12/26/2017 Crash To Desktop (CTD) Cure-All - Fallout 4 Technical Support - The Nexus Forums

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Crash To Desktop (CTD) Cure-All

Started by BlindLookout , Dec 28 2015 06:29 PM

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BlindLookout Posted 28 December 2015 - 06:29 PM

Hey everybody,

I was getting occasional crashes that became more and more frequent until there was
just no way to play the game at all, barring reverting back to the original INIs... which
meant, of course, no mods.

Eventually, after a lot of pain and suffering (and re-downloads and re-installs) I worked
out what was happening and how to fix it. Here's the step-by-step:

1. Open NMM
2. Click on each mod, one at a time, and click the icon on the left to "Disable" it.
3. Go to Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Fallout 4\Data
4. It should ONLY have TWO FOLDERS: Video and Strings... so delete anything else
that might have been left over. This is what's been crashing your game.
5. Launch Fallout 4 and load a few games just to make sure it isn't crashing.
6. Quit Fallout 4.
7. In NMM, reinstall just a few of your mods and then load your games, make sure
they aren't crashing.
8. Repeat the last step until you're back up and running.

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This is generally going to do it. Here are a few things others have suggested that you can
also try if the above doesn't work:

Run FOMM to sort the load order and get a sense of any known conflicts.
Check your mods for compatibility patches.
Load a previous game, make sure it's not just a corrupted save file.
Sleep for a week in-game, let all the cells reset themselves.
In Steam, right-click on Fallout 4, go to Properties, and tell it to Verify the
Cache... it usually finds a file or two that was "corrupted" (NOTE: you'll have to
re-do your settings and re-customize your INIs if you do this!)
Uninstall / Reinstall

Let me know if any of the above works for you, or if you have more ideas on Fallout 4
troubleshooting!

Ghartan123 Posted 29 December 2015 - 01:43 AM

Thanks and great timing ... I had my first CTD series today after loading a new mod.

Followed your steps and disabling everything and then deleting the remaining folders.
And it works.Guess something got corrupted along the way.

BlindLookout Posted 29 December 2015 - 11:01 PM

Ghartan123, on 28 Dec 2015 - 7:43 PM, said:

Thanks and great timing ... I had my first CTD series today after loading a new mod.

Followed your steps and disabling everything and then deleting the remaining folders. And
it works.Guess something got corrupted along the way.

That's awesome to hear! Yeah I can't believe how stable Fallout 4 is running for me
now... especially considering Fallout NV.

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Ghartan123 Posted 30 December 2015 - 01:57 AM

BlindLookout, on 29 Dec 2015 - 5:01 PM, said:

Ghartan123, on 28 Dec 2015 - 7:43 PM, said:

Thanks and great timing ... I had my first CTD series today after loading a new mod.

Followed your steps and disabling everything and then deleting the remaining folders.
And it works.Guess something got corrupted along the way.

That's awesome to hear! Yeah I can't believe how stable Fallout 4 is running for me now...
especially considering Fallout NV.

Yeah funny you should mention Fallout NV ... I am new to the whole Fallout game series
and so Fallout4 is my first and I love it so I bought Fallout NV when Steam had it for sale
with all the DLC included. So I downloaded Fallout NV and installed the top (most
endorsed mods) before I started ... well let's say ... I am still struggling a bit with it
(haven't made it out of the first town due to all the crashes).

You would think the main stream mods after all these years would be stable.

Anyway ... anjoying the Fallout world ...

Edited by Ghartan123, 30 December 2015 - 02:00 AM.

EMarshall Posted 30 December 2015 - 03:20 AM

I get CTD in interiors due to explosions such as fuel containers an the like it is the only
time and place I ever CTD period and before you ask this happened even vanilla

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although less often. I'd like to trim the frequency down but it doesn't seem likely.
Hopefully they correct the issue in the next patch...

BlindLookout Posted 30 December 2015 - 04:36 AM

Ghartan123, on 29 Dec 2015 - 7:57 PM, said:

BlindLookout, on 29 Dec 2015 - 5:01 PM, said:

Ghartan123, on 28 Dec 2015 - 7:43 PM, said:

Thanks and great timing ... I had my first CTD series today after loading a new
mod.

Followed your steps and disabling everything and then deleting the remaining
folders. And it works.Guess something got corrupted along the way.

That's awesome to hear! Yeah I can't believe how stable Fallout 4 is running for me
now... especially considering Fallout NV.

Yeah funny you should mention Fallout NV ... I am new to the whole Fallout game series
and so Fallout4 is my first and I love it so I bought Fallout NV when Steam had it for sale
with all the DLC included. So I downloaded Fallout NV and installed the top (most
endorsed mods) before I started ... well let's say ... I am still struggling a bit with it (haven't
made it out of the first town due to all the crashes).

You would think the main stream mods after all these years would be stable.

Anyway ... anjoying the Fallout world ...

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Fallout NV is crashtastic, no matter what you do, and even just the vanilla version
without mods. Some of the bug fixes released by the modding community went a very
long way towards stabilizing it. Recommendations: install all the top pics under "Bug
Fixes", and get the 1GB version for it. Helps a lot. But even then, you'll never be
completely rid of crashes with it.

BlindLookout Posted 30 December 2015 - 04:39 AM

EMarshall, on 29 Dec 2015 - 9:20 PM, said:

I get CTD in interiors due to explosions such as fuel containers an the like it is the only time
and place I ever CTD period and before you ask this happened even vanilla although less
often. I'd like to trim the frequency down but it doesn't seem likely. Hopefully they correct
the issue in the next patch...

Crashes on explosions... makes me wonder if it's a video RAM issue.

Well yeah, hopefully the patch will fix you, but meanwhile I strongly recommend
running through the cure-all because there is one scenario I can think of that could cause
your issue: if at one point you installed a mod that changed either sound or graphics
related to explosions (or screen shake), and when you got rid of the mod it never really
left, thus causing the glitch. If this were the case you'd get crashes no matter what mods
you had active, so disabling them all and making sure there's no garbage in your /Data
folder would be a good first step.

EMarshall Posted 30 December 2015 - 09:31 PM

I'll give it a go and see what happens.

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Gyukyen Posted 01 January 2016 - 03:55 AM

I'm doubtful there's one easy answer to everyone's crashes.

I've been trying to do the exact same process to fix my own crashes and I can't make
head nor tails of what the problem is. The fix you described has worked for me on
occasion to solve my crash at startup menu bug, but often not. I can't isolate any single
mod of my 60 mods that's causing the problem.

Just today, I tried this fix because I was crashing reliably after loading a saved game 3-4
times, and instead of resolving that issue, my CTD 5 seconds into the main menu bug
returned instead. I feel like this particular bug has something to do with a programmed
kill switch as I've noticed on one occasion that running FO4 from steam would reliably
succeed whereas running from NMM would not. However that didn't work this time
either.

I've already disabled all problematic mods, run compatibility patches and optimized the
load order, and validated files to no avail. I wish there was an easy fix-all, but so far I
have no idea what is causing all this.
The only thing that does work for certain is disabling all my mods, but for a long time
I've played FO4 stable with about 40 mods. But I find it very hard to sacrifice any of
them now.

ERASERhead1 Posted 02 January 2016 - 09:26 AM

http://forums.nexusm...lout-4-crashes/
(http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/3625510-any-ideas-on-what-causes-
random-fallout-4-crashes/)

Just linked it in case someone needs it. Game breaking CTD resolved with the help of
MonarchX.

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