Yet another CTD plea for help.

[Zylockk]

Hello weary traveler. I must first begin this post by confessing that I am not the type to post this kind of thread. I offer that information to indicate the level of desperation I suffer.

I'm going to try to be as thorough as I can, providing all the information I can recall.

 

First, the problem:

While playing Skyrim, at odd, unpredictable intervals my screen will freeze, turning all black--the game will be paused in the background; no sound, and no in-game progress. It will hang for a moment, then refresh--as if the screen turns off--back to black, followed quickly by a refresh to a bright, all white flash, followed by another black, and then my game will either continue playing as if nothing had happened, or will crash to the desktop. The outcome of this sudden freeze is not predictable, nor is how long it will hang--sometimes a couple of seconds, sometimes 5-10 seconds. When this error occurs seems to have no pattern. It'll happen when I'm running around, when I'm changing between weapons or spells, when I jump off of something, or... Anytime, really. Early on in the stages of this error I would also get an error message indicating that my graphics driver had crashed but had successfully restarted.

In between these screen-freezes, the game runs quite smoothly. That's what has me scratching my head hardest. I can make it through an intense dragon fight with half a dozen NPCs shooting arrows and effects while I fire magic and arrows at it with no stutter or issue whatsoever. Two minutes after it's dead, I look down at a flower and the game crashes. It makes no sense.

 

System specs:

Nvidia GTX560 (Drivers at 335.23, latest as of posting.)

8gb RAM

Intel i7 CPU

64 bit Windows 7

If anything else is pertinent, I'll find it. To note, when Skyrim assesses my system capabilities, it sets my graphics to Ultra, so by all indicators I should be able to run this game smoothly.

 

I'm running the Legendary edition of Skyrim through steam with the latest patch and the official HD Textures pack. The latest version of Skyrim Script Extender, Nexus Mod Manager, and BOSS. The only mod installed and activated through steam is the Official HD Texture Pack DLC--though I suppose that's not really a mod...

 

Mods:

- All Unofficial patches, including HD Textures patch

- Climates of Tamriel, all addons and required patches

- Skyrim Project Optimization

- Frostfall

- Wearable Lanters

- Skyrim Floral Overhaul and Expanded Diversity

- Wet and Cold (Ashes included)

- Sky UI

- iHUD

- Immersive Armor and Weapons

- Complete Crafting Overhaul

- Deadly Dragons

- Deadly Combat

- Inconsequential NPCs

- Run for your lives and When Vampires Attack

- Better Quest Objectives and the respective DLC addons

- Realistic Lighting Overhaul, all modules and required compatibility patches

- Midas Magic

- Locational Damage

- Ace Archery

- Balanced Destruction Magic

- Ultimate Follower Overhaul, all addons

- Remove Interior Fog, Dragonborn only

- Dimonized UNP body and the SG Female Textures Renewal

- Static Mesh Improvement

- TK HitStop

- Apocalypse Spell Package

- Falskaar

- A Quality World Map

- Detailed Faces, No More Blocky Faces, and High Quality Eyes

- Belt Fastened Quivers

(Formerly - Disabled to see if it would help)

- Cloaks of Skyrim

- Sounds of Skyrim, all addons, all compatibility patches

- Sneak Tools

- Ultimate HD Fire Effects

- Open Cities

- Pure Waters

 

All the mods have been cleaned with TS5edit and have been properly ordered using BOSS.

 

Attempted Fixes

I don't remember everything, or in what order, so I'll just start describing them in bullet point.

- ENB Series (0.254 and v13) with three different ENB presets, including an attempt to run only ENB Boost with no preset modifications. I used the Performance Version of RealVision, Phinix, and one other. In all cases the only measurable difference was a drop in FPS stability. The core problem persisted.

- As shown above, I have juggled many of my mods to see if any had a sizable impact on stability or FPS. Of those I disabled, Pure Waters, Open Cities, and HD Fire effects were the only that seemed to improve stability. Not by much, though.

- tdrdelay. I thoroughly researched the tdrdealy fix and currently have mine set to 8. After putting this 'fix' in place, I no longer receive the 'Your display driver has crashed' error, so at least it looks like I've (partially) ruled-out my drivers.

- CleanMem. Following one guide on limiting or fixing CTD's, I installed a memory management program and configured it to only manage Skyrim. I then launched the game and had it CTD 5 minutes later...

- I've modified my graphics settings down, culling many of the more taxing options, such as AA, radial blur, shadows, object fade, etc.

- I've set my speaker output to 24 bit 44100khz, down from 44800khz as one fix guide suggested.

- I've tried Razer Game Booster culling the majority of my unnecessary background programs and services. I also manually close everything before playing--Skype, Nvidia Control panel, etc, etc.

- This problem has persisted through independent use of graphical configuration settings applied by ENB's, the Nvidia GeForce Experience optimization, and manual graphic adjustments using the Skyrim Launcher.

- Just on the off chance, I reversed the +3% CPU overclocking that my ASUS software had applied.

- Please rule out corrupted save games, as this problem persists through multiple characters and save files.

- One thread suggested that there could be an issue with a conflicting monitor refresh rate, but my monitor has been running at the suggested safe value--60hz--all along.

 

At this point I have read dozens of forum threads trying to figure out what this problem is and how I can fix it. As I'm sure many of you have noticed, there doesn't seem to be any common thread between the various unstable, CTD issues with Skyrim. In most cases I wouldn't post this thread because I tend to prefer patient persistence over a cry for help. In this case... :laugh:

I'm crying for help. To be honest, I don't even know if this is a true CTD problem. Another wall I've run into is that I've been unable to find any reference to an instance of a CTD that closely resembles mine, which is why I tried to describe in detail what happens. Also to note, when this problem began and it looked like my drivers were crashing, I tracked down any fix I could find associated with "nvidia display driver stopped responding and has recovered."

 

In the past I've spent time as a modder and I've dabbled in basic programming, so I know the basics of debugging: pay attention to what triggers the error, eliminate causes one-by-one, certain not to try more than one fix at a time to isolate the problem, etc. Using all the tricks in my bag I cannot figure out what the hell this problem is. I'm a breath away from purging my system of Skyrim data and restarting, but the many threads I've read of guys doing the same thing and suffering the same problem afterward stopped me.

 

I hope you can help. If not, it's looking like Skyrim is going to take up residence with Oblivion, Morrowind, and Fallout New Vegas in the chest of Bethesda games I tried to play but couldn't because they were unstable or glitched to the point of being unplayable...

[Georgiegril]

The freezing/ screen going black that you describe is often graphics card related. It could be that you are exceeding your VRAM, overheating, a corrupt driver install, even card failure.

The first step is to collect data.

Download and run Skyrim Performance Monitor, then copy/paste the data to our post, if you want help in interpreting it.

(These days clicking on random links seems like an unnecessary risk to many, myself included, so copy/paste will get you more views than a link or attachment.)

[bben46]

This can also be caused by some background process taking control of the processor for a few seconds. If a background process steals focus long enough it can cause a crash.

 

By definition a CTD (crash to desktop) means your game has completely crashed and closed - and you are looking at the desktop - the game is not even in background and cannot be recovered - it must be restarted.

 

There are some freezes that pause the game and put it in background. These can usually ( not always) be recovered by clicking on the game icon in your task bar. If you do recover - be sure to make a save right away. Skyrim is much better at recovering than older Beth games.

 

I had one that crashed my Oblivion every ten minutes exactly. I finally tracked it down to an HP printer update program that would call home to check for updates - But HP had changed the site and it wasn't connecting - so, it would just try again 10 minutes later. It did this whether there was a internet connection or not.

[zzsquadron]

1. that is graphics card related. Best advice: GO FIND AND INSTALL OLDER VIDEO DRIVERS. play around with different versions and see which one survives the longest. Reason, some new drivers are incompatible with [some] video cards when using skyrim.

 

2. Watch my video and follow the advice, especially the part about install one-test one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7bayxneshA

Edited May 28, 2014 by zzsquadron

[jesusgreat1]

same thing used to happen to me, i turned down the anti-aliasing and used a few mods that reduce GPU usage. The ones that reduce quality of snowflakes and bullcrap. You really dont want to run your GPU into the ground like that