Man, I know this is an old post, but THANK YOU! My CK kept crashing when loading my NIFs and the past two days I've been trying to figure out why. I was pretty sure the issue was with my textures, but I just couldn't figure out what it was. Until I found your reply and tried the compression methods for DDS-files you're mentioning (exporting from Gimp)... and IT JUST WORKS. Before, I didn't use any compression at all, thinking 'compression = bad' (noob)... Seriously, I was about to throw my computer out of the window, so again, thanks!!