Let's say you are having unexplainable crashes. Let's also say you have 100 mods on.

How do you fix it?

Take off the first 10 mods. Test it. If you still have the crash, take off the next 10 mods. Test again. Repeat Process until you find which group of mods has the crasher. Now put 9 of those 10 mods back into the ON position. Test. Keep doing it until you have found the very cause of your crash. Now delete that mod.

Situation Solved!

I am not a modder, so I can not say I have ever created a single mod. But I have played this game since the first day it came out in 2006. Plus I stayed at a Holiday Inn.

yes, but was it last night???

There's a better way to narrow down your crash that programmer frequently use. Turn off half your mods. This tells you which half of your mods the problem is in. Then half that lot. Repeat.

Of course, these methods don't work quiet as well as they should, what with dependecies and conflicts causing new problems.

another is turn off bashed patch (if you used it) the downside of it is if the error is finding the error if is in the mods that going bashed...

Binary search rules! ^_____^


...I just like efficiency...

seconded!
Add to that often when you turn off a mod you turn off every mods dependancies..then for a good chunk of it isn't an exactly binari search... more that a tree seach (matematically speaching)

There is a good chance that that will not happen until the second halving...really depends on the load order, I guess. That would be the case with mine, since most mods and their dependencies are in concentrated areas of the load order (if its organized) excluding the Bashed Patch, of course.

I cannot imagine doing that for 100 mods. I had about 15 running, and it took me about two days to isolate it down to 3 possibilities. Very tedious.

Binary search is more useful the more mods you have. Actually, I don't see where it is less useful, unless you have more insight to the knowledge of the crash such that you can eliminate by type, which is sometimes the case...

What is binary search?

If you turn off half your mods, and the problem is still there, then you know that the problem is in the half of the mods that are still activated. If you turn off half of those, and it's still there, then you know it's in the quarter still activated. If it goes away, then you know it's in the opposite "half" (quarter, eighth, whatever).

Basically, every time you do it you'll halve the number of mods you have to check, making it more efficient than anything else (at least, assuming worst case scenario in both). With 256 mods (which is impossible but the numbers work out nicely), it will take 8 iterations (maximum) before you narrow things down to exactly one (you start with 256, then you only have to check 128, then 64, then 32, then 16, then 8, then 4, then 2, and then at that point you know which 1 it is).

Hmm, doesn't the possibility for interactive effects or load-order effects sort of mess that up?

Take my load order for example:


I've had CTDs, and based on process of elimination, reputation among more experienced Oblivion players, and the sequence when my CTDs started, I feel pretty confident those CTDs were being caused by either: MD Saddlebags, or Tyler's, or some aspect of Enhanced Economy.

Problem is this: what if it is not simply one of those three, but only when two or more of them are activated together? A split-halves method would potentially not reveal that. Not to mention that, the Enhanced Economy has a ton of different options. Indeed, I suspect that it was only some (or even just one) of the Enhanced Economy options that adjusts prices.

There is yet another layer of interactive effects that I with my lack of expertise fear may be at work: the CTDs only occur when two or more of those mods/mod features are running AND under certain game situations.

Specifically, transferring large number of ingredients with large numbers of items per ingredient seems to have been the consistent cause of my CTDs (not immediately, only when trying to save AFTER doing lots of transferring/potion making) but only with all three of those mods running. I still don't know which possible pair it depended on or if it was only one of them, or all three, or if it was dependent on some threshold amount of items in my inventory being transferred. It could've been having in excess of some total weight of items / number, or it could've been the sheer number of doses of each ingredient, or it might have been having more than some number in any given one ingredient. I suspect it was having more than 40 or so in at least three or more ingredients, but I cannot say for sure that it was not simply having 30 different ingredients, nor that it was having more than 27 ingredients and with a total number of doses exceeding 100 or some other wacky combination like that.

One thing I can say for sure: with all three of those deactivated = no problems with transferring huge numbers of ingredients. But it is so tedious to start, stop, deactivate, start, stop, reactivate, start, stop, etc. that I never really finished doing every possible iteration with the same save file to isolate it precisely.

Wouldn't diagnosing the actual crash details in some sort of crash report be the better approach overall?

ADDIT: one more thing! It MIGHT have been Advanced Alchemy that was causing my problems! I have stopped using it all together, but I don't recall if I've had any problems since totally deactivating it.

Herein lies the central paradox: you install mods to have more fun playing the game, but then getting the game to play becomes a bug-hunt. Naturally spending more time isolating CTDs is to be avoided, and I find that that causes me to not be as rigorous and thorough in my testing. I say I am confident that it was one of those three, but in fact it might have been that fourth one. Without treating it like a job and keeping a journal it becomes difficult to say for sure.

Binary Search is not allowed by my religion.

Is it OK if you wear a hat?

Really poorly titled thread.

Deactivating mods by groups is a great troubleshooting tool, but is not a 100% surefire way of discovering the cause of crashing.

If your system is crashing due to, say, running out of RAM, this method will not reveal that.
If your system is crashing due to, say, an inadequate power supply, this method will not reveal that.
If your system is crashing due to, say, virus programs updating themselves in the background, this method will not reveal that.
If your system is crashing due to, say, missing xml files after an improper uninstall of DarnUI, this method will not reveal that.
If your system is crashing due to, say, running out of VRAM, this method will not reveal that.

gothemasticator

Actually it may well point these two things out if you happen to drop enough to bring the memory issue under control. For both system RAM and VRAM. You have to be aware of that possibility to be able to connect the dots, but this method could lead you to the conclusion that you're simply overstressing the system.

You are right about the rest though, because even with nothing your game can still crash and if you've convinced yourself your mods caused it, that only leads to frustration.

Agreed, and that is also why you should test the game without any plugins activated as well. Which would be the end of the binary search. However, you might as well try the vanilla test first, unless you know what changes you've made since the crashes started.


1) RAM-related crashes are often consistent, time-wise.

2) Doesn't that often lead to the whole computer crashing, and not just Oblivion.

3) Wouldn't a virus affect the vanilla game running as well?

4) That causes menu hanging as the game load and other menu-related anomalies, right?

5) After deactivating all of the plugins, uninstalling non-plugin mods might help unveil this issue. It might be easier to point out the VRAM issue if you tried uninstalling those mods while leaving all of the plugin-having mods active...

Of course you are right. I don't object to the method at all, just the way the thread title is billing it. It presumes that one particular mod is the problem. To presume that is to jump to conclusions.

gothemasticator

I think so, but it has to be a funny hat, though we'll need richardrocket to confirm that... :blink:

If you have a power-hungry video card, and Oblivion is the only application you run that actually uses the video card, you might well experience crashing only or primarily when running Oblivion.

But, yes, usually, your computer itself would crash and not just the application.

gothemasticator

I thought I recognized you from somewhere... :foodndrink: