I am using the automatic mod manager to make things easy. I have watched the youtube video that tells me to click on a downloaded mod, and hit the “activate” button. When I do, the mod shows up in the “mod” tab with a check mark next to it. I then download like 30 other mods, and do the same thing.

Then I go into the game, and it looks like none of the mods are active. I know this immediately because I am going through the wagon ride (new game) instead of starting with a “new start.” I exit Skyrim, and look at NMM. It still has all my mods as checked active. I exit NMM, and restart it. Now NMM has only 2 active mods: Skyrim, and update.

How do I “save” my active mods, and load them with NMM?

There is something else that is weird. All these mods are in my DATA directory. How come Skyrim does not give me the option to manually activate them?

By the way I have made sure that crazy bsomethingmods=1 string is in my skyrimpref.ini file. (see I did some homework before coming here)

Click on "Data Files" in your Skyrim Launcher. There you can activate or deactivate mods and even change the load order of your mod list.

That is what's puzzling! The "Data files" is grayed out!

Take a look at the plugins.text in your user/appdata/local/skyrim folder. That folder may currently be set to hidden. If so, you will need to unhide it before you can look at it. I did find a bug where NMM would randomly delete the contents of the plugins.txt file if the Skyrim.esm file went missing. I don't know if that has been tracked and fixed or not because I stopped testing NMM shortly after I got hit by that issue.

Edit: You should also be reporting this over on their bug tracker if you haven't already.

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/tracker/

For other help look in the open beta sub forum and post your questions there.

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/tracker/project-3-mod-manager-open-beta/

Thank you so much Ysne58. I looked at plugins.txt, and it was empty (save for Skyrim.esm). So I copied all the files from loadorder.txt into plugins.txt. Somehow, NMM (or Skyrim?) deleted them, and emptied plugins.txt again!

But I got the last laugh...

I copied the mod names into plugins.txt again, and this time make the file "read only." Now, the contents could not be emptied by anyone. And when I started Skyrim, I started with "Live another life" and not the wagon ride. All the other mods should be working now (I hope).

Ha ha ha ha

Glad you sorted that out.

Making it read-only means your load order can't be changed. I hope you realize that

Yes. I had no choice. If I want to add any mods, I have to uncheck the read-only add them, then put it back!

If fact I have to play such a game right now. It seems my "expanded favorite manue" (forgot the actual name) mod is not working, so I have to move it to the bottom of the order.

Be aware that many mods can conflict with each other and cause problems, especially mods such as Live Another Life that changes the start/tutorial. Such issues are not necessarily with a mod manager, so trying 30 mods at once may lead to confusion in tracking down problems. It's usually better to start with a few and slowly add things, especially if a mod makes tricky changes (e.g., starting sequence) or major changes (e.g., dragons, interface, etc.).

I am not sure what your post has to do with NMM wiping out all of my mods from the pligin.txt file, but your point is well taken.

On another note, NMM just upgraded itself, and the new 1.8 version has the same problem (it also blanks the plugin.txt file).

Have you reported this on the NMM http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/tracker/? I realize that they are doing an absolutely horrible job of following up on bug reports, since the last post in my bug report is dated April 18, 2012 and it was by me. This lack of follow through is one of the reasons I'm not using NMM anymore. I still think reporting this is a good idea.

If you are referring to my post/advice, I was pointing it out because of your extensive mod list and because the problem you are posting is not seen by many NMM users, including myself. Therefore, it is not NMM per se that is clearing the plugins.txt file. If it was, it would be doing it for everyone. The problem has to be caused by something else or by some type of unusual interaction between NMM and something else (or even between two or more other things, but not NMM).

By the way, I have no idea what config setting you are referring to when you mention "bsomethingmods=1" in SkyrimPrefs. My SkyrimPrefs does not have that variable and I have used NMM since launch with no problems. With my current restart since last week, I have used both NMM and Wrye Smash/Bash, including launching with Wrye, but this is the first game I have launched Skyrim via Wrye and all my other games launched through NMM. I used up to NMM 17.1 last week, but haven't yet updated to the new 18.3 because I am using Wrye to launch right now.

Anyway... I suggest that you deactivate all mods, launch through NMM like normal (including SKSE, of course). Activate one mod at a time and test again until you find out what the problem mod is. That's really the only way to find the problem.

Oh, I also noticed something in your process description about the steps you take. There are two tabs in NMM: Plugins and Mods. Mods simply lists the mods you have downloaded and that are available for activation. Mods tab does NOT list the mods that are actually active for your game. That's what the Plugins tab is for.

In the Mods tab, you select the mod you want to activate and activate it. You can click it an install it using the button on the left sidebar menu, or you can simply double-click the mod you want to activate. Either method works. Once you do that, NMM installs the mod as a plugin and automatically activates it in the Plugins tab.

You can review your active mods/plugins in the Plugins tab. You can also change the load order manually there or deactivate specific mods without uninstalling them.