Game freezes forcing hard restart-Any way to avoid that?

[trog69]

While this occurred in F: NV, it has happened in other games as well. Rarely, as Bethesda games will, the game will freeze, during fast-travel or whatever trigger. This could be attributed to mods, the game engine, etc. Regardless, it is a rarity so not the topic here. Instead, it is how to get the game to close without having to use the power button on the PC. Most times, CTR/ALT/DEL works just fine. But, once in a great while, that doesn't work. Is there some way to get the game to close without the hard reset? Bringing up the Task Manager doesn't seem to work in these instances, but perhaps there is some trick I'm not aware of that can address this?

 

Windows 10, btw. I didn't have this happen very often at all with Win7.

[CharrGazgre]

What is temperature for your gpu and cpu? maybe overheating? if not, then... an issue with audio manager, perhaps?

 

I had this freezing issue since May, well ever since realtek updated by itself. I disabled Nvidia audio through Nvidia control panel and then the freezing gone. Do you have both realtek audio manager and Nvidia HD audio enabled? Try disabling one of them.

[repusDude]

Yeah, probably overheating.

[trog69]

Yeah, probably overheating.

Sorry for the late reply. No heat at all. This is a brand-new z170 system, and New Vegas, for instance doesn't even start to stress the components. That game and others like Oblivion, FO3, etc. run @ 42c. Skyrim, FO4, etc. run @ 60-65c. No heat issues. This is mostly a Windows 10 issue, in that when the game freezes, on rare occasions it locks everything, so not even the Task Manager can close the program, forcing a hard shutdown. I just want to know if there's a way to close the program without the hard shutdown.

 

EDIT: I need to clarify that this only happens very rarely; most of the time the Task Manager closes the program as it should. It happened a few times in FO4, but that likely had more to do with the different patches and bugs, plus shaking out the system and adding mods. It hasn't forced a hard shutdown in months. I was just reminded of this issue when playing New Vegas last week, when trying to fast travel to a location caused the game to freeze, likely because it was trying to load the game world while a Legion squad was entering into the same in-game area.

 

EDIT2: When I say that NV froze, I mean that the roulette wheel just kept spinning when fast-traveling to another location.

[dubiousintent]

It's possible, if this occurs after you have been playing for a while, that the game has consumed available memory. This may be video RAM or system RAM. In either event, rebooting your system to flush all memory is recommended before resuming play.

 

Other possible reason:

 

=== Issue: CTD on interior/exterior/"fast travel" cell change ===
* Cause1: Most crashes or freezes on cell-change are caused by the autosave feature choking because it's trying to write data into a save it corrupted the last time you changed cells. Note this may mean your last several saves are corrupt. Auto-saves are dangerous because they are seldom able to tell when the game is in the middle of doing something else critical.

* Solution1: Most importantly, completely disable all manner of autosaves in the game options, and go back to a "save game" where you made a "full" manual save. (The damage has already been done. Even that may not be far enough back.) [CASM] and [CASM with MCM] attempt to provide more control over such situations. They are better than the built-in mechanism, but don't rely upon any auto-save exclusively. Manual "full saves" after waiting about five seconds with nothing happening are still safest. Also, use [Clean Quick Saves] to create a new "quick save" file every time. You will need to periodically clean old ones out, but the purpose of a quick save is for a "temp" for safety's sake rather than a place to go back to. They do not save as much data as a "full save".

* Cause2: Crashes on cell transition will happen more often the more mods you have that affect NPC's & levelled lists.

* Solution2: You can't run different mods like that, reliably, without a "bashed" or "merged" patch. See [this article] for a description of both approaches.

-Dubious-

Edited June 12, 2016 by dubiousintent

[trog69]

It's possible, if this occurs after you have been playing for a while, that the game has consumed available memory. This may be video RAM or system RAM. In either event, rebooting your system to flush all memory is recommended before resuming play.

 

Other possible reason:

 

=== Issue: CTD on interior/exterior/"fast travel" cell change ===

* Cause1: Most crashes or freezes on cell-change are caused by the autosave feature choking because it's trying to write data into a save it corrupted the last time you changed cells. Note this may mean your last several saves are corrupt. Auto-saves are dangerous because they are seldom able to tell when the game is in the middle of doing something else critical.

 

* Solution1: Most importantly, completely disable all manner of autosaves in the game options, and go back to a "save game" where you made a "full" manual save. (The damage has already been done. Even that may not be far enough back.) [CASM] and [CASM with MCM] attempt to provide more control over such situations. They are better than the built-in mechanism, but don't rely upon any auto-save exclusively. Manual "full saves" after waiting about five seconds with nothing happening are still safest. Also, use [Clean Quick Saves] to create a new "quick save" file every time. You will need to periodically clean old ones out, but the purpose of a quick save is for a "temp" for safety's sake rather than a place to go back to. They do not save as much data as a "full save".

 

* Cause2: Crashes on cell transition will happen more often the more mods you have that affect NPC's & levelled lists.

 

* Solution2: You can't run different mods like that, reliably, without a "bashed" or "merged" patch. See [this article] for a description of both approaches.

 

-Dubious-

Thank you very much, dubiousintent for the detailed suggestions. I do know that, while I've been told before, I have forgotten to disable auto-saves, and everything you mention makes perfect sense.

 

As for the merged and bashed patches, I'm afraid I am far too ignorant to use those tools I tried following the instructions in a video for the FOedit program, but I became hopelessly lost, and only seem to have determined that my utter failures of installing mods into FO3 are due to my somehow making ALL of the main .esm files the "Losers". And of course, not knowing what I was looking at, I have no idea what to do with the utter cascade of information produced by that program.

 

So instead, I am planning on paying a modder to fix my crapped up mod installs and eventually hand-hold me through the basics of Wrye Bash and FOedit programs.

 

Thanks again for taking the time to help me here.