Skyrim complete PC crashes

[voldoman]

The good news is that mod tools will be out soon, I bet the mod community will probably have this fixed soon after that.

[Thefireball]

The good news is that mod tools will be out soon, I bet the mod community will probably have this fixed soon after that.

 

I wish it would just hurry up.

=P

[whogoods]

The community would still need to have figured out what is causing the crashes before it could be fixed would they not? Or would the creation kit allow further investigation than available now?

[Nirrtix]

At least the game is playable to some degree... the new patches made the game so laggy for me it is unplayable. I cannot even revert to before the patch, because I bought the game on steam. After the disastrously horrible game Brink was then this... if they do not fix this I will not buy another game from Bethesda. Do they even test their patches like most developers? Edited January 3, 2012 by Nirrtix

[whogoods]

So after fiddling around with my system for hours now I think I've finally solved the crashes I was having. Hopefully this works for those who would like to try it. What I did was the following steps,

 

• 
   
  
• Made a backup of ../Steam/steamapps/skyrim/mods folder for later use
  
• Made a backup of ../My Games/Skyrim/saves
  
• Uninstalled FXAA Project Injector
  
• Uninstalled Skyrim via the Control Panel.
  
• Made sure ../Steam/steamapps/skyrim was completely gone.
  
• Downloaded CCleaner
  
• Ran a Registry Analyze/Clean with CCleaner. Ran it several times to be sure no more issues were found.
  
• Reloaded Skyrim via Steam
  
• Moved backup of saves folder back into ../My Games/Skyrim/
  
• Loaded and Gamed
  

 

So I've been playing for about 2 hours now, fighting everything from Dragons to Falmer and Spiders in Dungeons in areas were I was sure to crash before I tried the fore mentioned steps. Considering I couldn't go 25 minutes without a complete system crash before this I think I've made some progress. Maybe it hasn't fixed nothing though and I'm just gaming on luck, we'll see. If anyone would like to try this let us know how it goes, and do it at your own risk! I feel my particular crashes had to do with the latest patch 1.3.10, can't say for sure but I never had a single crash before this patch.

 

Edit: Reloaded all of my mods and got a crash again. I call it quits. :wallbash:

Edited January 4, 2012 by whogoods

[Nirrtix]

So after fiddling around with my system for hours now I think I've finally solved the crashes I was having. Hopefully this works for those who would like to try it. What I did was the following steps,

 

• 
   
  
• Made a backup of ../Steam/steamapps/skyrim/mods folder for later use
  
• Made a backup of ../My Games/Skyrim/saves
  
• Uninstalled FXAA Project Injector
  
• Uninstalled Skyrim via the Control Panel.
  
• Made sure ../Steam/steamapps/skyrim was completely gone.
  
• Downloaded CCleaner
  
• Ran a Registry Analyze/Clean with CCleaner. Ran it several times to be sure no more issues were found.
  
• Reloaded Skyrim via Steam
  
• Moved backup of saves folder back into ../My Games/Skyrim/
  
• Loaded and Gamed
  

 

So I've been playing for about 2 hours now, fighting everything from Dragons to Falmer and Spiders in Dungeons in areas were I was sure to crash before I tried the fore mentioned steps. Considering I couldn't go 25 minutes without a complete system crash before this I think I've made some progress. Maybe it hasn't fixed nothing though and I'm just gaming on luck, we'll see. If anyone would like to try this let us know how it goes, and do it at your own risk! I feel my particular crashes had to do with the latest patch 1.3.10, can't say for sure but I never had a single crash before this patch.

 

Edit: Reloaded all of my mods and got a crash again. I call it quits. :wallbash:

 

 

I gave up too... I guess I will wait until they patch it. If they do not soon, I will jsut quit playing, and never buy a game by Bethesda again. Too bad I cannot go back to vanilla before the patches, the game ran well for me then with minor issues.

[jay0510]

well i am having the same issues as everyone else...i just bought the game played for a few hours and starting having this problem...sounds like i may be out of $60

this really sucks

[stabex]

After 180 hours or so of no crash play I have been struggling with these crashes. Similar to everyone else, game crash, monitor goes off/orange light, sound glitches up, system either crashes and reboots itself or I have to do a hard reset. This is very frustrating to say the least as the game is unplayable for me now. I must admit I am playing with a large amount of mods and don't even know if my game save would load if disabling all of them. I don't understand how Skyrim could completely crash my system the way it does. I'm going to backup my game saves and start a new game with no mods whatsoever and see if the problem persists. I'm thinking it has something to do with the game save for some reason.

 

So I have tried the following to no avail:

 

Upgraded system drivers to latest. (Bios, Chipset, Video, Raid, Sound)

Various Stress Test.

Lowering Clock Speeds. (Video & CPU)

Deleting anything having to do with the game except for saved games and reinstalling.

 

So the game even at stock but with old game save is still crashing. For me the crashes have been both indoors and outdoors.

 

Edit:

 

Deleted anything related to Skyrim from PC, reinstalled, started a new game and still got a crash. I guess I've had my share of fun. New Vegas, here I come =(

 

I have the absolute exact same problem: I have the Win 7/64 with an Nvidia GTX295. When I installed Skyrim I had the 280.33 driver and the game gave me the Black Screen - Hard Reset Crash every 5-6 minutes in game. I figured then, it was a driver problem so I rolled a few drivers back, when that didn't fix the problem I uninstalled it completely, then I clean installed the 190 driver and the 270 over it (because the 190 is very old, golden but old, and it didn't support a lot of the Skyrim’s graphics) The game ran almost flawlessly for a month or about 200 hours gameplay. And then, just as I forgot that I ever had crashes, it crashed 5 times in 30 minutes. And since then for three months I have played, an hour at most, before the Black Screen - it is very random it can happen at any time during gameplay.

 

However, one very strange thing I have noticed: Every time the game crashed it was when my character was somewhere or doing something very simple (in an almost static stance) - like looking at the floor, talking to an NPC, opening a door - the game never crashed when the graphics card had a lot of work to do. After nearly a month correspondence with Nvidia and countless in vain attempts to solve the problem we all agreed that it is not in my TV set, and Nvidia pointed to Bethesda – the problem is in the game. I run Battlefield 3 on nearly MAX settings with no issues at all.

 

I really hope a fix comes soon because Skyrim is one of my Top 3 favorite games and this crash just ruins it and my PC because it always requires a Hard Reset and that it like a blow to the head.

[burningworm]

You could backup your savegames, and then start with empty folder, and offline.

If this didn't help, maybe without mods also.

And look for remains of earlier inofficial patches, that could conflict with official ones.

 

From what i've read in the forums and experienced myself i made me a little theory,

that is that with the latest patch the way steam tracks your game advantages has been changed.

When i'm offline with steam i have an almost stable version, takes hours to crash, if at all.

and i've unlocked 66% of the game.

When i'm online with steam it crashes as described here, usually after a few minutes.

This was repeatable.

When i'm offline with steam, but online before or between, it ends somewhere in the middle.

 

So steam tracks your gaming history, with unlocked% and archievements.

Maybe it would be point of interest how much data is trafficked there, with patch 1.31, compared to 1.1.

Maybe not just what you're doing rigth now gets reported, instead all changes are compared... ?

[whogoods]

I posted this over at Bethesda Forums but figured I'd post it here as well.

 

As much of a PC Enthusiast that I am I hate to have to admit in my particular case my crashes might not be entirely or if it all Skyrim's fault. After being exhausted with trying to get Skyrim to work I called it quits and thought I'd start another game while waiting for a solution from the community. I load up Dead Island for the first time to try it out and what do you know, it crashes my entire system just like Skyrim after the character select screen :ohmy: . At this moment that little spark in me to get things working lights back up.

 

My initial thought was that it may be DX9 games being that both Skyrim and Dead Island are dx9c. I download a demo version of 3dmark06, a directx9 benchmark/stresstest. I run the tests which my system ran through stable though mind you the demo version only lets you run the test at 720p which I figured may not be enough stress on the system. I then load up 3DMark11, a DX11 benchmark/stress test utility, which I have the full version to. I select 1080p and run the test, I can't even get pass the first test. (I ran these tests months ago to test my systems capabilities with no problems)

 

I'm beginning to think either one of my 580s has a problem, or something may be wrong with my PSU. Maybe something got loose within my case. At the moment I am working on zeroing in on the problem and will update everyone on what I find.

 

I suggest that everyone here if not done so already run 3DMark11 (unfortunately demo version only stress tests at 720p) and see if your systems are capable of going through the tests without problems. If you own Metro 2033 it comes with a pretty good stress test that can be used as well. I could have sworn my system was 100% stable from running memtest86+ for 12 hours, Linx and Prime95 for a couple hours, and some other lighter games (Haven't played BF3 ever since Skyrim was released).

 

I have definitely been humbled.

 

Update 1:

 

After running 3DMark11 with SLI off for each card successfully I was pretty much left with my instability being due to SLI mode. I uninstalled my drivers, downgraded MSI AB 2.2.0 Beta 9 to MSI AB 2.1.0 Stable. Unplugged/Replugged PSU connectors going to video cards and mobo and now I was able to pass 3DMark11 with no problems. Now I'm off to test Skyrim. :ohdear:

 

Update 2:

 

So I have been playing since I last updated this post and have been crash free. Hopefully this continues tomorrow. I highly recommend everyone really stress test their systems if not done so already with either 3DMark11, Metro 2033 Bechmark Utility, Heaven DX11 Benchmark.

Edited January 5, 2012 by whogoods