Troubleshooting Introduction

This is a collection of articles on troubleshooting TES IV problems -- gotchas, common mistakes, CS bugs, etc. The basic ideas and topics were originally discussed in this ESF thread.

These topics could be organized in a lot of different ways, but for now we can start with a simple list.

I've created it as a category so we can add more specific topic articles in the category.

What follows is essentially a long list of some common mistakes and their effects on players and/or the CS. Please suggest more ideas if you can.--Dev akm 17:56, 20 February 2007 (EST)

Obscure Problems

These issues don't occur very often, and we don't even really know what causes them, but they hurt nonetheless.

Pathgrid CTDs

Does anyone really know why the pathgrid CTDs happen? The last thread about it I remember didn't find a solution.

This is an older problem that plagued both UL and OOO for a while. Basically, changing pathgrids is risky and requires a lot of testing to avoid CTD issues. I didn't find any surefire solutions for this either. Does anyone know if this topic has been written about in any more detail than the introductory Path Grid Generation article and Path Grids (simple)?

Black Screen Bug

This is the Infamous Nvidia + HDR Black Screen Bug.

This bug can usually be fixed by the mod-creator. It is usually caused by problems in a custom mesh. This can happen if the mesh creator forgot to assign a valid material to part of the mesh. It can also happen if you have an opaque texture assigned to a transparent portion of your mesh. It can even sometimes be caused by a standard shader like the GhostEffect.

It can also usually be solved by updating the tangent space of certain mesh nodes in a .nif file. NifSkope has a spell to do this.

Once you've narrowed down which .nif is causing the problem, simply open it in NifSkope, right-click each NiTriStrips/NiTriShape node and select Mesh -> Update Tangent Space. This works most of the time.

Related Articles

Helpful Programs

TES4Edit
Wrye Bash
TES4Gecko