Running LOOT Message

[DarkFaceGlow]

So I have zero conflicts or errors going on, but LOOT is still not sorting mods. This is the error I'm being shown:

Could not check or read potential symlink path "E:/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/Skyrim Special Edition": symlink_status: The parameter is incorrect.: "E:/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/Skyrim Special Edition"

Above is where the game is installed(obviously). I know it's a pathing issue, but I'm just not sure how it's "incorrect" Any ideas what I should be looking at?

[DarkFaceGlow]

I've also read that my SSD is exFAT and not NTFS, and LOOT doesn't read exFAT....

[Alex]

Are you using an external SSD?

An internal one should be formatted in NTFS.

[Death Approaches]

Partially correct.

LOOT of course reads exFAT, User programs have no ability to care about the underlying partition format. exFAT can set read only flags, supports long filenames, etc.

The issue is linking which ExFAT cannot do, and you will likely never get mods working... it's not about LOOT per se, but that both Vortex and MO2 require hardlink or symlink support.

You really are going to want to convert that to NTFS...

How full is your SSD mounted on E: ? Less than half-full?

The standard way is, you use a partition editing tool, shrink down the existing ExFAT partition to the size of the existing data, then make a new NTFS partition in the free space, and start moving stuff over... when the NTFS is near full, stop, go back to the partition editor, shrink the ExFAT again to the size of the existing data, and expand the NTFS to take up the new free space... move more things over... then when empty, finally delete the now-empty ExFAT partition and expand the NTFS to occupy the whole space the ExFAT did.

Course if you have like a large ~16TB HDD backup drive either internal or over TB/USB3 with plenty of terabytes free, it's much better (although slower), to back up the SSD in one shot, reformat the SSD's ExFAT partition as NTFS, and copy it all back in one shot.

[DarkFaceGlow]

Originally posted by Alex:

Are you using an external SSD?

An internal one should be formatted in NTFS.

Yes, SSD.

[Alex]

External?

[DarkFaceGlow]

Originally posted by Death Approaches:

Partially correct.

LOOT of course reads exFAT, User programs have no ability to care about the underlying partition format. exFAT can set read only flags, supports long filenames, etc.

The issue is linking which ExFAT cannot do, and you will likely never get mods working... it's not about LOOT per se, but that both Vortex and MO2 require hardlink or symlink support.

You really are going to want to convert that to NTFS...

How full is your SSD mounted on E: ? Less than half-full?

The standard way is, you use a partition editing tool, shrink down the existing ExFAT partition to the size of the existing data, then make a new NTFS partition in the free space, and start moving stuff over... when the NTFS is near full, stop, go back to the partition editor, shrink the ExFAT again to the size of the existing data, and expand the NTFS to take up the new free space... move more things over... then when empty, finally delete the now-empty ExFAT partition and expand the NTFS to occupy the whole space the ExFAT did.

Course if you have like a large ~16TB HDD backup drive either internal or over TB/USB3 with plenty of terabytes free, it's much better (although slower), to back up the SSD in one shot, reformat the SSD's ExFAT partition as NTFS, and copy it all back in one shot.

I have a 1TB SSD which is about 45% full.

[Death Approaches]

what difference would that make, if he's getting that message and he knows it's ExFAT, it's because that partition format can't have links, doesn't matter where it's physically located.

It's easy enough to test, though... open a cmd prompt with administrator privileges, and try:

mklink /h E:\DoesThisWork "E:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Skyrim Special Edition\SkyrimSE.exe"

If that doesn't work, you're not going to have a fun time modding.

[DarkFaceGlow]

Originally posted by Death Approaches:

what difference would that make, if he's getting that message and he knows it's ExFAT, it's because that partition format can't have links, doesn't matter where it's physically located.

It's easy enough to test, though... open a cmd prompt with administrator privileges, and try:

mklink /h E:\DoesThisWork "E:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Skyrim Special Edition\SkyrimSE.exe"

If that doesn't work, you're not going to have a fun time modding.

I don’t have too many mods, maybe 25, and they all seem to work without issues. Only thing is LOOT not running and MCM doesn’t show up in my mod settings. Other than that, all has been good.

What does that command do in CMD?

[Alex]

Originally posted by Death Approaches:

what difference would that make, if he's getting that message and he knows it's ExFAT, it's because that partition format can't have links, doesn't matter where it's physically located.

I'm just wondering why that SSD is formatted in exFAT, that's normally reserved for external storage.

For some reason, though, OP refuses to answer that.

[Death Approaches]

"I have a 1TB SSD which is about 45% full."

Great then you can do it in one shot, follow what I said, shrink down the ExFAT, make NTFS, move everything over, then whack the existing ExFAT and expand the NTFS to occupy all the space of the ExFAT.

If you are not technically inclined please read a guide to help you, this is your data we're talking about, I would feel really bad if you messed up and lost it all... there's plenty of "rescue" and "boot images" for things like this, I'm partial to linux tools over windows tools, mostly because they're solid performers and run on every hardware regardless of cpu/gpu, and they're open-source... gparted live image v1.6 has excellent ExFAT and NTFS3 support... https://gparted.org/download.php you can flash that to a USB stick and boot from it.

But wait though - do you NEED ExFAT for anything? Do you use it as a portable drive and take it to work or something? Most other OSes can mount NTFS but not all, do you use it to attach to your dSLR to copy images off the SDXC card, etc. Or is it dedicated to this machine, to your Steam games?

[Death Approaches]

wait HOW are mods working, did you manually install them into Data\? Both vortex and loot require linking, and exfat does not support that. Well, I only heard vortex does, I don't use it... MO2 definitely requires it.

you are confusing me here... maybe let LOOTt run in memory and then you manually edit plugins.txt yourself, that will save you a lot of work!

[Alex]

Originally posted by Death Approaches:

wait HOW are mods working, did you manually install them into Data\? Both vortex and loot require linking, and exfat does not support that. Well, I only heard vortex does, I don't use it... MO2 definitely requires it.

you are confusing me here... maybe let LOOTt run in memory and then you manually edit plugins.txt yourself, that will save you a lot of work!

Vortex has a mode where it doesn't need linking.

Scratch that, it ain't compatible with Skyrim

[Death Approaches]

I bought a Samsung 990Pro around xmas that came in the external USB3 chassis with a heatsink, and it was preformatted as ExFAT... I guess they're "helping" since it came in an external case... could be something like that.

[Death Approaches]

yeah let's back up a bit... first, tell us how you're modding skyrim, what mod manager you're using... we can have you install a LOOT separate from the mod manager standalone, if it can see the mod locations it can run, without symlink or hardlink support that way, this might be the wrong way to go about it, although NTFS is a much more robust filesystem than ExFAT... ExFAT is fast, but data integrity might be more important to you. ExFAT is pretty dumb, and things like ACLs and extended permission granularity are as non-existent as links...

[Death Approaches]

Originally posted by DarkFaceGlow:

... they all seem to work without issues. Only thing is LOOT not running and MCM doesn’t show up in my mod settings. Other than that, all has been good.

What does that command do in CMD?

Well, then they all don't work, do they? :-)

That command tests if the E: drive supports creating hardlinks, if you get an error message, there's our answer.