Game Constantly Crashing to Desktop Upon Loading a Save

[Prism]

This issue has been happening to me for some time now and I am on the brink of giving up. Basically, 80% of the time, I try to load one of my saves and the moment the save is finished loading, the game crashes to desktop with no error. What is weird is it doesn't always happen. There are times when the save loads up after the first attempt, and there's times where no matter how many times I reboot Fallout 4, the save refuses to cooperate and it just crashes. It has gotten old real quick having to constantly reboot Fallout 4 over and over again. I do have many mods installed which I will list further below. Here's everything I have tried to fix it:

- Weapon Debris has always been disabled in the launcher so that can't be it
- Fully reinstalled the game and mods
- Ran as administrator
- Used Wryebash
- Used LOOT to organize the plugins
- Downloaded many fixes for the game such as Buffout and Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch
- Updated my drivers
- Used ReSaver to clean up my Save games
- Used FO4Edit to clean up unwanted ITM Records
- Set the game to run in borderless window mode
- Lowered all of the graphics
- Installed ENBoost

I am at a complete loss of what else to try. Out of a fit of rage, I have uninstalled the game yet again, so if anyone knows if the list of mods below could be causing the crash, please advise, and I'll refrain from using that mod when I reinstall the game:

Load Order:
Fallout4.esm
DLCRobot.esm
DLCworkshop01.esm
DLCCoast.esm
DLCworkshop02.esm
DLCworkshop03.esm
DLCNukaWorld.esm
Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch.esp
ArmorKeywords.esm
AutoUnequipPipboy.esm
AWKCR - Last Resort CTD FIX.esp
Flicker Fixer.esp
More Smarter Companions Mod.esp
LovingCurie_1.0.3b.esp
THBrows.esp
AutomatronDialogueFix.esp
KSHairdos_oel.esp
VHCE.esp
LooksMenu Customization Compendium.esp
MiscHairstyle.esp
DeterminedDesdemona.esp
BetterSettlers.esp
BetterSettlersCleanFacePack.esp
BetterSettlersNoLollygagging.esp
Lots More Facial Hair.esp
Lots More Male Hairstyles.esp
Lots More Female Hairstyles.esp
Beautiful Female Settlers v. 2.0 - BS Compatible - VMSR.esp
Doctor Amari.esp
Less_Intense_Speculars_Vanilla.esp
Sporty Underwear.esp
The Eyes Of Beauty.esp
Hot Mama Murphy.esp
HAAS Core Replacer AE Edition.esp
HAAS Automatron Replacer AE Edition.esp
HAAS Nuka World Replacer AE Edition.esp
Clothes Pack v2.0 by DonEb14n.esp
VtawWardrobe7.esp
VtawWidowmaker.esp
BoS Pilot Uniform.esp
CROSS_CourserStrigidae.esp
VtawUtilityPack1.esp
NewerMind43 Nano Suit.esp
ShadeArmorIV.esp
DX_Black_Widow.esp
sarahRageArmor.esp
Patterned Leggings.esp
winryTop.esp
VtawWardrobe2.esp
ToughGirlAttire.esp
loosumRageArmor.esp
LegendaryModification.esp
ShinoClosplay Spider Gwen.esp
CROSS_Cybernetics.esp
WastelandGirlArmor.esp
ChainBikini.esp
rpampas.esp
MkVIIMacTurret.esp
Faster Terminal Displays (20x).esp
CBBE.esp
KSHairdos.esp
Wasteland Heroines Replacer4_1.0.0.esp
Wasteland Heroines Replacer3_1.0.0.esp
Wasteland Heroines Replacer2_1.0.1.esp
AzarPonytailHairstyles.esp
LovingCait.esp
LovingPiper.esp
Beautiful Female Enemies.esp
Molerat_Disease_Immunity_PA_Hazmat.esp
LooksMenu.esp
Companion Infinite Ammo.esp
Quieter Settlements - Contraptions.esp
Quieter Settlements - Vanilla.esp
Quieter Settlements - Wasteland Workshop.esp
RAW INPUT.esp
Realistic Death Physics - ALL DLC.esp
SkjAlert_All_DLC.esp
HN66Fo4_EasyGirl_BS.esp
VtawWardrobe4.esp
ARESAppleseed.esp
VtawSaraBellum.esp
MGSBB.esp
Armorsmith Extended.esp
HAAS Far Harbor Replacer AE Edition.esp
Toxic Raider Armour.esp
wasterArmor.esp
NukaGirlSuitEdit.esp
Jumpsuit.esp

[Jouchebag]

Most mods cannot be safely removed without starting a new game. Simply disabling mods often causes even more problems.

[Jacob]

This is the same thing that happened to me, its your update drivers causing this issue and once you roll back to version 442.74 you will be able to play again, its a wide known issue that has effected a lot of people through out the community

I cover this in my guide, and provide some links that will resolve this issue for ya, its in the 4th section close to the top titled Nvidia Driver CTD, READ ME
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2242115007

[Prism]

Originally posted by Goonz:

This is the same thing that happened to me, its your update drivers causing this issue and once you roll back to version 442.74 you will be able to play again, its a wide known issue that has effected a lot of people through out the community

I cover this in my guide, and provide some links that will resolve this issue for ya, its in the 4th section close to the top titled Nvidia Driver CTD, READ ME
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2242115007

Hmm, I do have an NVIDIA RTX 2070. Will rolling back the drivers to 442.74 affect any of my other games? If so, then I'm abandoning Fallout 4 forever, because I'm not risking crashes for any of my other games simply because my driver was sent back to an older variant.

[Jacob]

It depends on what the games are, just hold on to that 442.74 driver executable and when u play FO4 rollback, when u play ur other games update them, thats what I do, I just updated my drivers this morning and have been playing Far Cry 6 all day today, but when I return to FO4, then all I will be playing is FO4 so ill roll my drivers back

[Prism]

In that case, goodbye Fallout 4. I hardly knew ya.

I am not gonna constantly switch my drivers back and forth just because I want to play Fallout 4 over something like Warframe. That's just ridiculous.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by Goonz:

This is the same thing that happened to me, its your update drivers causing this issue and once you roll back to version 442.74 you will be able to play again, its a wide known issue that has effected a lot of people through out the community

One work around I have found is load an older save in another location first, then load the one that crashes.

[Prism]

Alright, so I have been doing a sort of "Experiment" playing Fallout 4 in PURE vanilla mode. No mods, not even Fallout 4 Script Extender, itself. So far, I have had no problems with loading any save and no crashes of any kind. If this persists, then I can only assume that my up-to-date NVIDIA drivers are not to blame, and it is one of the mods that I have installed not working properly. I will report if anything occurs.

[Jacob]

Originally posted by Prism:

Alright, so I have been doing a sort of "Experiment" playing Fallout 4 in PURE vanilla mode. No mods, not even Fallout 4 Script Extender, itself. So far, I have had no problems with loading any save and no crashes of any kind. If this persists, then I can only assume that my up-to-date NVIDIA drivers are not to blame, and it is one of the mods that I have installed not working properly. I will report if anything occurs.

If it starts happening again then use Buffout 4 and let it generate a crash log, and if the crash log has a probable call stack where it says nvwgf2umx.dll, then it is 100% your drivers, for me I played for 9 hours straight, no issues, then when I closed the game out, came back later my save would not load, got ctd everytime, thats when I started to investigate and figured it out, and thats what most users report, they can play for as long as they want without issue, it happens when u go to load your save

I only read the first part of your post and it seemed to fit the profile, I didnt even look at your plugins and don't plan to, but I give ya a few tips ,towards the stuff you did to try and fix the problem, maybe they will help u on your future modding journeys

-You should never have to run your game as administrator
-You shouldn't use Wryebash, always resolve conflicts yourself manually in Xedit
-LOOT will not always place your plugins right, you need to look at your plugins in Xedit and see what they are doing after you sort with Loot, that way if something is wrong you will see it and can make proper adjustments to the load order, to insure u have no issues
-Be wary of many plugins for the game that claim to fix stuff, more times then none they create problems
-Dont use programs like Resaver
-Dont remove ITMS from mods, most times authors place them there for a reason, and the mod relies on them to function, if you are unsure then you ask the mod author
-Dont use Enb Boost on Fallout 4, it runs on a 64bit game engine, enb boost is for the older Bethsada games that are on a 32 bit engine

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by Goonz:

If it starts happening again then use Buffout 4 and let it generate a crash log, and if the crash log has a probable call stack where it says nvwgf2umx.dll, then it is 100% your drivers, for me I played for 9 hours straight, no issues, then when I closed the game out, came back later my save would not load, got ctd everytime, thats when I started to investigate and figured it out, and thats what most users report, they can play for as long as they want without issue, it happens when u go to load your save

Yep. That is almost exactly what happened with me.

Except I had one crash opening the Cambridge Red Rocket Door and then later I started getting them every time I got near Sunshine Tidings.

I wasted hours chasing the .dll issue only only have it come right back.

What ended up working was loading an older save then the save that would crash. Then I could play for hours and hours without it happening again.

[Prism]

Originally posted by Goonz:

If it starts happening again then use Buffout 4 and let it generate a crash log, and if the crash log has a probable call stack where it says nvwgf2umx.dll, then it is 100% your drivers, for me I played for 9 hours straight, no issues, then when I closed the game out, came back later my save would not load, got ctd everytime, thats when I started to investigate and figured it out, and thats what most users report, they can play for as long as they want without issue, it happens when u go to load your save

Thanks for the reply. Sorry if I snapped a bit about the driver thing, it's just really frustrating. What I plan to do is very gradually start reinstalling my mods and see if a single install of one of them starts increasing the rate of saves crashing. You also mentioned some interesting points about Wryebash and Resaver. I'll refrain from using those in the future. The next time I use the Buffout mod, I'll keep a lookout for a crash log if the game CTDs. Lastly, is there any version of ENB I can use for Fallout 4? Or are they all unstable for it? Also, is it safe to go into the Fallout 4 ini file to turn off the in game VSync as the game is locked at 48 FPS and would prefer it to run at 60 FPS?

Edit: Oh I almost forgot to ask. Is there a guide on how to use XEdit somewhere and is it different from FO4Edit or is it the same thing?

[Jouchebag]

xEdit is just a generic term for the series of programs. It means FO4Edit in this case. However, you should not need it. It's a program for making deep changes, compatibility patches, or making/customizing mods. From a "mod user" standpoint, FO4Edit is almost entirely unnecessary and you're likely opening a new can of worms. You should be able to build a functional, stable mod list without it.

[kdodds]

Disagree. You want xEdit for (at the very least) conflict resolution/patching and creating a Merged Patch (which will actually be the bulk of your conflict resolution). Ignoring this can, actually, lead to instability. You also want WryeBash to created a Bashed Patch.

[Jouchebag]

Originally posted by kdodds:

Disagree. You want xEdit for (at the very least) conflict resolution/patching and creating a Merged Patch (which will actually be the bulk of your conflict resolution). Ignoring this can, actually, lead to instability. You also want WryeBash to created a Bashed Patch.

It depends on how much you want to bash or merge.

If you go by like Avrie's guide:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=947769634

You're just combining leveled lists, really. After using that on my ~130 mods and looking into the patches made, they were basically empty except for merged lists and a couple of redundant clothing pieces merged.

And from what I could tell, almost all of my mods do that scripted leveled list thing. Even the leveled list bash had barely any changes in my set up.

And on my previous mod list which reached closer to 200, and was a wee bit less stable, I didn't bother with making my own patches at all. Granted, it could have stopped the one or two crashes every 10 hours or so, but that could have been the dying CPU too...

I really do feel like having a good feel for compatibility by thoroughly reading descriptions, the bugs and posts, a little intuition, a bit of experience, etc. is 98% of the work. xEdit can't easily fix a totally screwed up mod list, anyway. Bash/Merge patches aren't a magic button.

[Prism]

Should you still use FO4Edit to clean up the ITM Records for the Masterlist (Fallout4.esm, etc.) like LOOT wants you to do? I've been doing that every time I mod.

[kdodds]

I would not clean ITMs unless you ask the mod author. Presumably they SHOULD be removable, but some mods will break if you do so, so I'd check first. Polite thing to do is search the mod's post/forum pages for your answer first though. Also, I haven't had problems just leaving them.