Can be indeed if there is many processes running in the background. In this specific case utilities like Game Booster can help you. Lets assume you have these two lines in Skyrim.ini under the "[General]" section uExterior Cell Buffer=36 uGridsToLoad=5 make sure the numbers are not greater than these (which are default) for it would be memory killing in your system. (Notice the uGridsToLoad is always odd number and uExterior Cell Buffer is the uGridsToLoad + 1 squared ... in the case (5+1)^2. Many tweaks for powerful machines advise increasing those numbers to 7, 9 or even greater... this is fine but too demanding on anything less than the most powerful machines over there. And have a problem, simply reducing the number of grids to load invalidates savegames. I hope is not the case, if it is, come back to instruction on how to reduce that number and still be able to use previous savedates. Trying Game Booster now also I did not have "uGridsToLoad=5" line at all in skyrim.ini. Only had "uExterior Cell Buffer=36" added uGrids line there.