Why is my groups cache so huge over and over?

[songsmith]

I reinstalled the game after losing everything to a system crash almost a year ago. I have arred versions of BV and H&M. The rest are regular. No FT or AL.

I know that periodically the groups cache file increases in size and must be deleted for your game to start. I'm fine with that. It's the first thing I check.

However, since this new install, my groups cache hovers around 900-1000kb all the time. I pretty much have to automatically delete it to boot the game. This doesn't seem normal to me. I did hunt up CC I remembered having from before, but I'm 99% sure I have less of it now than I did in the past.

Is this something BV started maybe? Or just dumb luck? Should I check polys (I don't really understand those) on the CC?

I'm running XP SP3 with Nvidia Gforce 8800 GT, 4mb RAM and a ton of internal memory. Pretty much a new machine with a new motherboard.

I want to catch any problem now (if there is a problem) so thought I'd ask the people in the know. Thanks.

P.S. I would happily make a donation to this site and the other one. You guys saved me from having to pay for some of my old CC twice.

[jsalemi]

That sounds pretty big -- mine is less than 500kb, and that's with all EP/SPs and about a gig and a half of CC.  How much CC do you have, exactly? 

[SaraMK]

Too much CC sounds like a reasonable cause... possibly too many default replacements. Those seem to cause bloat somewhat more than other CC.

[jolrei]

I have a fair bit of CC - 932 Mb including hacks, CC objects, clothing, face templates, hair, and a couple of default skins, and my groups.cache is only about 200 Mb kb with all EPs.

What happens if you delete it and let it regenerate?  Does it come back the same size?

[Keksich]

I have a fair bit of CC - 932 Mb including hacks, CC objects, clothing, face templates, hair, and a couple of default skins, and my groups.cache is only about 200 Mb with all EPs.

Excuse me? 200 MB??

[songsmith]

I have just under 4 gig in CC (including hacks, defaults and lots). It's a ton, but I know I have less than what I did before (not as much hair, eyes, skins, furniture and walls/floors/terrains). About once every two weeks, I might have had to delete my groups. cache, not every day. That's why I wondered if BV changed some stuff in that regard.

I'll remove about half of that and see how we do. I wanted to wait and see what I liked in game and didn't before weeding stuff out.

Thanks, everyone!

[J. M. Pescado]

What happens if you delete it and let it regenerate?  Does it come back the same size?

Pretty much: "You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down, I'll just come back and pick up all my stuff."

[SaraMK]

Try going to C:\Program Files\EA Games\ and doing a search for groups.cache. Depending on your EPs, one of them may be getting copied over to the My Documents directory when you run the game after deleting the file. It's possible it's naturally bloated, or that it has gotten corrupt. I just deleted all that crap.

[Kazzandra]

I don't see this as a problem; I see it as a minor annoyance. I have 8 compressed gigs of downloads (26,000 packages). My groups.cache is consistently over a meg. If there was a problem with it being consistently huge and having to delete it every time, I would have probably seen it.

[jolrei]

I have a fair bit of CC - 932 Mb including hacks, CC objects, clothing, face templates, hair, and a couple of default skins, and my groups.cache is only about 200 Mb with all EPs.

Excuse me? 200 MB??

I'm assuming he meant 200 kb. I have the same amount (863 mb CC) and same game config. My groups.cache is 120 kb.

Yes, you're absolutely right.  200kb.  Corrected.