I can't get any mods to work and I don't know why

I've been trying for hours to install a singular mod using mod engine 2 and I can't seem to get any of them to work. I've ran into problems where the elden ring .bat file won't launch, or there's files missing preventing the game from launching. extracting files with 7zip, and so on. I've even watched some installation guides on YouTube where the guy will just drag and drop extracted files right into the mod folder and boom, it works for him perfectly, but when I do the exact same process, the game will launch, and it appears to be in the vanilla state with no mods loading whatsoever. I don't know why this is so complicated, yet it seems so easy. if there is anyone who has some sort of advice on how to get mods working at all, I would appreciate it. now I have to wake up for work in 4 hours after failing miserably at modding the damn game.