It's freezing in Windhelm...

[scorrp10]

Interesting oocurence...

 

So in my current playthrough, I need to visit Windhelm. This character has already been there, done all the quests, got the T-shirt, etc. But it has been a while since last visit. So, open the map, fast travel to Windhelm, loadin screen, then black screen, music playing, ambience sounds, and that's it. Game frozen. Wait a minute, open Task manager on second monitor, kill the game.

Start again, fast-travel to Windhelm Stables, cross the bridge, click n gates... black screen freeze.

Again, coc windhelmpalaceofthekings - this works. Try to exit from palace - freeze.

Try loading one of my 'mod-testing' character saves, coc windhelmorigin ... freeze.

Start game, and from main menu, open console and do 'coc windhelmorigin' (completely new game) ... freeze.

I try Markarth, Whiterun, Riften, Solitude - no problems there.

Starting to remember what may have changed since I last been to Windhelm... I changed a mod script or two that should not affect it at all, done some outfit work - again, nothing anyone in Windhelm wears.... nothing.

As game freezes and not crashes, there are no crash logs, and none of the existing logs hint at any problem.

 

Start googling about, come across this one:

So, I did not bother with compatibility stuff, but I did go into task manager and set Skyrim process priority to 'Realtime'.

First, tried via coc in main menu with new game - and it loads just fine!

 

Exit to main menu, load up my current playthrough, fast-travel to Windhem - no problem. Enter Palace of Kings, exit back to town - no issues.

 

So now I am kinda puzzled. My PC is not exactly a potato - 11th Gen Core i7 with 64GB RAM, RTX3080Ti and 5GBps NVMe SSD. And at least 2-3 months ago, Windhelm was just fine. What may have changed?