Game won't load after using F2SE.

[CPL]

I have never before had this problem. I'm using F2SE to adjust something in my inventory, and when I load the game back up, it crashes. I get an error that reads, the instruction at 004EFB51 referenced memory at 00000100 memory could not be read from.

What is causing this? I'm playing restoration project 2.1.2B

 

[NovaRain]

If you can load other savegames with no problem, looks like the edited savegame data is corrupted. Adjusting the inventory is risky especially if you change one item to another or add something new. Always backup your savegames before changing anything other than quantity.

 

[CPL]

The odd thing is this never happened before, and I've been doing this for several years. I didn't exactly change anything, but I have it modded so (for example healing powder) that the ground art looks like the inventory art, instead of some bag or box. Sometimes, I use the editor to "refresh" the item so it looks like this, because it often won't when you pick up the item on a shelf or container on a regular map.

It's just a superficial thing with the ground artwork, so if I can't do it anymore I guess I'll have to live with it. It's just odd it started acting up all of the sudden. I did reformat my hard drive and put all my files on a DVD. Maybe somehow the artwork files got corrupted on the process.

I do have a couple more things I can try to see if it will work.

Another thing that happened, it screwed up other saves than the one I used with F2SE after the fact and I can use any of them. The funny thing is that before I used it when started a game (at the Temple Of Trials, BTW) and added an electronic lock pick for when I eventually get to the Toxic Caves, it worked fine. It's just when I picked up the healing powder in the temple and did my adjustment, it crashed.

So weird that this started doing this all of a sudden.

 

[CPL]

OK, I didn't seem to have this issue when I went to Klamath, so I don't know if it had anything to do with the Arroyo map or not. The odd thing was that when I got a Kaga encounter, it would just start to load, but then zip right through it. Another thing that happened it when I went to the Primitive Tribe, it crashed. It looked like it was something to do with ddraw dll file. So I just uninstalled and re-installed the Restoration Project and copied over my data file with my save games (I've got a bunch of this stuff saved) and it seems to be working fine now.

Now I'm not sure if it was some issue with the F2SE, or a bad install of the Restoration Project. It was weird, because it never happened to me before. I'm starting to think my Fallout files have a temperamental mind of their own. You can do exactly the same thing, but sometimes get different results.

It would be nice to know, if anyone is kind enough to answer, what would cause such a crash. I know this game can be a pain in the ass, especially when you mess with mods, and whatnot. I've only been able to join this site recently, but I've been following this forum since at least 2003, so I know what you modders have been dealing with.

 

[Darek]

@ CPL,
To me it sounds like your problem was with missing protos.
At least skipping Kaga and crashing Primitive tribe can happen then for sure. It would also explain your saves crashing.
Perhaps when you were modding you forgot to set the protos back to read only and they got deleted by the game?

Adjusting the inventory is risky especially if you change one item to another or add something new. Always backup your savegames before changing anything other than quantity.

In my experience it's been risk-free to change items into something else (unless changing something equipped by the tribal critter in the beginning), but maybe I've just been lucky. Adding something can be dangerous though. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes it works for a while but always crashes after a bit.
If a save crashes it will usually (always?) work if you remove the item again with the editor. Still it's good advice to back up before making changes.
One dumb thing I've done a few times is is to leave the save editor open while playing then saving my game, and then not refreshing the save before making a new edit, and thereby writing old data onto my latest save.

 

[CPL]

Thanks for responding. Yeah, I remember reading about the protos being set to read only. The funny thing is I didn't mess with those, except a long time ago when I used Cubik's editor, when I originally started making my own equipment mods. For some reason, items that are included in the maps (healing powder in a chest at the temple, for example) retain their original ground FRMs, although other things like in random encounters or merchant inventories adapt to the modded ground FRMs. This is why I'll use F2SE to kind or refresh or change without changing it (click on the item and just click on change button,) when I get those. I guess that has something to do with the master dat file or whatever (you guys know more about that stuff that I do.) I suppose you can change things in a mapper, but I never could get that thing to work on my computer. I have Vista, so I'm sure that contributes to a lot of my aggravation when I have to deal with things.

The one thing I tried when I re installed the Restoration Project was another copy of the .exe file I have saved (I have a few of everything) and just copied over my Data files. This time everything seemed to work fine without the dreaded PING! (I hate that noise!) and our friend, the warning file. I've had this happen in the past with files that I have saved. This is probably why I keep spares. It never made sense to me how something could possibly be corrupted like that, but it has. The one common thing I've noticed, it will usually happen after I've reformatted my hard drive (I've had to do this a few time because I've had some issues and it was just easier for me to start over) and re installed all my Fallout stuff. Another thing, it was files that I would have saved on a flash drive or recently, a DVD. I never seemed to have any issues with files on old CD back ups.

There is another thing that I didn't mention that happened with a few inventory FRMs (included one of the FRMs that seemed to originally contribute to my crash.) In the folder, it will have the date modified, but on some of those dates it read something like January 1st, 1980. That was really strange. It just happened on the files from the DVD. 1980? Something is really screwy there. It happened once before with files on a flash drive, but those were mostly script files and that date was 1979. I never could figure out what why that happened and not to everything. I checked the protos and everything else, but they didn't have such a date. Well, at least things are seemingly normal at the moment.

Damned Mercury retrograde. There must be something to that, because anytime I've had a computer issue, that has happened. Go figure.