dreigner

as someone who has been using an "alternate" version of the game (yarrr!), i can say that steam isn't likely the cause for this. Admitted to piracy :rolleyes: Banned bben46

if the card is on the way out, then it's really quite disappointing since i've had it less than 12 months. as for the power draw - as i said in my previous post, the card i used prior to my current card had a much higher draw and there were no issues with power. i can play other games pushing my gpu to 100% and not have a single issue there, yet occasionally when playing skyrim i will get the black screen. the only other game that i have which produces the same sort of issue is trackmania 2 canyon when i use the track editor.

Black screening is usually caused by the USER running multiple low level access sensor apps together at once, putting the gpu into an unrecoverable state. use one, and disable gpu sensor access in the others. evga eleet also causes a black screen (as does any hardware mon based apps) when used in conjunction with precision/afterburner. having GPU-Z left running alongside precision and stuff is also a common cause of gpu crashes. though it's a likely cause for some, it still crashes without sensor/monitoring programs running. the card's not overheating - i know that for a fact. the power supply is capable of handling a much larger draw than it currently has, too. these are two problems that many people have had so far in this thread. my ram is fine as i've already replaced older faulty ram from my original build and ran a lengthy torture test in prime95 without issue.

as someone who is using a pirated copy myself, i've had these for some time and they did nothing for my issues. i still get the hard reset black screen at certain areas and sometimes when i get poisoned. i'm getting CTD more often than before, though. i haven't been able to play my save any further than i currently am due to it crashing the moment i try to head towards a town. if they work for some of you, then that's great. the issue still remains and until bethesda get the creation kit out, i don't see the problems going away any time soon on behalf of their efforts. modders end up doing a better job of fixing problems these days than the developers.

the majority of new PCs getting built now for enthusiasts have at least a 650W power supply. your post holds true for people who have older machines and are throwing new pieces in there to avoid replacing the other parts, but for new builds it's unlikely to be the case outside of faulty equipment or, in the case of some prebuilt PCs, the company trying to squeeze more money out of you by using cheap, shitty quality parts. anyone who has been able to run an nvidia 8800 model card will know that the power draw on those were almost shameful. subsequently, the 9800GT/GTX/GTX+ cards were very much the same. both cards were also amazing performance wise. if people have been able to use those cards previously in their machines, they shouldn't have any problem with newer cards and power consumption. again, though, it never hurts to check your parts and equipment to make sure everything is up to standard if you are upgrading an older machine.

actually, the thread was originally about fill system crashes that required a hard reset. people still continue to post CTD issues even after we stated it wasn't a CTD thread.

kernel-power just means the pc lost power before a proper shutdown occurred. your issue could be any number of things. i suggest you grab monitoring tools like gpu-z and cpu-z/coretemp and have them keep a log of sensor data while you play. the logs can then be imported into an excel worksheet for you to look at voltages and temperatures.

THIS IS SKYRIM! sorry, but someone had to do it. :wink:

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.

unsure why you chose vista instead of 7 but to each their own. i did a half-yearly reinstall of windows at the beginning of december and encountered the same issues i had before, but after repairing all of the MS c++ redists i barely had any problems with the game. also for those of you who have the game crash when you open the map, are you using the ini tweak to turn off the bloodspatter effect? that particular tweak is guaranteed to cause CTD, but occasionally it can cause a full system crash.

protip: nvidia users have the same issue! i've more or less removed my black screen crashes recently and even though i still get the occasional one, it's mostly CTD now. telling people that they're reiterating stupid advice just because "you fixed your problem so this must be the way to fix everyone else's problem" is plain rude and just shows that you're a fool. suggesting that people switch cards completely isn't fixing the issue, either. if someone was to keep entering your house without your permission and there was the possibility of having the faulty lock fixed by someone but instead someone else said "you should just move house. yeah, that's how i fixed my problem. since moving house i haven't had anyone enter it without my permission," what would you do? have someone fix the lock or just move house because someone else said that it was how they "fixed" their problem? seeing as there have been a range of suggestions posted and some work for some people while others don't and vice versa, i think the best method would be trying fixes that aren't going to cost money to begin with. new expenses due to software faults should be a last resort.

this thread isn't for crash to desktop problems. you'll have to look around in other threads relating specifically to crash to desktop.

something that i'd like everyone to test, please: download the microsoft visual c++ 2005, 2008 and 2010 distributable packages and run each of them (starting with '05). you should be given an option to repair them (seeing as they'll probably already be installed if you have a lot of games) and it's possible that these may decrease the likelihood of the black screen crashes. i recently reformatted and went with a fresh windows install from the ground up. no service pack and no updates. i found that after running skyrim on both a new save and my previous saves that the game would crash pretty quickly as soon as i left a city, dungeon or cave. after that i updated the game to 1.3 and noticed no change except a slight improvement in fame rate. after that i downloaded all of the updates that fixed compatibility and stability issues within windows and still continued to have crashes but not as frequently. once i did the repair on each of the distributable packages and installed the updates for those, i found that the game ran almost flawlessly unless i was around water or my screen had either blood spatter or "poison blur" present. neither of these two can be disabled without causing crashes upon opening the world map. this leads me to believe that the game was not tested on a diverse set of hardware and as such our problems may be something to do with the game's engine calling references incorrectly when trying to render water or on-screen effects depending on certain hardware. even though you may not have water in your view when the crash occurs, there may still be a small stream being rendered in the distance. standing outside of whiterun is a good example: walls all around you and no water in sight unless you go around a wall - but the water is still rendered.

there are a lot of us who are still on 1.1 though. i refuse to update a game until i know for sure that a game breaking issue has been fixed.

if it is RAM/savegame related, then that's something that currently carries over from the PS3 version of the game. i feel sorry for PS3 users, since some save games are hitting sizes upwards of 19MBs, effectively preventing them from being played due to the PS3 not being able to free up its own memory. for those who don't quite understand what i'm getting at: skyrim loads the bare essentials to get started - this takes up space when you load a game, variables are put into play and the area around you is loaded - more space taken up when a save gets larger, more and more variables get loaded from said save, since they're flagged as having been active - the further you are in the save, the more variables since the PS3 only has 256MB of RAM to play with for anything that isn't graphics, the system grinds to a halt when that capacity has been reached.

as has been posted many times already: this is not a CTD thread

1 - you can most certainly use higher settings if you'd like (but seeing as crashes are still present, that's entirely up to you whether you even want to keep playing) 2 - i was able to play almost 20 hours into a new save before i got the first crash 3 - i'm using texture mods, but nothing that modifies the d3d9.dll. i'm unsure as to whether certain mods can be used. as for old saves, i haven't checked mine yet. i wanted to start fresh to see if there was anything in particular that started the chain of crashes. for anybody who wants to repost my instructions on the bethesda forums: go ahead! i can't be bothered to create an account and copy and paste on there. just link back to this thread so that people who aren't lazy can sift through the replies. please also add a disclaimer that it is not a permanent fix and that crashes may still occur at random. bethesda better be whipping their programmers for how long the game has been out and riddled with faults. i expect better quality with a high budget on development.

as much as it annoys and saddens me, my game has crashed once again. after a total of roughly 20 hours with the possible ATI card fix i posted earlier, i left whiterun and mounted my trusty steed. before the horse even turned around my screens went black and the looping sound began. i'm hoping that this will be something of a rarity from this point on. for the game to run so well for such a short amount of time would be disappointing. i will keep you guys updated when i continue my efforts tomorrow.

i have a clean game with the exception of high-res textures. nothing that modifies the d3d9.dll.

did you miss/skip anything in the instructions? especially with the d3d9.dll and removing existing skyrim.ini and skyrimprefs.ini? with the two settings files still there, the game will continue to use the instruction set for the graphics card that it detected BEFORE placing the d3d9.dll in your skyrim folder (same folder as your TESV.exe is in). if anyone doesn't know where the skyrim.ini/skyrimprefs.ini files are: open your documents folder navigate to "my games" navigate to "skyrim" your saves will also be there. i am glad to hear that others are experiencing possible steady gameplay using the instructions i provided. i really hope that this is only a semi-permanent fix (bethesda need to fix the problem instead of relying on the work of others), and that we won't have to worry about stuff like this over the coming months. also, could everyone using the instructions please let me know what game version they're using and whether it's a steam/retail/cracked copy. if steam users are having problems with this then i may be able to work something out. i, for one, am using a cracked copy of 1.1.

Tried this fix below, and a lot others, but still crashing. if you could, please try again with the following guide and a new, clean set of ini files (lower the settings a notch using the launcher, since you will get a higher predefined set than your computer may be able to handle). ATI Users! Please Read! google search for radeonpro, download and install - nvidia users note that this is for ATI cards. you will have to fiddle around with whatever the tweaking program is for nvidia cards. the following has enabled play on my computer after crashes that stopped me from getting any further than helgen's dragon attack. my specs: AMD 955BE @ 3.2GHz ATI HD6850 @ 800MHz Core & 1100MHz Memory - Catalyst 11.11 8GB Kingston HyperX Blu @ 1600MHz Coolermaster 650W PSU that's the important stuff 1 - open radeonpro and add a new entry, pointing the program to your tesv.exe 2 - follow these settings (you may have to turn some off if the game slows down) the following settings are fine on my machine. if you experience low frame rates or texture popping, turn down some settings or disable some options. ymmv. http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/3447/tesvradeonpro1.png http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/6836/tesvradeonpro2.png STEAM USERS NOTE: launch using radeonpro - NOT STEAM http://img802.imageshack.us/img802/1277/tesvradeonpro3.png 3 - download the d3d9.dll file i had in my directory and place it into yours MegaUpload link 4 - backup and remove skyrim.ini and skyrimprefs.ini 5 - launch the game using radeonpro 6 - report back here with your findings! i sincerely hope that this works for at least one other person. i've been excited as all hell to be able to play - even if there are some performance hits sometimes.

an update on my situation! my game has been running non-stop for almost 8 hours today! the only thing that i've had to put up with is the sound problems where everything sounds like it's coming over a first generation radio with an empty tin can as a speaker and the occasional stuttering of the game engine. the stuttering is something new that i haven't experienced before. it can last a few seconds to a few minutes. the fps and responsiveness of the game suffer tremendously during this time and it's almost as thought the engine's code hit a snag and didn't get the outcome it was looking for, sending it into a loop. it happened mostly when objects were moved leading me to believe that something may be up with the terrible way bethesda tied their physics calculations into how fast the engine is rendering (we've all seen how violent objects can get when you put them on a dresser and open a door nearby). i'm still clueless as to why having the game think i'm using a completely different card to what i have has enabled me to play. maybe skyrim on old cards is just "the way it's meant to be played" if you catch my drift, fellow ATI users. i've noticed that a lot more effects are being rendered, too. much more. my lighting is so soft compared to what it used to be with the same settings. anti-aliasing looks much cleaner, but anisotropic filtering seems a little different in a bad way. i've got almost an entire day to do whatever i want tomorrow, so i'll keep updating everyone with anything i find and whether or not this run of playability is simply dumb luck. if anybody is curious to try the settings/d3d9.dll file i've got, then i will upload screens of radeonpro settings and a megaupload for the dll. for now, though, it's off to bed.

the strangest of things has happened to me today. this could be a possible fix for ATI users! so i downloaded a d3d9.dll file from one of the posts in here - i cannot remember which one. i had put it in my skyrim folder and played only to see my game crash just like it always had. today, however, i tried something different: i launched the skyrim launcher via the radeonpro application. straight away, the message came up that my settings were configured for ultra high. this struck me a bit odd, since my last detection was set to high. i ran the game and was able to play for an entire hour on a brand new save. i've even got mods running and have edited the ini files to tweak my settings. what i noticed in the skyrimprefs file is what may have allowed me to play (and note that i didn't crash during the hour that i played for). i'm running an ATI 6850, but found sD3DDevice="NVIDIA Geforce 8800 GS" in the ini. i have a feeling that this was due to the d3d9.dll file in my skyrim folder. could some of these issues stem simply from a string of text? i will play some more and hopefully continue on crash free. pastebins for anyone who wants to go over my settings: skyrim.ini skyrimprefs.ini

i can confirm that after experiencing these crashes on my main save, making a new character causes the game to crash. i can get a short way into the initial escape and then everything stops with the black screen and hard reset being required. sometimes it doesn't even get that far.

FOR ANYBODY WHO HAS JUST FOUND THIS THREAD: THIS IS NOT A CRASH TO DESKTOP OR "MY MENU DOESN'T SHOW UP WITH THE LATEST PATCH" THREAD. PLEASE DO NOT POST ABOUT THOSE PROBLEMS IN HERE. THIS THREAD IS ABOUT FULL SYSTEM CRASHES. THAT MEANS THE COMPUTER STOPS RESPONDING. WE DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOUR CTD FIX. WE DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOUR MENU. WE DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOUR DOG. OR CAT. OR FISH. PLEASE STOP POSTING ABOUT THOSE IN A THREAD ABOUT FULL SYSTEM CRASHES.