unable to interact with anything, menu grayed out?

Post » Mon May 19, 2014 8:28 am

I'm suddenly having a very strange problem that I've never encountered before. I'm almost 60 levels into this character and the problem started after completing the CW questline for the Stormcloaks, although I'm not sure if that's relevant.

What is happening is that when my character is moving around the gameworld, all of a sudden most functions seem to just disappear. The only key on the keyboard that does anything is the Esc key, which still brings up the menu but I can only access the Save/Load menu, and the Settings menu. Everything else is greyed out and clicking on it with the pointer does nothing. I can't bring up the map, I can't bring up the journal, I can't bring up anything with the Tab, Q, I or P keys, and all onscreen options for interacting with things disappear - I don't see the onscreen text for 'talk' or 'open' or 'take' etc. when I have the pointer over NPCs or doors or playable items and hitting 'R' doesn't do anything, I don't bring my weapons or equipped spells up for combat. If I am in Sneak mode I immediately come out of it without warning and without pressing the appropriate key. Also the crosshair, which is set to be invisible in most circumstances via iHUD, immediately reappears but as I said I don't get any option to interact with things when it's hovering over them.

I would suspect iHUD because of the crosshair thing, but I've used it for ages and never had any problems and I don't know how that would explain all the other functions disappearing as well. I am using Civil War Overhaul and it's my first time playing through this far with that one, and I did have some notable glitches during the final battle in Solitude that made me replay that bit several times, but on the final runthrough everything seemed to go fine - we finished the battle, all the usual scenes were played out, etc. However it was almost immediately after finishing the CW that I started having this problem... I found out soon afterward that I had large bounties in a couple of holds and fast traveled to each of them to pay them off and when I was released from jail in those cities and tried to walk away was when I think it started happening. I reloaded a couple of times and tried to pay off the bounties with console commands but that didn't work.

I managed to reload a save from just after the end of the CW, to before I had one of the hold bounties, and successfully paid off the one I did have at that time with console commands. Then I just avoided getting the second one. I thought maybe this glitch had something to do with my having been sent to jail when I first tried to get rid of the bounties, it's been ages since I had that happen and I thought maybe the game disables certain functions while you are doing time and it just didn't re-enable them properly after I got out. But as noted I managed to avoid any jail time, went straight back to Windhelm from Solitude via the ferry, and wandered around there for a day or so in-game doing some bartering and preparing for what I was going to do next. Had no problems while in the city or on the docks or out by the stables.

Then I left Windhelm and set off south through the wilderness, and it's happening again. What's odd is that I can get about as far south as Steamcrag Camp before it happens, and after trying various routes on the road and off, and checking the area in the CK, it seems like what is triggering this is when I cross from one section of navmesh into another. You know how when you pull up a non-interior part of the world and look at the navmesh you can see where one section of it borders up against another? Yeah, it appears to be happening when I cross one of those borders.

I did completely remove CWO and reloaded and took the same path south from Windhelm and it still happened, so I don't know that CWO is causing the problem either... and it's such a weird, unexpected thing that I don't know what to think or where to look, especially since it does seem like crossing from one navmesh to another is the trigger. I should probably note that moving from cell to cell via loading screen, either by passing through a load door or with fast travel, doesn't seem to trigger it.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

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Jimmie Allen
 
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Post » Sun May 18, 2014 6:50 pm

The first time you installed CWO, it was at a new game with a new character ??? It should be that way.

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> I did completely remove CWO and reloaded <

CWO completely rewrites the civil war, so if you are already in (the Civil war quests) that's out of the question uninstalling it. !!!!

CWO should be installed at the beginning of the game and not in a different way.

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Have you tried to "deactivate" Immersive HUD ???

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Try to reset you keyboard buttons.

Navigate to:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Skyrim\

Delete ControlMap_Custom.txt.

Navigate to:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Skyrim\Data\Interface\Controls\PC\

Delete controlmap.txt.

Then set-up your keys again.

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Javier Borjas
 
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Post » Sun May 18, 2014 8:24 pm

Yes, I followed all the protocols for using CWO - completely new game, new character. I'm not even sure it has anything to do with this problem. I only removed it after completing the questline, and after this problem showed up, just to see if the problem continued. It did. I put CWO back and reloaded a save from before I removed it. As I said I had already completed the entire CW questline before this problem showed up, so if CWO has anything to do with it, it's something related to whatever happens when the CW shuts down. But how that could cause so many basic functions to simply stop working is beyond me.

I suspect it could be iHUD, and removing it to see what happens might be the next step, but it's hard to believe it would suddenly cause this type of problem after using it since the first version came out with no issues. :shrug:

Regarding your suggestion about resetting the keyboard, the files you refer to don't exist in my Skyrim folder. I think you may be under the impression that I have remapped keys which I have never done. And it's not as though the keyboard itself stops working - it's that certain functions of the game are no longer there. A keyboard malfunction would not explain why 2/3 of the main menu is inaccessible, or why my character can no longer raise and lower weapons, and why the onscreen prompts for interacting with the gameworld disappear completely. It's as though it's not there, except it is - it reacts to me, but I can't do anything in it except use WASD to move my character around. Nothing else works.

I am in the process now of reloading saves, going backward, to see if I can find one where this doesn't happen. The problem is it's so random that I can play from a save point for 15-20 minutes and then *boom* it happens again. I fast traveled to Whiterun and tried to walk from the stables to the city gate and a few steps later, it happened. Reloaded a much earlier save, fast traveled to same spot, walked same path, didn't happen. Reloaded same save, made it from Solitude to the Haafingar SC camp, then Dragonbridge, and all the way to Meeko's shack with no problems, then it happens again. Without knowing what's likely to be causing it, it's kinda hard to know how far back in saves I might need to go and if it's completely unrelated to something that is IN a particular savegame and not another, doing that isn't going to help anyway.

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leni
 
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Post » Sun May 18, 2014 6:41 pm

it's working on a new save (new character - new game) ???

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stephanie eastwood
 
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Post » Mon May 19, 2014 12:26 am

I haven't gotten that far yet, and again it seems so random that starting a new character and playing for 20-30 minutes after leaving Helgen and traveling all the way to say, Whiterun, without a problem wouldn't necessarily mean anything. I can load a save on this character and play that long and go from one side of a hold to another and its fine right up until the moment it's not. :P

I did remove iHud though and played without it for a bit and went to a spot where the problem occurred before on that savegame and it still happened without iHUd in the mix so I don't think that mod has anything to do with it.

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Naomi Lastname
 
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Joined: Mon Sep 25, 2006 9:21 am

Post » Mon May 19, 2014 8:37 am

Have you tried, to verify your game cache files. ???

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=2037-QEUH-3335

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Emilie M
 
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Joined: Fri Mar 16, 2007 9:08 am

Post » Mon May 19, 2014 5:36 am

Yeah, I did that and the problem still persists. I've just looked at the exterior of Meeko's shack in the CK and it appears that the spot where it happened most recently may also have been a border between one 'wilderness' navmesh and another. However on a previous attempt to move around, I lost functionality and interactivity with the world while actually IN the shack, so now I don't now that it's an issue with moving from navmesh to navmesh at all. I'm just stumped. At almost level 60 on this character, with a consistent mod lineup all the way through, you'd think if it was a mod it would've happened a long time ago, unless as I said it's something that happened with CWO at the point where it's supposed to shut down the CW questline. But it's just so unpredictable and random, where and when it occurs.

There's got to be something linking all these occurrences but I can't put my finger on it. It's not the length of time the game is running, if I load a save very near one of the trouble spots I might only be in there for a few seconds before it happens, or I can load a save some distance back and spend the time getting to that spot again and everything will be fine until I get there. Then sometimes a spot will trigger the problem one time, and the next time I go there to test it nothing unusual happens, and I play on and it happens somewhere else.

Once it does happen, this is the result:

I'm forced out of sneak mode if I'm in it - which I have been, because it's an easy way to tell exactly when the problem triggers.

the crosshair that I toggled off via iHUD reappears, but nothing else that I toggled off with the mod (like the compass) does. I can still toggle the compass on and off using the key I set for that in the mod - which does not conflict with any vanilla keymapping, and I haven't customized anything else.

the M, P, I, R, Q, Z, Ctrl and Tab keys no longer do anything so I can't access the map or my inventory/powers/favorites/etc., can't raise my hands or weapons or use whatever shout or power might have been equipped, and can't go back into Sneak. I can still use WASD to move around, and I can use the T key to wait, and IIRC I can still use the appropriate key to toggle Run/Walk, but that's about it. I don't know if "sprint" and "jump" still work.

the right mouse button does nothing in the same way that the R key does nothing.

the E key and left mouse button don't do anything, and there's nothing for them to do anyway because there are no "interaction" options with anything. The text for it doesn't appear on the screen and it's not like it's just invisible, the options to talk to someone or pick something up just don't exist anymore.

if I have a follower, he will keep following, but I can no longer interact with him either.

Edit: just found a post in the comments on this mod at Nexus, someone else saying they couldn't interact with things (smelters, doors, etc.) when they got to the end of the CW questline. It's not any more specific than that but I'm wondering if it's the same problem I'm having, they had to reload earlier saves to fix it. I guess that means all the way back to before the final battle, which svcks as I had to play that 6 times through or more to get it work right once I got that far. :P

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lauraa
 
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