NOT a Happy Camper

[Hana]

I haven't re-installed the armour mods yet (went to the baseball game last night). Will be doing that today.If that doesn't work I throw my brand new PC out the window.

[Hana]

Well, some progress, maybe?I re-installed all the armour mods. Save 896 (and a bunch of others) turned orange from red. I thought great! That's done it. But no, it still crashes when loading.My mod list is now exactly the same as it was before (Diff Masters says so). The load order may be slightly different due to an updated BOSS masterlist that now sorts some of the armour mods that it didn't before, but come on, that can't be it.I can still reload my other char from a previous reinstall save and they use the same profiles.Also, I updated BASH from 285 to 287 no difference.Any other suggestions before I resort to another full re-install of the whole fucking thing?

[Arthmoor]

Yes, try sorting it in the exact order your save wants it in. Whether it makes sense or not, some armor/body mods DO get pissy about being out of order if you try to load an old save.One of the most prominent examples of this is the Bruma statue. Wearing custom equipment when the statue is made can become a permanent hoser if you try and enter later and those items are missing from the game. Or even just out of order.

[Hana]

OMFG I CAN'T BELIEVE HOW STUBBORN THIS STUPID THING IS!!It's PURPLE. It's finally purple. After painstakingly re-ordering, going back to Boss masterlist of Aug 8th, then redating all the armour mod crap that didn't get sorted, it's all finally settled. The save is purple and the list of mods in it are blue.AND IT STILL WON'T LOAD. :mad:The only thing left I can think of is that I upgraded a couple of mods - New Roads & Bridges, Feldscar and Vergayun. So I'll revert back to what it was before.If it works, then that makes all this Samson's fault.

[Hana]

Ok, deep breath.It works. I did it. Finally. My head is about to explode from frustration, but I'm dancing inside. I beat it.Yes, it was the downgrades, which also need barthom 6 instead of 7.0. But I fooled it. Shhhh. I used Feldscar 1.0, when what it really had was 1.0.2. Don't tell.

[Conner]

Gratz Hana. :)Sorry Samson, she says that makes it all your fault..

[Arthmoor]

That's whacked. I don't get why Bartholm or any other city/village mod would have causes a problem. Does it let you update them individually now that everything is back in shape? If it doesn't then something is still screwed up but I couldn't tell you what that is.

[Hana]

Thanks Conner, I'm pretty proud of myself now that the pain is over.And I couldn't have done it without your help, Samson. Thank you so much for being patient with me. I'd hug you if there was a hug emote.I really don't want to mess with a good thing, but yeah, I'll probably try updating tomorrow. I really didn't care to update bartholm, I must have grabbed the wrong archive and threw it in. Didn't even notice until somewhere in between those posts above. I also have to update AN.It is seriously whacked, especially considering it only affected one of my two characters. But on the bright side, we've all learned something about re-installs.

[Conner]

But on the bright side' date=' we've all learned something about re-installs.[/quote']Yeah, avoid them at all costs!

[Dwip]

But on the bright side' date=' we've all learned something about re-installs.[/quote']

Yeah' date=' avoid them at all costs! [/quote']My thoughts precisely.[edit] I feel safe in believing that the br tags added by the quote post button are probably not particularly necessary. Or are added in the wrong spot somewhere. One of those.

[Arthmoor]

You would be correct in that they are not necessary AND are added in the wrong spot, because they shouldn't be there at all and I don't know why they are.

[Conner]

It's got to be something that changed in the quoting template.But, yes, Dwip, you can definitely very safely delete them when quoting to get a cleaner looking quote.

[Hana]

UGH! Booted up yesterday morning like normal, was somewhat suspicious that it wanted to go through chkdsk but cancelled it out. Windows booted fine, I open FF to start browsing when suddenly FF keeps closing randomly. After a few restarts here comes the dreaded BSOD. Although it flashed by quickly I did see something about "Memory Management". Great. It rebooted again but Windows kept shutting down. It finally goes through another chkdsk on boot up, goes into windows repair mode, and it apparently "fixed" something on the disk.Being our Thanksgiving I had no time to mess around with it and just let it run Norton all day. No viruses, and it seems to run fine now. Being a brand new install of course I'm concerned as to what the hell happened. Any suggestions for troubleshooting tips I can run through to make sure everything's ok now?

[Dwip]

Kind of sounds like the early stages of when I was having problems with bad RAM. Sounds a lot like that, in fact.If you go into Windows help, and do a search for "memory test" there will be an article called "Diagnosing memory problems on your computer." Read that, follow the manual link it gives you. Let it run. If it catches anything, you'll want to shut everything down, then start testing each individual RAM stick until you find the one with problems.If you don't find any problems, I'd run it one more time, and when it first starts do the F1 thing described in the help file, make sure it's an Extended mix, and change the pass count to do it a couple times. Then read a book or something while babysitting it, because it's going to take a while.Speaking for myself, the vast majority of my BSODs ended up being nominally nvlddmkm.sys crashes, with some of them being other graphics driver related stuff and a few sound card ones. The approximate feel of the thing I related here. I'm telling you to run the memory tester a lot, since it took a bunch of tries in my case to detect anything. YMMV.Also possible you've got some kind of disk problem you'll need to run chkdsk for, but the memory thing is where I'd start.Also there's some way to change it so BSODs don't flash by on the way to reboot, but damned if I can remember what it is.

[Conner]

Happy Thanksgiving, sounds like your computer's trying hard to remind you of stuff to be thankful for. :lol:I agree with Dwip, it does sound like it might be a memory module going bad on you or, less likely, a bad disk sector. So check the ram and be thankful that it's come down considerably in price lately. :)I believe what you're thinking of, Dwip, is under the advanced tab of the system properties for Windows. (Right click on My Computer, select properties, then select advanced system settings, then the settings button under the Startup and Recovery section.)

[Arthmoor]

You say chkdsk "fixed" something on the disk? Afterward it seems to be running fine? That points more to a bad sector on the drive than to a bad memory module. If you want to eliminate the possibility of bad RAM, you need to download memtest86, burn it to CD, and then boot with it and let it run a thorough test against your RAM. If that turns up nothing then you can be confident the problem lies elsewhere, likely with the drive.Bad sectors on hard drives are, well, bad. If you're getting those now, you'll want to be diligent about making backups and if at all possible look into getting that drive replaced. Assuming it's still under warranty you can file a claim with the manufacturer and be sure to cite bad sectors and chkdsk reporting on them.

[Dwip]

Conner - Yeah, that looks like it.Samson - You're aware that Win7 has what amounts to memtest86's functionality built in, right? I mean, is there really a point to it unless you cannot for any reason get into Windows? I also heartily disagree with the "run once" idea, because I got burned really really really hard with that and have the scars to prove it, but.On the subject of the chkdsk thing, if I recall my RAM experience correctly, I had a few brief chkdsk issues as well, which ultimately proved to be symptoms of the bad RAM and not bad disks. YMMV though, so worth running both.Hanaisse - Good luck.

[Conner]

Oh, did she say it was running fine again now that chkdsk "fixed something"? I must've missed that when I read her previous post. In that case, yes, a disk sector going bad is more likely than the ram as her culprit. I'd thought she'd said that chkdsk fixed something and she was still having the problem which, to me, says ram issue.Yes, bad disk sectors are bad, but they are also pretty common. (If this is your brand new drive, by all means, get it factory replaced while it's still under warranty.) Generally, once the OS marks a sector bad it's safe to continue using the drive for quite a long time before the issue spreads enough to matter. It's when you start getting sets of bad sectors that it's time to make a really good backup and start looking for a new drive. At least, that's been my experience over the years.

[Hana]

Ok, did the restart-run memory diagnostic thing and pretty much immediately it said "hardware problems were detected". So I guess that answers that. Now for the fun of isolating it.Probably won't hurt to run another full chkdsk either.Thanks guys

[Conner]

No, it won't hurt to run either/both tests multiple times, and Dwip is still right that disk "errors" can be very effectively simulated by memory errors, but usually if chkdsk resolves the problem it wasn't memory.

[Arthmoor]

Samson - You're aware that Win7 has what amounts to memtest86's functionality built in' date=' right? I mean, is there really a point to it unless you cannot for any reason get into Windows? I also heartily disagree with the "run once" idea, because I got burned really really really hard with that and have the scars to prove it, but.[/quote']No, I wasn't aware, but in every case where I've uncovered RAM errors in a system, Windows wouldn't remain stable long enough to bother looking for something like that. Memtest86 booted from the CD ran the check in each case, and in each case precisely identified which chip was bad. On the first run.I'm also old school and place no trust in Windows ability to diagnose itself. When shit breaks, I turn to the hardcore tools to find out what's going on. I'm still extremely leery of doing BIOS updates within Windows but most motherboards don't provide you an alternative anymore and I don't have a floppy drive these days. So too am I leery of trusting an in-OS memory diagnostic.

[Dwip]

Hanaisse - Well, that's...good...to hear. Beats the days of pain it could otherwise be.And yeah, it's entirely possible to wind up with some crazy aftereffects from bad memory, especially if it was present from day 1. In my case I don't think they ever quite went away until I did a fresh OS install.Samson - The Windows memtest is accessed through Windows itself, but doesn't actually run in Windows, it reboots to run and does it at startup, sort of like chkdsk - not really "in-OS" in the sense you mean, I think. Handy if you can't get to memtest86, but not critical.In my own case, I forget the details, but it was Windows that finally caught the culprit, not memtest86. After a dozen or two runs through either. Bizzare experience, but it's given me some faith in Windows' ability to keep tabs on itself. In that sense, Vista and 7 are much better than their predecessors. Although I do wish that chkdsk that wiped my external HD had been slightly less proactive about it. Ah well.Also, what is it with RAM these days, anyway? I don't think I remember anybody I know having RAM issues by themselves until a few years ago, and now it seems like everybody's computer problem is with the RAM. Maybe that's just me, but it used to be hard drives. Now not so much.

[Conner]

I think these things tend to run more cyclically as far as widespread issues go, but on a case by case basis, there are probably still just as many instances of hard drive issues or memory issues as at any other given time (it's more a matter of which ones you happen to be hearing about at the time).

[Hana]

Geez, that took forever. I knew there was a reason I didn't actually want a 1TB HD.Happy to report chkdsk found no errors. So it is just a memory thing, even though, like I said, everything has been fine so far today. Weird.I agree with you Dwip, you hear a lot more about RAM issues nowadays. Maybe because it's become such a generic entity that everyone and their brother are cranking out mem sticks. Mine are OCZ gold, which I thought was a reputable name. Guess you never know.Off to Best Buy tomorrow, yippee.

[Arthmoor]

Actually I think the reason you're hearing more about bad RAM these days is because more and more programs are using a lot of it. Especially in 64 bit environments. That 4GB we all sat on for years probably didn't get utilized enough to know that the 4th stick was bad the whole time, and some of those one-off crashes we had were lurking there all along.This is going to become more and more common as time goes by because developers are going to realize the 4GB barrier is gone. Which will make it more important to be sure you're buying high quality RAM and not cheap generic chips from Malaysia.Drive failures aren't out of the picture though. The PC in our living room must have heard our discussion because it bit the big one in a very sudden and LOUD manner when it got turned on this afternoon. There's nothing more chilling to the ear than the sound of heads dragging across platters at high speed. Old PC, still had XP SP2 on it. Chances are it won't be getting anything more than previous warranty return drives I have laying around. Assuming my XP CD still works that is