Synthesis

As a report: going back to day 11 (from day 27) in my saves did not help. Yeouch. Any earlier, and I can't even find dragons (not that there were a lot of them to start with--another bug, maybe?) Console spawning dragons? No souls, though that might be "by design". Running around for a few hours hoping to trigger it? Nothing there either. Looks like I'm left to restart. I went from 200 hours to a game breaking bug to 60. I guess I can expect about 20 hours in next time, at this rate....

I...don't play an custom races, though I think I have one implemented into the game. I doubt that would cause it, but at this point, I'll try anything. :( Did disabling the race help at all?

I had the same--as already mentioned, apparently having any sort of modded mesh for her clothing causes a crash. Delete it and you'll be good to go--you can enable it afterwards.

I appreciate the reply, but I don't have that mod....I also tried loading back several in-game days (considering I'm 29 days in game so far) and found the same effect (tested by traveling to a Dragon Lair via console). I'm doing the whole "Run around a bit and hope that I magically get soul absorbtion..." but it's not looking optimistic yet. Amazing....I went three times as long in my last character and never got this bug.

I seem to be running a gauntlet of "Effectively game-breaking bugs" recently. A few weeks ago, I abandoned my ~200 hour save because of perpetual CTD in the outside world (basically every few blocks, in every direction). Short of never going outside and using the console to move around, that game was pretty much lost. Oh well. Since then, I've gotten a decent number of hours into a new game, without the problem. Instead, upon reaching the "A Blade in the Dark" Quest, I have a new problem: no dragon souls absorb. Anywhere. As far as I can tell. I've tried multiple dragons, they all do the same thing when they die (nothing). As it happens, this is effectively a game-breaking bug (since you can't progress on wards into the game, since you can't talk to Delphine). I can use the console to advance the quest, but regardless, this pretty much breaks the whole game if it keeps happening.I have never encountered this one before (to my surprise).I always assumed if you spawned a dragon out of the console, it wouldn't give you the option to absorb the soul, but now actual plot-related dragons are off limit too--a lot worse. Earlier saves now have the same problem. I seriously doubt it's mods. I'm using fewer mods than before, when this was never a problem, and I actively tried disabling mods that wouldn't make saves crash upon loading. I'm actually quite surprised there's no mod out that that simply forces every dragon killed to give you a soul. It's not as though having 99 unused souls in your inventory (well, sort of) is a problem. Not when compared to "You can't progress in the game". Does anyone know what might be causing this? I have no mods that modify dragons in any way, to the best of my knowledge.

I seem to be running a gauntlet of "Effectively game-breaking bugs" recently. A few weeks ago, I abandoned my ~200 hour save because of perpetual CTD in the outside world (basically every few blocks, in every direction). Short of never going outside and using the console to move around, that game was pretty much lost. Oh well. Since then, I've gotten a decent number of hours into a new game, without the problem. Instead, upon reaching the "A Blade in the Dark" Quest, I have a new problem: no dragon souls absorb. Anywhere. As far as I can tell. I've tried multiple dragons, they all do the same thing when they die (nothing). As it happens, this is effectively a game-breaking bug (since you can't progress on wards into the game, since you can't talk to Delphine). I can use the console to advance the quest, but regardless, this pretty much breaks the whole game if it keeps happening. I have never encountered this one before (to my surprise).I always assumed if you spawned a dragon out of the console, it wouldn't give you the option to absorb the soul, but now actual plot-related dragons are off limit too--a lot worse. I seriously doubt it's mods. I'm using fewer mods than before, when this was never a problem, and I actively tried disabling mods that wouldn't make saves crash upon loading. I'm actually quite surprised there's no mod out that that simply forces every dragon killed to give you a soul. It's not as though having 99 unused souls in your inventory (well, sort of) is a problem. Not when compared to "You can't progress in the game". Does anyone know what might be causing this? I have no mods that modify dragons in any way, to the best of my knowledge. EDIT: My apologies, this is in the wrong section (as I seriously doubt it's a mod, and I have none that are described as effecting dragons).

That was it, Georgiegril...apparently, I had not properly uninstalled the "See You Sleep" mod. Reinstalling and uninstalling it did it the trick. Thanks!

Here's a new one: since restarting Skyrim due to CTD making my 160 hour save unplayable (my loss, I guess), I've managed to avoid CTD but found a new, weird problem: the upstairs bed you rent in the Bannered Mare Inn is unusable. Not because its owned or unowned, simply selecting it causes the "Can't do anything" click noise, and nothing happens. Disable and enabling the bed makes no difference. You can actually disable it and spawn a new bed in the same place and sleep in that just fine, but I would assume this wouldn't be an actual in bed, just an unowned bed you could sleep in. By itself, this is a small problem. What I'm worried about is if this somehow spreads throughout the game, thereby breaking the whole 'inn' mechanic. I've got no mods that would effect sleeping or beds (anymore), and I didn't have any problem using the bed in past games with the same mods. Is there anyway to use the console to trigger the bed to work again?

Follow up: Looks like I might have been wrong. I'm getting fewer crashes, but they demonstrate the same symptoms. I really do think it's related to a preference file, or 1.6, not the mods. So I'm still getting the occasional crash outside. Any further help would be appreciated.

Yup thats my version i just tried deleting my skyrim.ini and skyrimprefs.ini and sure enough it fixed the ctd issue but as a side effect i cant use any of the old saves that had repeatable ctd's now those saves just ctd as soon as i try to load them its no big loss for me i was only lvl 10 lol but this doesnt seem like a fix for people who have more time than me invested in the game hopefully some way of fixing this surfaces soon Now I have the same problems in some locations and the random game "freeze" (black screen, sound still playing) has come back as well. I was playing a vanilla game when Steam updated me, so I don't think its a mod. I have used a couple mods before, but I do have Plain Jane never-had-a-mod-installed vanilla saves to test with. Can I ask what general tweaks you had in your ini files? I'll try backing out the ones we have in common, if any, and see if I can find which ones are causing this. Damn I hate Steam. For the person who was able to fix crashes with deleting the INI files, did you change your uGridstoLoad originally? If you have a save with that implemented, you're going to have to adjust your new INI files to load it properly.

What worked for me was deleting my Skyrim.ini and SkyriPref.ini files--the updates to 1.6 basically broke the adjustments I'd made. Let the game recreate them and make the necessary uGridstoload adjustment. Try that--it's easy, since if it doesn't help, you can always restore the files.

This is the solution I use on companions with UFO (if they get caught in your Mark of Death shout, they permanently take a penalty). Strip off your armor first, just to make sure it's not something on that end, then change that to zero?

Having given up, I tried restarting a new game from scratch, with same mods--that would be a good way to see if the save was the issue. Things were generally pretty stable for the first few hours--until after the Companion quest to recover the fragment, where the CTD happened again. My error log now looks nothing like my old ones. Not surprising, given that I'm in a completely different part of the game. More and more I'm thinking something--possible a patch--has simply broken the game for a lot of people. Granted, it's not "that" broken--you can still play the game just fine, you'll just need to either fast travel everywhere or restart every 5-20 minutes. I might try reverting back to older Nvidia drivers. I hate to that that, since it's potentially sacrificing performance in other games to possibly help with one, but oh well. EDIT: Well, that was a waste of time. Opened the same area--running on foot to Whiterun. Encountered an DB assassin (a new event, first time it happened in this stretch), crashed in the same area. So far, the most consistent thing is that the crashes always happen outdoors, in the world cell. This seems like it started when 1.6 hit...which really added nothing of interest that I wanted. I wonder if I can revert the game back via reinstallation, since it seems Bethesda might have broken it with their mandatory update. EDIT EDIT: Looks like I found it: 1.6 broke my Skyrim.ini and SkyrimPref.ini modifications. I deleted them, regenerated them, reset UGrids (so I could load up the save), and was able to run through areas with no CTD whatsoever. Wow, there's one whole day I won't get back, heh.

As the title says, my frequency of CTD has risen from "Never" (instead, I'd just get freezing or glitching) to "every few minutes when outdoors". I've already disabled every single mod that I can possibly disable without breaking my save games. Crashes are only outside. They happen in all areas. Basically, spending a certain amount of time outside (say, three or four minutes) while traveling, either on horse or on foot, causes a crash. I've checked Papyrus log, which by and large is useless. The most common report of a bad script is the Potema fight (which did cause a glitch when I did play it a few weeks ago...), despite not being anywhere in that area. Here it is, though I doubt it would reveal anything useful: I've tried changing out my drivers. Game performance is good, except for CTD every few minutes. Is my save just unsalvagably corrupt? I've been extremely careful about saving regularly, and loading saves doesn't fix the problem--I went back a week, no luck. I might try two weeks, but I doubt it'll make a difference. Is it time to start again, from scratch?

At that cost of resurrecting this thread, does anyone have any insight as to whether or not extracting the BSA files improves performance? Or, at least, overcomes those periodic bursts of "one frame every 3-4 minute" load cycles the game goes through for no clear reason? Obviously, Skyrim's been patched a bit since it came out. I'm actually tempted only to use the HD textures indoor, where game performance doesn't absolutely suck on occasion.