Persistent Crash to Desktop

[Carreau]

So, I had no issues early on in game regarding these. However, the more I play, the more common they have become, impacting my ability to play. There may be no easy fix at this point, but what I would really like to do is have a place for everyone to document if they're experiencing desktop crashes. If we can get a good list of area related CTDs, then maybe there is a common link that's causing these. I've spent a little time googling, and haven't seen a whole lot of people claim any major CTD issues outside of Monsignor.

 

I play on my laptop these days, which has specs:

Win 7 - 64 bit SP1

Intel Core i7 - 4700 MQ

Nvidia GeForce 470M with most recent drivers

12 GB memory

 

Laptop also has HD Graphics 4600, but is superseded by the 470M. I'm using custom settings of either high or ultra graphics for texture related settings and medium for most shadow and light related settings. All binary options have been turned on. I have not experimented to see if turning everything back to low when the 470M is my primary card can fix some of these CTDs.

 

The first CTD was repeatable in the area around just east of Wildwood Cemetary. Then I had a repeatable CTD in the same play session at Medford Memorial Hospital. This was specifically on the front steps. Believing this to be a driver issue, I updated my Nvidia drivers. During this, the game didn't recognize my graphics card and I was playing the game on low settings. I was able to get into the hospital, but the game was nearly unplayable due to choppy frame rates. Reinstalling the drivers allowed the game to properly recognize my card and the frame rate issues were much better. However, the CTD returned on the steps, preventing me from leaving Medford without console commands.

 

Later in the game, I was sent back to medford for another randomized loot quest. I had to console command my way past it as the CTD was still persistent on the steps.

 

The next big one happened after I had logged 1 day and 8 hours on my save. After a trip to Hubris Comics, I picked up the Grognak costume. At Sanctuary, I attempted to store the costume in my workbench, and began crashing once I changed the sorting filter to armor for transfer. Any other sort filter has worked fine. I did not test to see if I could transfer the armor with no sort filter applied. This only happens in the workbench transfer menu. I can hand off the Grognak costume to a companion and scroll over it in my Pip-Boy menu. The menu crash seems to happen immediately if I scroll over Grognak in the transfer menu, or within 5 seconds or so of setting the filter. Even if I trade the costume or drop it, the CTD still happens.

 

Now for the more annoying, seemingly random CTDs.

 

As I've progressed further into the game, I can be traveling through an area and have random CTDs that aren't as repeatable. Usually, these happen during a fire fight, or right after. I had one in Sunshine Trading while doing the associated Minutemen quest. It happened when I entered the centeral building with the workbench while there were still mobs in the area to clear. I returned after the CTD, and could not repeat the CTD after clearing the area.

 

I also have had repeatable CTDs outside Convenant. I took the long way around the south of the lake to avoid the area near WIldwood since I had repeatable CTDs in that area. I'm beginning to think the area around Covenant might be the issue.

 

The area around Med Tek Research was safe earlier in the game. However, now that the game's respawn timer for that area has cycled, I'm having repeatable CTDs after clearing the ghouls and deathclaw.

 

I remember hearing issues regarding save size during the early weeks of Skyrim's release. I never had CTDs with Skyrim, FO3, Oblivion, or FO:NV. FO4 is a first for this. With the exception of Oblivion, I've played all of BethSoft's previous iterations of GameBryo/Creation on this laptop. I checked my file size, JIC. The largest save is around 9.3 MB, which is much less than the reported 19 MB saves giving issues suring Skryim.

 

I'm VERY certain this issue pertains to my graphics card in some way since the Medford crash was fixed temporarily by my system messing up recognition of the graphics card. However, the menu issue seems unrelated to the card. I can avoid areas that cause CTDs, but I have to be able to offload items to continue to function.

 

Any help is appreciated, but like I said earlier, this post is more to document a series of CTDs.

[Vulon]

I've been lucky; I think I've had 5-6 CTDs in the entire time I've spent playing so far, and I've played, well...a lot.

 

The biggest dip in stability I saw was after I'd accumulated a ton of different saves (somewhere in the vicinity of 500+ slots, I think). Every time I'd enter into the menu to save/load or tweak settings I'd get crazy input lag and it would take forever to do anything. I eventually figured out it was because I had all of these unnecessary save files, so I moved all but a few to a backup folder and everything's been smooth sailing ever since. I had experienced a couple of random CTDs in addition to the massive menu lag, so it's possible that was contributing to the crashes despite having little to no observable effect on my actual performance outside of the menu/settings screen. If you have a whole bunch of save files accumulated like I did, I'd recommend deleting or moving all but your most recent saves.

 

I had one CTD while recording some gameplay with Nvidia Shadowplay, and I know it was Shadowplay's fault because I got an error message that essentially stated as much. Aside from the aforementioned crashes prior to cleaning up my saves folder, the only consistent crash I experienced was right after meeting up with an NPC prior to the Battle for Bunker Hill quest. I experienced a CTD twice in a row, but after that the issue seemed to mysteriously sort itself out. I haven't experienced any of the specific crashes you've described for myself.

 

You didn't specify if you're running a fully vanilla playthrough or if you've installed any mods. I tried to install an ENB at one point -- which I've done for Fallout 3, NV, Skyrim, and Oblivion in the past without issue -- and experienced consistent main menu CTDs until I removed the additional .ini lines specified in the installation instructions for the ENB. If you've added any mods to your game or added anything to your .ini that wasn't present by default, that could be a factor. Other than that, only thing I can think of trying would be to validate the integrity of your cache via Steam and see if that does any good.

 

Good luck!

Edited November 22, 2015 by Vulon

[Carreau]

Thanks Volun. This is a completely vanilla play through. I went ahead and reduced my save count from 40 to about 5 to see if that was my issue. The crashes are still repeatable. I also had heard that closing the Geforce Experience would help. It did not.

[Nukeaon]

Having the same exact issue, doesn't matter where I am in game it seems although they are more frequent in Sanctuary

[archtrtd1]

I'm having frequent ctds as well. I had two catastrophic crashes after about 15 hours into my playthrough - these I fixed by doing a second reinstall of Nvidia drivers. Yes, I followed the clean install protocol both times but for whatever reason it didn't work the first time. The game played fine for a few more hours then I began to have the normal instant game to desktop crashes with a few hard freezes mixed in. I decided to revert to an earlier save (about 12 hours in) because I realized that I had accidentally gotten one of the autosaves mixed in with my manual saves. I keep turning the autosave off but it somehow keeps getting turned on again (and my ini files are set to read only). I was able to play for about 10 hours before the ctds resumed. They were quite infrequent at first but have escalated to every few hours. I actually crashed three times last evening doing the Unlikely Valentine (crashing outside of Park Street Station) and Reunions quests (crashing once just outside the Fort Hagen building complex, and once while accessing my pipboy inside Fort Hagen). I have had crashes randomly throughout the game - even during settlement building. It is very frustrating.

 

My specs are as follows:

Windows 7 64bit with SP1

i7 5930k (hexacore processor overclocked to 4.5 Ghz) (liquid cooled with Corsair GTX 110i)

Asus X99 Deluxe (USB 3.1 version)

32 GB 2666 MHz ddr4 ram

480 GB Sandisk Extreme Pro SSD

2 EVGA Titan X Superclocked (SLI)

2 Samsung 27" 1440p 60Hz monitors (I only use one during gaming sessions)

Asus Xonar Essence STX sound card

 

Before anyone posts suggestions: I am not playing with mods, my hardware temperatures are normal, I don't have any other programs running in the background, all of my drivers are up to date, and using the latest Asus bios.

 

I don't know if anyone else has noticed the discrepancy in size between the autosaves and manual saves. My autosaves are about 1.2 MB larger than my manual saves (in the same time/location of the game). I don't think Bethesda has bothered to fix the autosave game bloat problem from their previous games.

 

I also have some crazy drops in frame rate in the downtown Boston area - it will go from a smooth 60 fps down to 32 fps and back again. I am extremely disappointed in this - my computer shouldn't be performing this way AT ALL. I get between 50 and 60 fps in a very heavily modded Skyrim with the most demanding ENB quality presets at 1440p. This is just unacceptable - Bethesda really needs to figure out why so many people are having performance issues with this game.

 

The crashes feel almost like some sort of memory leak is occurring - it reminds me of the way Fallout 3 or Skyrim would crash before applying the 4GB patches. The frustrating thing is, there is nothing I can fix right now.

[Burt66]

Exactly the same here.

Tried all options i can think of, all resolutions, windowed, full screen and so on.

Tried new install and change nothing, it crashes immediatly or after few seconds.

Even after the official patches on steam.

Tried enb and config tool from nexus to no effect. It keeps crashing.

Completely wiping and new install of newest nvidia drivers, no effect.

 

Win7 SP 1 64 bit

nvidia geforce gtx 650

8 GB RAM

i5-3570k 3,8 ghz

[Meat5taiN]

20 hours in and no CTDs until Covenant. Then I crashed 3 or 4 times in 20 minutes there. Staying away from Covenant until I figure out the problem. My game is far from stock: 50+ mods and extensively tweaked INIs.

 

I7-4790k (FO4 set to use 8 threads in INI)

GTX 980 (x2, only one being used for FO4)

16GB 2133 MHz RAM (8GB allowed to be used by FO4 in INI)

[renegade3270]

cant open workbench at any settlements it ctd's soon as i press open