4GB Skyrim

READ THIS FIRST
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If your running the game via Steam this is no longer needed as the latest patch does this too.

This mod contains an executable which is designed to make changes to other programs. That's exactly what it is supposed to do, make changes in "TESV.exe". But it may well get flagged by your anti-virus program as potentially dangerous. While it will be a false positive, If you are not comfortable using such a mod, please don't.

This variant by argie will work with any language and version of the game.

http://modsreloaded.com/universal-4gb-memory-patch

Skyrim 4GB

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by MonochromeWench ([email protected])

Skyrim4GB is a tool to load Skyrim with the Large Address Aware executable flag set so the entire 4GB Virtual Memory Address Space can be used by the game.

This is my 'official' port of my tool that did the same to Fallout NV.

Skyrim4GB is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1. Read the included lgpl-2.1.txt for the terms. Source code is included with the package. Original binaries compiled using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.

SPECIAL NOTE: Make sure you do not have a modified TESV.exe file. If your file is modified you will not be able to run the game. If yours is modified right click on Skyrim and get properies. On the Local Files tab click Verify Integrity of Game Cache. Steam will then check for modified files and redownload them as necessary.

If you get an Access Denied error make sure your TESV.exe isn't "read only". If the "read only" attribute is set on TESV.exe then it gets copied onto LAA exe that Skyrim4GB creates. When Skyrim4GB attempts to set the LAA flag on the copied exe file an Access Denied error occurs when opening the file. I'll fix this in the next version.

Update Details

1.5

Fixed at least one case that was causing people to get Access Denied error messages.

Changed the default laaexe to be '.exesTESV.exe' instead of 'TESV.exe.4gb'. This is so people don't have issues with other programs detecting when Skyrim
runs.

Updated the code so it wont fail if the original exe already had the LAA flag set as will apparently happen in the next Skyrim patch. If the LAA flag is already set, the loader will NOT create a modified executable. It will directly run the original exe without modifications while still injecting skse and extra
dlls specified with -extradll.

Added -nolaa command line options. If the original exe didn't have the LAA flag the loader will directly load the original exe without modifications while still injecting other dlls. If the original exe had the LAA flag set, then a modified exe will be generated with the LAA flag unset and that will then be run by the loader.

1.4

Generally cleaned up the code.

Rewrote how the helper dll is injected into the child process. Moved helper dll code out of DLLMain into its own function that gets called after the DLL has
finished being loaded. I want to avoid the possibility of issues with the Windows DLL Loader Lock.

Skyrim4GB now accepts a variety of command line parameters to control what it does. See the Command Line Reference below for details.

1.3

The loader now prints out details of what it is doing.

It also now attempts to check if TESV.exe has been modified. If the exe is detected as modified it will tell you, instructing you to get Steam to validate
the cache.

The loader will no longer wait for TESV.exe.4gb to exit before it exits itself.

The helper dll will now attempt to hook GetModuleFileNameA, if possible, to disguise what exe is actually loaded. If that hook fails it will fallback to
the older CreateFileA hook.

1.2

Skyrim4GB will attempt to load the SKSE loader (skse_steam_loader.dll).

Skyrim4GB no longer hooks GetTickCount().

1.1

Made some code changes that 'may' improve things for some people. Now checks the Bethesda SoftworksSkyrim and ValveSteam paths for the installation
directory.

Also will now write out a log file to ~DocumentsMy GamesSkyrimSkyrim4GB.log that outputs some debugging information that may help track down why it doesn't
work for some people.

If you are getting Steam Application load error 3:0000065432 messages then please post the log contents to the discussion thread so I can see whats going
on.

Also compiled the new version with Visual Studio 2010. This may or may not make any difference.

Installation

------------
Extract the archive to anywhere you want. You don't need to do anything in paricular.

Running

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First, make sure Steam is running. Then run Skyrim4GB.exe to launch the game!
You don't even need it in the games directory, just make sure skyrim4gb.exe and skyrim4gb_helper.dll are together.

If your version of Skyrim is not the standard version with the SteamAppID of 72850 you need to run Skyrim4gb.exe and specify the actual SteamAppID on the command line. Example: Skyrim4gb.exe 72850

Command Line Reference

----------------------
Skyrim4GB.exe [-exe string] [-laaexe string] [-SteamAppID number] [-noskse]
[-extradll string [-extradll string [...]]] [-- game parameters]

Details

-exe The games original executable. If not an absolute path Skyrim4GB will look for the executable in the Skyrim directory using paths
that should be in the registry. Default is TESV.exe.

-laaexe The executable created by the loader that has the LAA flag set.
This must not be the same file as the original executable.
* If this is an absolute path the file will be created using that exact path.
* If the path starts with . the exe will be created relative to the directory containg Skyrim4GB.
* Otherwise it will be created relative to the original executable.
Default is the original exe with .4gb appended to the end

-SteamAppID The SteamAppID id to use. Default is 72850

-nolaa Don't set the LAA flag or unset it if it was already set in the
original executable.

-noskse Disable attempting to load SKSE (Skyrim Script Extender)

-extradll An extra dll to load into the laaexe process after its been
created. This can be specified multiple times to load more than one
dll.

-- Anything after this will be passed as is to the game when the
loader creates the process.

Examples

Skyrim4GB.exe -laaexe .TESV.exe
Create a LAA Exe called TESV.exe in the directory containing Skyrim4GB.
This is probably what you'd want to do if you need some other application to detect TESV.exe loading, not TESV.exe.4gb

Skyrim4GB.exe -exe "C:Steamsteamappscommonfallout new vegasFalloutNV.exe" -laaexe .FalloutNV.exe -SteamAppID 22380 -noskse
Run a completely different game using the loader. In this case Fallout NV with SKSE disabled because thats just not going to work with FalloutNV.