I've been struggling for days trying to get Skyrim to run somehow.
I have Skyrim v1.6.1170, including the Anniversary Edition and all Creation Club content.
I used the latest Wabbajack Unlocked version and successfully downloaded and installed the "Legends of the Frost" modpack.
Now I'm at the Mod Organizer 2 stage.
Whenever I try to launch the game through Mod Organizer, the game simply doesn't open. I only get a message saying that the application has to finish running, and then nothing happens. After that, I can click the "RUN" button again.
I discovered that inside the Mod Organizer folder I have a folder called "Game Root," which also contains the original game files such as SkyrimSE.exe. I placed my Codex crack there.
I noticed that every time I tried to launch the game through Mod Organizer and it failed to start, the steam_emu file would get deleted from the "Game Root" folder.
At that point it became clear to me what was happening. There is also another folder for RootBuilder inside the MO2 plugins directory, and inside it there is a file called RootBuilderCacheData.json. This file contains a list of the essential files from the Game Root folder along with their hashes.
I noticed that if I remove an entry and its hash from that file—for example the entry for SkyrimSE.exe—and then try to launch the game through Mod Organizer, the SkyrimSE.exe file gets deleted from the Game Root folder. So it seems that all files not listed in RootBuilderCacheData.json are automatically deleted.
So I thought I could simply add the steam_emu file to the JSON file with a text editor so it wouldn't be deleted, making sure it was separated from the other entries with a comma. However, when I tried to launch the game through Mod Organizer afterward, I got a dozen error messages. I assume this happened because I added the steam_emu entry to the JSON file but didn't include a corresponding hash.
So I opened the RootBuilder settings in the Mod Organizer UI, deleted the backup and cache, and clicked "Build" again. Since the crack, including steam_emu, was present in the Game Root folder at that time, a new RootBuilderCacheData.json was generated correctly. Since then, nothing gets deleted when I try to launch the game through MO2.
At that point I tried to start the game, but now when I click RUN I get a message saying that my Skyrim version is newer than the version supported by SKSE.
So I downloaded the latest version of SKSE from the official website and copied it into MO2's Game Root folder. The game can now be launched directly through the SKSE loader executable, but whenever I try to launch it through MO2 by clicking RUN, it still tells me that I'm using a newer Skyrim version than the installed SKSE supports.
My next step was to open the dropdown menu in MO2 where SKSE is listed, click Edit, then Paths, and point it to the new SKSE loader executable.
And STILL, every time I try to start the game, MO2 tells me that my Skyrim version is too new for SKSE.
I don't even know whether replacing SKSE was the right thing to do, because Wabbajack should have set everything up exactly the way it needs to be for this modpack, right?
At this point I'm completely frustrated. I have no idea what else to do. If I launch the game manually through skse_loader.exe, none of the mods are loaded, so I have to launch it through MO2. But I simply don't know how to proceed anymore.
Could someone who knows what they're doing please help me? I would really appreciate it.