Elsewhere in these forums I saw listings for the ID's for various items, NPC's, etc. -- Dogmeat's is listed as 6a772 -- however in my game when I press the ~ key, and then target Dogmeat, it shows his ID as 6a775. When I used the "SetEssntial 1" command using that ID I get an error saying it's invalid (or something along those lines)...when I use the 6a772 ID number it was accepted.

So when I used the SetEssential command and the 6a772 ID number, did it set the Dogmeat that is currently with me to "Essential" or a different version of Dogmeat? Why would the Dogmeat I currently have as a companion have a different ID number?

I play the game on my PC, through Steam. It is the Game of The Year version. My OS is Win 7 Pro, if that matters.

I have used no Mods, etc. with the game, except the GFWL Disabler, and have made the following changes to the game the day after I started playing (3 - 4 days ago):

Set the game to run in Compatibility Mode (WinXP, SP3) and as Admin., as well as disabling the Visual Themes and Desktop Composition (in the Compatibility Tab when setting the game to run in Compatibility Mode).

In the Fallout-dot-ini file I changed "bUseThreadedAI = 0" to 1 and added "iNumHWThreads=2" (both without quotation marks).

I also set Steam itself to run as Admin. because after I made the above listed changes Steam stopped keeping track of my time in the game...after setting the Steam program to run as Admin. it now tracks my time correctly again.

Anyway, back to the variation in Dogmeat's ID number...I listed the stuff I have done to the game, in case any of it might have anything to do with it...primarily I just did not want to presume I have correctly set him to Essential, and then get him killed because of this variance in ID numbers? (Hope that makes sense...I'm tired).

I am computer illiterate...made the changes listed above because the day I started playing the game would randomly freeze (had to use Ctrl/Alt/Del to get out of it), and after making those changes it now plays/saves/exits properly (so far anyway--have played less than 5 RL days). One of the grandkids looked up this information and sent it to me and after making the changes the game seems to be playing fine now.

I know nothing about modding/altering the games, and have not downloaded/installed any programs for that stuff (maybe after I've played awhile...) -- I mention not knowing much/anything about computers so that others won't reply using terminology or with suggestions that are beyond me.

Thank you for your time and assistance.

Well, after that wall of text, it now turns out I may have found the answer to my own original question: one of the ID numbers I listed is the "BaseID" while the other is the "referenceID"...is that correct? Don't know what that means, but found it while browsing through one of the stickied posts.

Thank you for your time and assistance.