Skyrim: Taking FOREVER to Save

[Kiowa77]

Well looks like i'm bad late divin in here. Yep, the quick saves have got bad slow, and some of the loads has too, mostly out of Whiterun, out of Lakeview and out of Jovvasker. By checking the dates on ya'll's posts, and on other pages it looks to me like all this started for all of us about the same time. So if figure the culprit is an update by Steam. Had em cause issues before until they got things fixed.

[FierySwordswoman]

The culprit is not Steam. Steam only backs up saves at the end of a session. To top it off backing up to the cloud only uses network bandwith, not any kind of processing power.

 

Also, I've never heard a thicker English-speaking accent in text form before. Australian?

[metaforce]

I had a similar problem a short while ago with my autosaves only. I use Mod organizer. The result I came up with was that it only took so long if a savegame was overwritten. If (for example) I deleted all autosaves and then started the game I was able to produce 3 autosaves in a matter of one digit seconds (since the game kept 3 autosaves and then started to overwrite them). From that point on the time to produce an autosave went up to over one minute! I checked for save game bloat but size was between 11 and 12 MB...which is nothing.

What I did was I got this mod:

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/34842/?

 

then I deactivated the vanilla autosave in the game options and configured my autosaves as MANUAL saves in the Autosave mod.

I tested autosaves using the autosave manager and it even took that long to overwrite an autosave. Configuring my autosaves as Manual saves in the Autosave mod fixed it for me...since then autosaves happen within *snaps his finger*. This still puzzles me somehow since the only difference between autosave and manual save is that the game engine has to stop the games Virtual Machine (which is automatically done once you press Esc to get to the game menu for a manual save)

AFAIK the Windows functions the game engine calls if you overwrite a savegame are the following:

 

1. use the function Write File to produce (for example) autosave_1.ess.tmp
2. remove the backup using the system function DeleteFile
3. Renames the old savefile to backup
4. Renames the save file produced at point 1. to the actual autosave_1.ess

Here is a video for confirmation:

[Bucketgod]

i know its kinda late but i had the same problem and my saves had a size of 80 freaking mb so i used edited save and it turns down that it was an adoption mod that was causing all that s#*! it was making 40k scripts running y deleted that s#*! and know it works fine

 

 

[firebolt2526]

This reply is late as s***, but I want to help out anyone still with this problem/who may get it in the future - I got this exact problem running a similar number of mods (which otherwise I've gotten working well with one another) and it was the most infuriating problem. First time I got it some months ago, I couldn't find a solution and ended up stopping playing skyrim for a good while. Couple weeks ago I decide I'll launch and try again fixing it, but it suddenly works perfectly with no trouble whatsoever! My character is level 67 running a consistent 18 MB save file size. Saving normally takes 3-5 seconds when I don't have the problem where it takes 30-40. I take it as a blessing and play a ton over the last couple weeks, and suddenly I launch skyrim again today and it's busted with this bug. Added no mods or plugins of any sorts in months. After trying some things to no avail, I actually go and check for updates on my graphics driver, which there was one made available a few weeks prior. With nothing else to do, I update that and restart my computer, and lo and behold skyrim works fine then. I updated my graphics driver other times between when I first had the problem and when it disappeared, so I'm assuming that the graphics driver, oddly enough, was the culprit. I've gotten very strange game breaking bugs in a wide variety of games simply due to my graphics driver being slightly out of date, and considering skyrim's physics engine will also break down from its foundation when your monitor refresh rate is above 60Hz, I definitely wouldn't put it past the graphics driver to cause something as weird as this.
Maybe this isn't the solution to your problem, but it is very much worth the try at least. Saves the trouble of digging through countless delicately constructed mods and plugins if that ends up being your issue.

*Oh, and quick edit, updating my graphics driver causes my game's resolution to suddenly change to 3840 x 2160, double my monitor's 1920 x 1080 - not noticeable when you run full screen, but changing it back to what it should be improves my game performance and reduces crashing issues on the rare occasion that they do still happen. Not likely related to the above, but may be helpful still.

**Another edit - upon more testing, my bug is back - apparently I could get the bug to go away simply by restarting my computer, and it would be gone for about 5 minutes after starting the computer and playing skyrim, but it would return after that. This led me to believe maybe there was an external program conflict - to test this, I used a backup of my entire skyrim directory I made some time ago in case I get some awful bug and I need to revert. Upon testing the game with this clean directory, the bug was still present, further enforcing the idea of an external conflict. Some hours of testing with shutting off various programs and system services yielded no results however, so I went back again and looked at the save files. I removed my entire save folder and replaced it with an empty one, and tested the game - despite all my obviously lost saves, it now worked perfectly off of new save files. Save bloating would be the probable next answer, but again I've had this bug before which randomly seemed to go away entirely on its own - not characteristic of save bloating. Even so, I began removing all my excess save files, down to a few clean saves I made some time ago and my most recent save. No change so far, but I noticed that for every save I make, two files are actually generated - an ESS file and an SKSE file. The ESS should be the main actual save file skyrim uses, while the SKSE is obviously for the skse loader. I decided to delete the associated SKSE files with the saves, and launched again to test, and it seems fixed! So far at least, but I think it really is this time. A new SKSE save was generated with the new save I made, but I believe this isn't problematic anymore, and all my mods appear to work from what I can tell. My save time was actually slightly improved from before as well. I'll post further updates if it returns, but this may be the best working solution right now.

Edited March 4, 2019 by firebolt2526

[qanteras]

This is a bit late but i used --- NetImmerse Override Cleaner --- and my saves now take <1 seconds ( was around 10 seconds ), but i am not sure what problems this will cause afterwards.

[RealmRoamer]

I ran into the same problem. The save time was about a half second. Restarting the game the following day and without adding new mods or changing existing mods, it took more than 1 minute to save a game with all saving methods: quicksave, console save, new save (deleting the old save files).

 

I used Mod Organizer 2 and I restarted MO2, then the save time went back to normal.

 

One day later, I ran into the same problem again. Thus I searched the web and found this thread. Nothing worked.

 

Finally I rebooted my PC which I rarely do unless being forced by an Windows update. Starting the game from an old save, now the save time took about a blink of an eye (quicker than before)

[Darkangel13]

Right.... IF you follow the general modding rules IE, have all the unofficial patches, engine fixes, sse fixes, enb boosters etc. installed, and STILL go from saving in 4 second to 30+ seconds out of nowhere EVENTHOUGH you have not changed your load order since the day you used loot to fix all the issues and load order since you started playing there is a explanation.

The reason this bug shows up here and there is due to a script going haywire and looping. Majority of the time it is due incorrect mod update/uninstallation, BUT it can happen with any mod that uses scripts. The script keeps trying to launch again and again and that is what caused the ridiculous saving time. This could simply happen cause you previously saved at the wrong time... or went through a loading door as the script was trying to fire. I know right? How do I know when it is safe to save/go through doors? It is the way Skyrim works, nothing we can do about that. The best fix is to go back to 2 saves before this issue started and that should do it. If you can't do that there are solutions you can try.

Potential fix... totally basic way. go to a small cell like qasmoke and sleep/wait for 30+ days all cells will reset, so will some scripts. 40% of the time this is enough to fix the issue. IF not this is a more drastic measure. You need to manually clean your save/remove the now messed up script. Thankfully we have come a loooong way in developing tools and mods for Skyrim so these are pretty reliable these days. FallrimTools - Script cleaner and more download read the read me!!! Clean your save INSIDE a save cell and that should fix the issue. WORD OF WARNING. editing saves is no way a safe thing. ALWAYS back up your saves. I have over 5k hour in Skyrim and was forced to use this tool over 200+ time I reckon. out of those it fixed my issues 95% of the time. 2% it screwed up the save (early version of the tool) BUT that was most likely due to my 1000+ mods. Good luck.

P.S. IF your save is getting larger and larger over time it is called bloating save. It is due Skyrim not cleaning cells properly (things you throw out, loose NPC weapons, dead bodies, ash piles etc. if you change a position of an item for example you step on a bone and it moves a little it will be added to your save. Heck if you enter a cell and the gravity (havok) will kick in every item that moved all of it will be added to your save). That is why it is important that your Skyrim is correctly set up to handle cleaning cells properly. Unofficial patch, SKSE, sse engine fixes etc. fixes this issue. THIS IS IN CASE YOUR LOADING TIME has increased GRADUALLY over time NOT from save to save (within 30 min). Again the 30+ days reset cell is usually enough. If not you need to used a tool to force reset all cells.

P.S. IT IS A VERY bad idea to remove OR update script heavy mods during playthrough unless you know 100% what you are doing.

Hope this helps.

D13