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IanHead

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    Skyrim complete PC crashes

    in Skyrim LE

    Posted

    I have taken the liberty to repost IanHead wonderful analysis on the Skyrim crashes in Kotaku.

     

    I hope that someone there might notice this and maybe turn some heads our way so this issue can get the attention that it deserves.

     

    Keep on spreading the word!.

    *fist bump*

     

    Thanks mate.

    Skyrim complete PC crashes

    in Skyrim LE

    Posted · Edited by IanHead

    I've compiled a fairly exhaustive summary of this thread on the Bethsoft forums, located here.

     

    Below is a verbatim copy of my post on there:

     

    PREFACE: Three things to note about this issue before I continue.

     

    1. This is not a thread about crashes to the desktop.
    2. This is not a thread about crashes to the desktop.
    3. This is not a thread about the main menu not appearing when you start the game.

     

    Symptoms:

     

    I and a fistful of other players have been experiencing this problem since day one. At totally random times during gameplay:

     

    • The screen will turn black without warning, with sound/music continuing in the background.
    • Monitor gives a 'no signal' message like it would if the PC were switched off.
    • Sound freezes and begins looping. At this point the PC has completely hung and the only way forward is to shut the power off and reboot the PC.

     

    Demonstration and prior correspondence:

     

    There are available a few videos on youtube which demonstrate this problem, one of which is

    . There is a very, very long thread about this on the Nexus forums, located here.

     

    Observations based on my own, and other peoples' reports:

     

    • Symptoms are in line with the video driver crashing (black screen, monitor losing signal), then failing to recover (hard hang).
    • There is no strict correlation between what the player is doing and how often the crashes occur.
    • The crashes have been reported to occur anywhere between several hours of play to within seconds of starting.
    • It seems to be mostly affecting ATI HD5xxx and 6xxx chips, but Nvidia users are also reporting the issue. (I have an HD6950 card myself)
    • Both desktops and mobile systems are affected.
    • Some (including myself) have reported the problem seems to happen at moments such as switching to the map, viewing the main menu/quest journal, or riding a horse -- however it also happens at random during normal gameplay.
    • Some hypotheses suggest the problem lies either in the engine duping the card into entering some kind of powersave mode and then not switching back, or that Flash middleware used for rendering the menus (if there actually is a Flash binary blob in there that's used for the game's UI) is crashing the video driver.
    • The problem has been there since version 1.0 and is still present as of 1.2.
    • Video card temperatures are NOT a factor. This occurs when the GPU is at regular operating temperature, and also occurs on underclocked cards.
    • Nobody has been able to reproduce these crashes in any other game, stress test application or any other general application of any kind.

     

    Measures people have tried taking to address the problem:

     

    • The sound fix (before the 1.2 patch came out)
    • Underclocking/overclocking.
    • Reinstalling Skyrim.
    • Lowering/raising graphics settings.
    • Turning off background applications.
    • Changing 'Catalyst AI' settings.
    • Updating video drivers to newer, older, or beta versions.
    • The 4GB fix.
    • Enabling/disabling Crossfire.
    • Running in windowed mode.
    • Contacting Bethsoft support. (most reports say that the techs who responded either asked for peoples' dxdiag info or suggested the 44khz sound thing. The technicians I dealt with, after extensive back-and-forth conversation, were extra patient with me and eventually admitted that they'd run out of ideas.)

     

    Measures people have taken that were probably never going to help anyway:

     

    • Reformatting, reinstalling Windows.
    • Defragging.
    • Messing with manual clock speeds in MSI Afterburner and similar applications.
    • Switching between legitimate and pirated versions of Skyrim.
    • Turning on/off firewalls, anti-virus programs.
    • Changing power saving settings on the PC.
    • Reinstalling/rolling back DirectX versions.
    • Verifying game integrity via Steam.
    • Messing with various BIOS settings.
    • Messed with both skyrim.ini and skyrimprefs.ini files to disably vsync, etc.
    • Running chkdsk.
    • Disabling gamepad via ini files and the in-game menus.
    • Adding different performance-related .dll files to the Skyrim game dir.
    • Reformatting the entire drive and starting over.
    • Opening the computer and blasting it with an air compressor to clean it of cobwebs, dust bunnies, dead rodents etc.
    • Messing with processor affinity settings in the task manager.
    • Running as administrator.
    • Running in compatibility modes (XP, Vista, etc.)
    • Running virtualised under Windows 7's XP Mode.
    • Deleting any and all mods installed.
    • Swapping out the Steam-ified TES4.exe for the pre-patch version.
    • Playing online, playing offline.
    • Sacrificing babies of various lineage in blood rituals.

     

    I'm just hoping to get this to the developers' attention if at all possible, since there was the announcement made that these forums will be monitored following the 1.2 patch's release. I'm not really expecting a direct response from the dev team as I know a single response from a developer in a thread on here would open the floodgates for everyone to start going nuts about everything else that plagues them as well, but I and many others have our collective fingers crossed that by the time 1.3 comes around, we'll actually be able to play this wonderful game for an extended period of time without having to hard reset our PCs every half-hour or so, potentially endangering our expensive shiny hardware.

    You might all want to head on over and get this thread noticed over on those forums again, the original thread about hard crashes was merged with their very generic 'Crashes to desktop' thread.

    Skyrim complete PC crashes

    in Skyrim LE

    Posted

    Bad news, the mod kit isn't coming until January. Maybe a modder can still fix this, who knows. I'm certainly not holding my breath for Bethesda anymore.

    Sadly, I don't think it'd make a difference anyway. The problem lies within the game engine, which the Creation Kit will not allow access to.

    Imperial VS Stormcloak

    in Skyrim LE

    Posted · Edited by IanHead

    By the end of the main quest it's pretty obvious that the question is not "Who is good and who is evil" but rather more along the lines of "Who are the bigger dicks". Every time I'm about ready to declare allegiance to one side, I recall something awful that side has done so I'm put back on the fence again.

     

    Just on my way to completing my induction task for the Imperial Legion, I was stopped on a road by three Thalmor justiciars. Upon talking to them, their leader asked down his nose at me whether I worshipped Talos. Upon responding people should worship whomever they like, I was declared a heretic and attacked. After blasting his two cronies of a cliff with Unrelenting Force and taking their mage leader's head off, I reflected on this. The Thalmor have the Empire of Tamriel in their pockets and their ultimate agenda is for high elf supremacy. As soon as I realised giving Skyrim to the Empire really meant giving it to the Thalmor, I immediately turned tail and went to Windhelm to seek out Jarl Stormcloak and join the rabble.

     

    Of course, as soon as I got inside the gates, I recalled seeing how a pair of nords were bullying an elf around, calling her a spy &c. As a nord I suppose my character would be carrying nord interests at heart, though I certainly have no distaste for elves (I even ended up marrying Jenassa, a dunmer). At the end of the day, as much of an arse as Ulfric Stormcloak is, and his racist/supremacist tendencies, he is at least interested only in subjugating Skyrim to his ends. He doesn't seem at all concerned with what goes on beyond Skyrim's borders.

     

    The Thalmor, on the other hand, already have most of Tamriel under their thumb, and so the choice became slightly easier. If the Thalmor dominated the entire continent there would be little hope of them letting go. Maybe somewhere down the road, with a divided Tamriel at least there would still be some hope for someone new to step up and unite the nations under a truly neutral regime with the interests of the people at heart, no matter their race or creed, just as Tiber Septim did so many yonks ago.

     

    As an aside, I love the fact that Skyrim even allows this kind of internal conversation to take place. It goes to show just how well Bethesda have crafted this world and lore. This kind of political intrigue, after playing Morrowind and getting caught up in all the politicking among the great houses, was something I was really missing in Oblivion, which was much more of a straightforward 'good vs bad' fantasy.

    Skyrim complete PC crashes

    in Skyrim LE

    Posted

    I have tried everything suggested in this and other forums and I still get the following problems:

     

    - Crash to Desktop (no black screen)

    - Missing textures (and that aweful lilac colour instead)

    - See through floors

     

    I am running:

     

    Intel Core i7 930 3.6Ghz

    Windows 7 64bit

    6 GB RAM

    ATI Radeon HD 5800

    1000 watts

     

    I still haven't figured out how to fix this.

     

    Andrew

    BEFORE YOU POST, PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS ISN'T A CRASH TO DESKTOP (CTD) ISSUE. Please post your problems and solutions revolving around CTDs in other topics.

    Skyrim complete PC crashes

    in Skyrim LE

    Posted · Edited by IanHead

    I have been watching this post since it began just lurking to try any solutions given. Have tried every one of them, currently still have my video card's fan at 100%. I found this to improve frame rate issues and it seems to have fixed the black screen crash as well for me. Hope it helps anyone else with the problem.

    http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=48

    I've been using that for a couple of weeks - had no effect unfortunately.

     

    Tried the MSI Afterburner thing now, too -- didn't seem to do it for me, though it's hard to verify I was doing it right at all - the program doesn't really give any feedback as to whether it's working properly. At this point I'm just waiting for a patch... crashes and all, I've still racked up nearly 60 hours in this bloody game since its release. I need therapy.

     

    I have the same problem:

     

     

    ..and nothing has fixed.

     

    when the patch comes out?

    and patch will solve this problem?

    Mods or OP - maybe this vid should be added to the opening post for this thread?

    Skyrim complete PC crashes

    in Skyrim LE

    Posted · Edited by IanHead

    I've been getting fewer crashes now through no input of my own. It seems to be mostly when entering or exiting the map, or checking the quest log, when the black screen occurs, but it's also happened at random in many other places.

     

    Totally a stab in the dark, but I'm wondering if it may be the game's UI system that's triggering these crashes. I think of this because:

     

     

    I'm not even sure if Skyrim actually runs its own Flash player under the hood at runtime, or whether the Gamebryo Creation engine just interprets .swf files the way it needs to without any actual Adobe Flash binaries, but anyway - just my hypothesis.

    Skyrim complete PC crashes

    in Skyrim LE

    Posted

    Did anyone already get some form of reply from Bethesda that this'll be fixed in the next patch or whatever?

     

    I really want to play my game anytime soon

    I sent support an email referring them to this thread - they responded by asking for my dxdiag info. No mention that they're working on a patch, but they wouldn't be asking for that kind of information if they weren't checking this issue out.

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