Skyrim complete PC crashes

[kingsofglover]

Wow, maybe it's a problem with the video card, because I'm having the same problem and my system specs are almost identical. I have a Radeon HD 6870 (1GB) with a AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2GHz, 8GB ram, 64-bit Windows 7 Home. I have latest drivers for the Radeon, hopefully if it's a problem with the HD 6870 they will come out with a fix soon. It sucks not knowing when it's just going to black screen and make me have to manually reboot the computer.

 

I'm working with the HIS manufacturer now regarding the 9870 card. They are interested in this issue. Played last night for about an hour with the Core and Memory Clocks at 750Mhz and 900Mhz by using the MSI Afterburner tool and no problems even on high settings across the board. There was a comment about the game crashing even on the lower settings when the map overview was displayed, but that did not happen to me.

 

Personally, I do not think it is a hardware issue, but a game software issue.

 

I was the one that first tried to underclock the memory clock with msi afterburner and i play now for over a month fine without bsod problem...I encourage people to try this it is really working i had bsod from day one with the game and now i am lvl 61 and put over 100 hours in the game i just underclocked the memory a little... I found this solution by luck i downloaded msi afterburner in order to change fan speed but when i tried the underclock the game immediatelly became stable...Please inform us if HIS answers you

 

Couple of questions: is this easy to do? I'm not a computer pro but I'm not a newbie completely either. I've never done over/underclocking at all. Also, is there any risk of damage to computer from doing this and will it affect my other games (i.e. will I have to keep changing settings back and forth to play Skyrim?) Thanks for any help!

 

Also, what settings should I try to set it to for my computer? I have Radeon HD 6870 (1GB) with a AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2GHz, 8GB ram, 64-bit Windows 7 Home.

 

It's quite easy. Here is how with ATI Tray Tools. I've got similar pc to yours (6850, Phenom II x6 3.2).

 

Download and install ATI tray tools.

 

Run it as admin (or it won't work).

 

See picture!:

 

1. Right click on it's red and white icon in the task bar then go Hardware>Overclocking Settings

2. To start off, underclock the core to 750Mhz and the memory to 900Mhz (that's what I started with) and hit OK or apply. Make sure the Voltage is at 0.950.

3. Run the skyrim launcher and turn off anti aliasing. Put anisotropic filtering to 2 samples.

4. Play the game. Hopefully it works! If it does, you can slowly creep them up to test. If you set it too high, you will know as it will crash lol.

 

Of course whatever works for you may be different since you have a 6870, so just start low and see what works. With these settings I get steady 60fps, with intense scenes dropping to 35-40

 

P.S. For good image quality, make sure 3D>Texture Preference is set to High Quality. I tried high performance and it looks wayyy cruddy.

Edited January 12, 2012 by kingsofglover

[jlcoving]

Wow, maybe it's a problem with the video card, because I'm having the same problem and my system specs are almost identical. I have a Radeon HD 6870 (1GB) with a AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2GHz, 8GB ram, 64-bit Windows 7 Home. I have latest drivers for the Radeon, hopefully if it's a problem with the HD 6870 they will come out with a fix soon. It sucks not knowing when it's just going to black screen and make me have to manually reboot the computer.

 

I'm working with the HIS manufacturer now regarding the 9870 card. They are interested in this issue. Played last night for about an hour with the Core and Memory Clocks at 750Mhz and 900Mhz by using the MSI Afterburner tool and no problems even on high settings across the board. There was a comment about the game crashing even on the lower settings when the map overview was displayed, but that did not happen to me.

 

Personally, I do not think it is a hardware issue, but a game software issue.

 

I was the one that first tried to underclock the memory clock with msi afterburner and i play now for over a month fine without bsod problem...I encourage people to try this it is really working i had bsod from day one with the game and now i am lvl 61 and put over 100 hours in the game i just underclocked the memory a little... I found this solution by luck i downloaded msi afterburner in order to change fan speed but when i tried the underclock the game immediatelly became stable...Please inform us if HIS answers you

 

Couple of questions: is this easy to do? I'm not a computer pro but I'm not a newbie completely either. I've never done over/underclocking at all. Also, is there any risk of damage to computer from doing this and will it affect my other games (i.e. will I have to keep changing settings back and forth to play Skyrim?) Thanks for any help!

 

Also, what settings should I try to set it to for my computer? I have Radeon HD 6870 (1GB) with a AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2GHz, 8GB ram, 64-bit Windows 7 Home.

 

It's quite easy. Here is how with ATI Tray Tools. I've got similar pc to yours (6850, Phenom II x6 3.2).

 

Download and install ATI tray tools.

 

Run it as admin (or it won't work).

 

See picture!:

 

1. Right click on it's red and white icon in the task bar then go Hardware>Overclocking Settings

2. To start off, underclock the core to 750Mhz and the memory to 900Mhz (that's what I started with) and hit OK or apply. Make sure the Voltage is at 0.950.

3. Run the skyrim launcher and turn off anti aliasing. Put anisotropic filtering to 2 samples.

4. Play the game. Hopefully it works! If it does, you can slowly creep them up to test. If you set it too high, you will know as it will crash lol.

 

Of course whatever works for you may be different since you have a 6870, so just start low and see what works. With these settings I get steady 60fps, with intense scenes dropping to 35-40

 

P.S. For good image quality, make sure 3D>Texture Preference is set to High Quality. I tried high performance and it looks wayyy cruddy.

 

Awesome, thanks it worked. I just set the memory to 900 and didn't change anything else and thankfully it worked so far with no crashes (played from last post up until now). Thanks everyone for all the help I very much appreciate it. I can finally actually enjoy the game instead of just worrying when the next crash is coming. Thanks again

[m_m]

I blew out my computer with compressed air and ran a small fan. Result is I went from many crashes to none. I suspect based on logging with HWINFO that either my ICH or DRAM might have been too hot

 

UPDATE: no crashes for a month ... but then it returned. First on Skyrim and then it spread over a couple of days to other things.

 

Lots of debug later, I established that positioning a portable fan blowing on the POWER SUPPLY INTAKE stopped the crashes. I've now replaced the power supply and all is good. Why Skyrim? Perhaps because it puts load on GPU and CPU and combined they push a marginal supply over the edge. There is no obvious clue in HWINFO except 12V droops to 11.75, not conclusive

[ibrad]

I was the one that first tried to underclock the memory clock with msi afterburner and i play now for over a month fine without bsod problem...I encourage people to try this it is really working i had bsod from day one with the game and now i am lvl 61 and put over 100 hours in the game i just underclocked the memory a little... I found this solution by luck i downloaded msi afterburner in order to change fan speed but when i tried the underclock the game immediatelly became stable...Please inform us if HIS answers you

 

I want to THANK YOU because it absolutely works great for me and it's the least intrusive and safest bet for any user.

 

Brad

[dreigner]

I blew out my computer with compressed air and ran a small fan. Result is I went from many crashes to none. I suspect based on logging with HWINFO that either my ICH or DRAM might have been too hot

 

UPDATE: no crashes for a month ... but then it returned. First on Skyrim and then it spread over a couple of days to other things.

 

Lots of debug later, I established that positioning a portable fan blowing on the POWER SUPPLY INTAKE stopped the crashes. I've now replaced the power supply and all is good. Why Skyrim? Perhaps because it puts load on GPU and CPU and combined they push a marginal supply over the edge. There is no obvious clue in HWINFO except 12V droops to 11.75, not conclusive

 

you'll always find that voltage readings are never exact. this doesn't necessarily affect things unless you see a sharp increase/decrease in voltage over any given moment when the performance load hasn't changed. for example: gpu usage at 98% with the 12v reading at 12.15v then suddenly it drops to 10.95v while gpu load is still 98% indicates that either the power supply is damaged/faulty or aged OR that the capacitors on the card aren't holding charge like they should.

 

minor variations (+/- 0.5v) are within acceptable limits.

[BarderothReturns]

I still think the game is at fault, but making your system more stable seems to work, at least until the next time I upgrade. But I don't play this game that often (my highest level character is 24 and I've been playing since day 1), so fixing the issue isn't really a big deal for me. Even so, I would like to fix this game properly.

Thank you, whogoods, for contributing and adding a new statistic for my research.

[NotFromThisWorld]

Hello world

 

Guess what....

Yes, I have the same problem. And there are a few solutions.

I can play a lot of games without BSOD, but there are a few games like Skyrim, that can crash the whole machine.

 

First of all: Mainly it is because of the bad multithreading-programming of Bethesda, but it has also to do something with cheep components of some graphics cards from some companies.

 

So...the whole toppic is not a new toppic. A lot of Fallout 3 gamers have (or had) the same problems. And now you can guess again.......yeeeeesss......it is from Bethesda. But the community found a workaround that was never implemented into an official patch. Until Christmas I played Oblivion (again Bethesda) and there was not a single crash after 200 hours (or something like that). Now I am playing Skyrim and I had too many crashes, but during the last 20 hours everything worked fine with a little workaround.

 

What I did:

1. TESV.exe -> properties -> compatibility -> Select the Run This Program in Compatibility Mode option, set it to Windows Vista Service Pack 1 AND disable visual themes AND disable desktop composition (and maybe some of you select the option to run the program as an administration).

2. Skyrim.ini -> go to [General] and add the line "iNumHWThreads=3"

3. Skyrim.ini -> got to [HAVOK] an add the line "iNumThreads=1"

4. Taskmanager -> set the process priority of TESV.exe to Above Normal

5. Taskmanager -> set the CPUs of TESV.exe to 0 and 1 and deactivate all the other CPUs (CPU cores).

6. Deactivate the Steam Community of the Steam client.

7. Deactivate FSAA.

 

Why this helped the Fallout 3 gamers? Fallout 3 (and Skyrim) is horribly programmed. In this case it is the multithreading part. When there is a synchronization problem with lots of threads it is better to reduce the number of threads and the number of CPUs that are handling those threads. That is the reason why it does not matter if it is an AMD or Intel CPU, and why the game is (normally) running better when there are 1 or 2 CPUs (cores). So...this explains the lines 2, 3, 4 and 5.

To line 1: In some cases the deaktivation of Aero makres a big difference. I do not know why. But I do know, that Aero is using more graphics power, and sometimes it interfers with running games.

Line 6: The pop-ups of the Steam client during a running fullscreen game can crash a game crash or make it run unstable.

Line 7: FSAA seems to produce other stability problems on some machines.

 

You can also automate the taskmanager part. There are a few programs that can do this. I am using Process Lasso. It is free and you must not register and pay. But there are other tools that are really easy to use.

 

And now to the hardware part. It is true, that some graphics cards are producing more BSODs than others. Some time ago an interesting info was leaked. For example there were lots of AMD 5750 cards from a few big companies that were crashing because of some cheep electric components that were out of reference and not working properly. I can not remember which components exactly and which companies. But I remember AMD 57xx and 68xx and NV2?X and there where some other cards. The problem had something to do with voltage and/or MHz of the graphics RAM, and switching from low speed to full speed. So...you already know the corresponding workaround: reduce the graphics RAM clock by 100 MHz or more. For example (AMD5750/AMD6750): 1150MHz -> 1050MHz. For such a weak card it is no good advice to do this, because the bottleneck of this card is the RAM speed. If you are using the software workaround the hardware workaround should not be neccessary.

 

Yeeeeesss.... I know. Some of you would say: "How can a software workaround fix a hardware issue?" There I say: "Because of a creepy multithreading programming that is not working propperly with the multithreading supporting part of the graphics driver." And there you can say: "So it is the bad driver!" And there I reply: "No, Bethesda is showing a lack of programming standards." etc etc etc. Just a question: How many games are you playing that are crashing your system?

 

The software workaround may look like a big loss of fps, but that is not true, because Skyrim has no fully functional multithreading graphics engine (if it is multithreading at all). My loss of fps is hardly noticeable, and I have definitely no high end PC.

 

So....try this workaround. Work with it. Try to optimize it. Watch your fps. Write tickets to Bethesda.

Stop flaming around and concentrate on the problem. And write tickets to Bethesda.

Stop digging around inside your hardware. If a burning test of Furmark on 1 CPU core and torturing test of Prime95 on the other cores can not crash your PC within 10 minutes -> your CPU, graphics card and power supply and cooling is OK. But I would not advice to run such a cruel test, because it could destroy your good hardware.

 

Kind regards from Germany

[onkelako]

Hello guys.

 

It seems like I have a slightly different problem than most have here, but I really hope you can help since I have no clue whatsoever to what I am supposed to do.

 

A couple of weeks ago I played Skyrim just fine, but all of a sudden it wouldn't boot up which means it would, right after I clicked 'play', just lock on a black screen. It does that every time and every time I have to reboot my computer since ctrl + alt + del doesn't work at all. Actually nothing seems to work 'cept the reset button on my PC... I have changed monitor which was around that time it started crashing. Dunno if me unplugging and plugging in the cables adjusting the video settings f***ed some s*** up, but I tried reinstalling the game with no success, so that doesn't seem to be the problem either... And I am perfectly sure that the resolution and gfx settings are as they should be.

 

Any help appreciated.

 

I can post some info about my hardware but frankly I don't think it's a hardware problem since my PC is quite new and is good enough to run everything on ultra. Also all other games work perfectly.

I have also tried some of the sound fixes that was recommended but nothing helped. I can't start Skyrim at all so it seems permanent.

 

Please help :-)

[whogoods]

Hello guys.

 

It seems like I have a slightly different problem than most have here, but I really hope you can help since I have no clue whatsoever to what I am supposed to do.

 

A couple of weeks ago I played Skyrim just fine, but all of a sudden it wouldn't boot up which means it would, right after I clicked 'play', just lock on a black screen. It does that every time and every time I have to reboot my computer since ctrl + alt + del doesn't work at all. Actually nothing seems to work 'cept the reset button on my PC... I have changed monitor which was around that time it started crashing. Dunno if me unplugging and plugging in the cables adjusting the video settings f***ed some s*** up, but I tried reinstalling the game with no success, so that doesn't seem to be the problem either... And I am perfectly sure that the resolution and gfx settings are as they should be.

 

Any help appreciated.

 

I can post some info about my hardware but frankly I don't think it's a hardware problem since my PC is quite new and is good enough to run everything on ultra. Also all other games work perfectly.

I have also tried some of the sound fixes that was recommended but nothing helped. I can't start Skyrim at all so it seems permanent.

 

Please help :-)

 

When uninstalling the game did you also remove the ../My Games/Skyrim/ folder and made sure that the game folder itself was also completely gone? If not try deleting the .ini files found in this folder and try launching the game. Be sure to back up this folder before doing so. What are your PC specs and what mods are you trying to run if any?

 

I'm glad to see a couple of you were able to fix/halt your crashes. :thumbsup:

Edited January 12, 2012 by whogoods

[onkelako]

I'm not running any mods... And I haven't tried that.

 

My specs:

GeForce GTX 275

Quad core CPU - i7-2600K

Motherboard: ASUS P8Z68-V PRO

 

Also I managed to get Skyrim running when I put gfx on 'default' which set it to high. When I try and change it back to ultra it stops working again. (I have played it on ultra before with another monitor (Switched to Samsung S23A700 recently)

 

Btw it crashes right when I press 'play'. Everything stops working and I can't do anything.

Edited January 12, 2012 by onkelako