If you have a save that is giving you some issues and mods not working exactly like they should, what's the best way to try and clean up a save and hopefully get the mods to work as they should? I seem to remember reading somewhere that you could make a new save, exit and unload all of your mods, reload the last save totally vanilla, save again, exit, reload your mods and play on from there. Is this correct that it might fix some problems? My suspicion is that it might be a corrupt save based on some other minor peculiarities, so I was hoping I could try this as a last resort. Oh yeah, do you also need to unload the DLC too, or just the mods?

For the long version of the story, I got my 70 year old dad hooked on FO3, and he's at Level 27! But, his Better Companions Essential mod is not making his companions essential for some reason. He lost Jericho some time ago, and he lost "his little 4-leaf "Clover" last night to an ambush by a Deathclaw & Yao Guai. Fortunately, he had a recent save to go back to, so she's still with him, but it still bugs me that that mod isin't working properly. I've used that mod extensively and never had a problem with it. I've tried to move it around in his load order and put it dead last so there would be no chance of something overriding it to no avail. It's partly working because he CAN hire all available followers at one time so that much is working. But they're just not essential as they should be.

I have heard that deliberately killing your character and letting the game resurrect him with the last save and then saving again with the rezzed character can sometimes clear up problems. Not sure how well that works, but what have you got to lose?

Often times it seems that corrupt save games are fatal errors, especially if they are caused by activating mods, playing them for a bit and then deleting them and trying to continue with the same saves. I believe that perk mods are notorious for that.

This is what I read to do/do myself.

1.) It is generally best to go to an interior cell, and smaller cells are best. An interior cell is apparent because you have a loading screen when you "open" the door from the outside (such as when you enter most buildings).
2.) Save your game to a new save slot (do not overwrite an earlier save) and quit the game.
3.) Uninstall the mod.
4.) Start the game and load your last saved game.
5.) After the game full loads, make a new save (do not overwrite an earlier save) and quit the game.
6.) If you're upgrading the mod that you uninstalled, you can now install the new version.
7.) Start the game and load your previous saved game.
8.) Just to be safe: make one more new save (do not overwrite an earlier save).
9.) That's it!

I also read somewhere to wait for 4 days in game before making a new save. Not sure that would help in this case but hey, can't hurt.

To 'clean' a save, uncheck all mods, load your current save despite warnings about missing content, then save it without any of 'em loaded. Afterward, loading that save with the mods turned back on will work like it's the first time the're loaded and might fix/reset things.You'll be missing any mod added items, but you can add them back with the console. At least, that's how I'd go about it...

Thanks for the help guys. I'll give them a try. But, if it don't work I've been telling pops that it's time to start a new character anyway. That one was his first and I helped him with too many hints, lol.