crash Fixes is able to handle? I am not exactly sure how Crash Fixes gets around the limit and if it just raises the limit much higher than it initially was or completely eliminates the limit.

 

I do have Crashfixes and am absolutely 1 million percent sure I haven't changed anything in this loadout since starting it months ago. Unless Steam changed and is doing something weird with files after I shut down, the only changes to my system have been a couple of Windows updates and one antivirus update, but none of those happened recently and shouldn't have anything to do with this.

 

The other piece I really don't understand that makes this particularly vexing is that I am able to play from the last working save for hours, reloading saves during that play session with no issues, but if I stop playing and restart Skyrim I am suddenly unable to load saves that I was able to load from in game only moments before! Looks like this will be a testing weekend instead of a playing weekend.

 

Cheers!

[jamesmand]

Crash on load is a known problem which this mod tends to fix for most cases: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/85443/

[agrestial]

On 2/11/2018 at 10:11 AM, jamesmand said:

Crash on load is a known problem which this mod tends to fix for most cases: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/85443/

I have that already and it isn't working for this issue, thanks, though!

 

So after a lot of testing it looks like there is something in Blackreach Railroad that just isn't playing well with this setup. I have been able to play for hours and hours and reload the saves as long as I don't go any further in the Blackreach Railroad quest. But whenever I unlock that first station and then shut down the game (that still drives me crazy that the save will load just fine until I close and restart the game), then I can't load that save anymore. Too bad, that really fills in a lot of the gaps not covered in my other immersive travel mods. Tough to decide whether to just push on with what has been a really stable setup until now or try to do something about it and risk losing the saves that do work. Thanks for all the help, everybody!