83 replies to this topic

[Kelmych]

I followed the STEP procedure in the PDF and then re-added additional mods that I had previously used. I did not start a new game, but after reinstalling the mods I also folllowed the procedure for cleaning save games in the guide (testing hall, 31 day sleep, ...). For a long while after this I had slow increase in savegame size. Recently, however, my savegames are gaining bloat at a rapid rate I'll soon revert to an earlier savegame and eliminate some mods that might cause this until I see why it is happening. But I do have some bloated savegames if that is what you are looking for; however they are not helped at this point by the procedure in the guides and I expect I would need the hopefully-someday-available TESVEdit if I ever want to fix them. I had the same problem with BOSS mentioned above until I found the solution using a google search.

[frihyland]

Your papyrus log that you examined during the cleaning procedure didn't have any errors?

[Kelmych]

There are lots of errors in the papyrus log. The first page has some "cannot open store for class" for a few mods, primarily lorecraft. The next few pages have more lorecraft-associated and IMCN-associated errors. After that there are a huge number of pages with script errors which seems to be related to a few Skyrim calls (e.g., aaTKEconPlayerTracker) that an older version of Economics of Skyrim used to make frequently. The newer versions use a different approach, but it looks like the old scripts are present and running in a way that they are constantly failing.

[MadWizard25]

There is no true fix at the moment for this issue. After uninstalling mods, orphan scripts will continue to run in your savegame. You have 3 options. You can try 'cleaning' your savegame using this guide; https://wiki.step-pr..._and_Savegames. However, this will not truly clean your savegame, but may help with stability. Or, you can load a save before that mod was added. Or you can start a new game. There is a 4th option, which is to add 'dummy' scripts for the ones that keep generating errors, and this can stop them. But this is far more technical and requires working knowledge of the papyrus language and CK.

[frihyland]

[quote name=''Kelmych' pid='9352' dateline='1343377373']There are lots of errors in the papyrus log. The first page has some "cannot open store for class" for a few mods' date=' primarily lorecraft. The next few pages have more lorecraft-associated and IMCN-associated errors. After that there are a huge number of pages with script errors which seems to be related to a few Skyrim calls (e.g., aaTKEconPlayerTracker) that an older version of Economics of Skyrim used to make frequently. The newer versions use a different approach, but it looks like the old scripts are present and running in a way that they are constantly failing.[/quote']
A good rule of thumb is that if your papyrus log is more than 2-3k after playing for 15 minutes your savegame is toast.  We have given every available optioin to try and save it, but there is no sure fix other than reverting to a save before installation or starting a new game.

[Kelmych]

I had come to similar conclusions as those you mentioned. I've been thinking about restarting a new game since a number of the mods I've used have evolved and changed how they use scripts.

[bitdman]

I don't know if this is important or not but it's a technique I've been in the habit of doing since the days of Morrowind. If I've added any mods to the game I'll make my final save in a new spot or slot so to speak,(not over a pre-saved spot). Then I will load that last save to make sure it can load with the new mods in that save. This way I still have a save that doesn't have the newly installed mods in it. Sometimes it seems that the game becomes corrupt during the save process and not the load. To simplify,load the new save before you exit or delete the old save in case it crashes upon loading,then you still have a save you can use as long as you can get rid of or correct the bad game save or identify the mod that caused the crash.:ohmy: OMG this was hard to explain!

[LeetMiniWheat]

I always save in a new slot. You can rar or 7zip your old saves, they compress VERY well since they're mostly text files. Would be cool to have a program that would automatically compress your old saves and keep like the most recent 25 or 50 saves uncompressed. There used to be one that took quicksaves and kept every single one of them by monitoring the skyrim save folder.

[bitdman]

I always save in a new slot. You can rar or 7zip your old saves, they compress VERY well since they're mostly text files.

Would be cool to have a program that would automatically compress your old saves and keep like the most recent 25 or 50 saves uncompressed. There used to be one that took quicksaves and kept every single one of them by monitoring the skyrim save folder.

I'm not sure though if the compression and de-compression process won't introduce a new set of problems. It seems anything and everything done to files can have an odd effect, on some files.
Could be hardware or software issues.

[LeetMiniWheat]

Compression won't corrupt the files, they have checksums for that sort of thing. It's just backing them up basically. Of course you'd need to extract them to use them again though.

[frihyland]

Added best practices for saving and reloading games.

[torminater]

Reading this article i thought: hey, this is some nice info. I think we should put up a partition about load order on the troubleshooting guide, it might not be really really necessary for people who only stick to step baseline without any packs, but anybody who uses step only as a baseline and wants to add 100+ mods by him/herself would need to know something about load order. I've seen a video on the nexus front page about load order, but it didn't really explain how to set up a load order using any form of strategy. Info about load order is even more important for skyrim, since there isn't any tool to look inside to a mod's esp yet (except the CK, but for the normal people it's crap).

https://skyrim.nexus...m/articles/132/

[frihyland]

Nice find, that's a lot of quality info in one place.

[Kelmych]

I'm not sure whether it's already on the Wiki troubleshooting section or discussed in a thread (if so I apologize), but when I startup Skyrim via the SKSE launcher I will occasionally (not very often) get immediate CTDs because of Steam problems. There is no error message that says what is wrong. When this happens I startup Steam by running steam.exe directly and the problem goes away. It seems to be related to a problem in Steam updating.

[frihyland]

You just need to make sure steam is running before launching skse.