Skyrim complete PC crashes

[ShezzedUp]

Wow, this is so frustrating. I thought I fixed this issue by replacing the atimgpud.dll file. After doing that I ran crash free for months and was really enjoying the game. However, I decided to start a new character yesterday and the goddamn crashes came back. It has even started crashing on my main character again. Starting a new character was the only thing I changed, so I have no idea why they came back. Any insight would be appreciated.

[KurianOfBorg]

I am not having any more crashes with the v1.4 update. However sometimes there is severe graphical corruption after playing for a couple of hours. I just quit and restart the game. There is also corruption if I alt-tab out and come back. Edited February 6, 2012 by KurianOfBorg

[krudmonger]

Hello,

 

Just thought I'd help.

 

After suffering the very same problem and being pi$$ed off tremendously I did some searches and it seems it works:

 

1. http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=28845773&postcount=94

 

2. Disable VSync:

(It is very simple to do that. For that, you will have to open \Users\[username]\My Documents\My Games\Skyrim directory. And from there open the display section of the Skyrim.ini file. Now, go to bottom of that and add iPresentInterval=0 to the bottom of that. Save that file and you are done with that.)

 

After that it's been two evenings full of joyful gaming and no problems whatsoever (before that max I could play without manual reset of PC in Skyrim was sth like 15mins). I'm not sure which one of those two works but I'm too busy gaming to find out ^^

 

Good luck, I wish that the above will work for you too :)

 

I've tried these (and every other suggested fix I've read in this thread), and so far my results have been random. Meaning sometimes the game would run for a while, sometimes it wouldn't. Which makes me think that there's something going on other than these fixes that makes it work (or not work). After one particular fix (the VSync one), the game went black within seconds of loading my saved game. By contrast, without making any changes, I was able to start a new game [and new character] and play for about 45 minutes, and then load a saved game and play that for 20 minutes (before the black screen.) I'm at my wits end here. There must be a solution, because hundreds of thousands of PC users seem to be doing just fine...

[eslpro]

 

@eslpro

 

Great to read that, you're welcome mate but instead of me we should be grateful to boba321471 who came up with the fix ^^

 

 

Guardian, i sent a message thanking him! But your search deserve the credit too! :thumbsup: :biggrin:

[gjm777]

Well I still have the issue. No rhyme or reason, and the only game it happens on.

I have uninstalled all ati dirvers, ran driver sweeper, installed the latest drivers. No luck

I notice this seems to happen the most either when a very dense foliage outdoor area , or with a snowstorm going on. The only reproduce able thing I can find is that in certain areas, if it transitions to a new cell, or area where the autosaving comes up, it can crash the game and lock up the pc. Looking back on old oblivion threads, it seems disabling this fixes the issue, and also to delete the autosave. Remedies even went as far as to never save until you were ready to quit for the day, and to use the save/load screen. I have not tried this but I will tonight.

I have also tried the atiumpg.dll fix (spelling could be wrong) There really isn't a consistant variable with me, thats why i'm hoping its the autosave.

 

AMD 6870 1gig never goes above 70c because of afterburner.

I5 2500k no overclock

4gb ram

all power saving options tuend off in windows and bios, spread spectrum turned off as well on BIOS as well as C states.

Win7 x64

Skyrim patched to 1.4 but this has happend since it lauched for me.

 

Somehow we will figure this out....

[gjm777]

All,

Just an update.

First off, I have been able to play without a crash for over an hour. Here is what I've done thus far. Keep in mind I am still troubleshooting.

1. If you were using multiple displays like me, disable the non primary via your ATI CCC or Nvidia software. Doing this alone lowered my cards temp by 15 degrees

2. Set all of your AA and other 3D settings via the ATI or Nvidia software. Normally, this might be set for "application controlled"

3. Disable VSync by adding or setting iPresentInterval=0 to your skyrimprefs ini located in %userprofile%/my documents/my games/skyrim

4.Make a backup of all your saves. Delete all but your most recent autosave.ess.bak. You can keep the quicksaves.

5.In your skyrim game folder, set both the skyrimlauncher and the TESV.exe to run under compatibility for XP sp3, disable visual themes, and disable desktop composition. Finally check the box to run as administrator. Remember to do this for both exes.

6. In steam right click skyrim and go to properties. Uncheck "enable steam community in-game

7. Click to play Skyrim. When the launcher starts, go to options. turn off antialiasing and anisotropic filtering. These will now be controlled via your vid card's software.

8. Launch the game. Once in load your most recent save (not the autosave).

9. In game, go to options. Turn off all of the save options. Also turn off the user xbox 360 controller and vibration options. Please note the only way to save now will be either a quicksave or a manual save from the menu.

 

 

I'm starting to think this might have to do with the game having the AA AF settings, and the card software as well. Who knows.

 

Just as an aside, and hopefully another possible lead. I was able to force a crash while in game by unplugging my usb headset, plugging in an ipad, and then plugging back in the headset.

I do have a utility called ASRock app charger that helps charge devices like ipads, so i'm not shocked doing this caused the game to freak out. It actually didn't hard lock my machine but the video never came back, so I did have to hard reboot.

 

Please give this a shot. Hopefully this helps someone out. I will report back if I crash again.

Good luck all.

[MonkeyOnJET]

All,

Just an update.

First off, I have been able to play without a crash for over an hour. Here is what I've done thus far. Keep in mind I am still troubleshooting.

1. If you were using multiple displays like me, disable the non primary via your ATI CCC or Nvidia software. Doing this alone lowered my cards temp by 15 degrees

2. Set all of your AA and other 3D settings via the ATI or Nvidia software. Normally, this might be set for "application controlled"

3. Disable VSync by adding or setting iPresentInterval=0 to your skyrimprefs ini located in %userprofile%/my documents/my games/skyrim

4.Make a backup of all your saves. Delete all but your most recent autosave.ess.bak. You can keep the quicksaves.

5.In your skyrim game folder, set both the skyrimlauncher and the TESV.exe to run under compatibility for XP sp3, disable visual themes, and disable desktop composition. Finally check the box to run as administrator. Remember to do this for both exes.

6. In steam right click skyrim and go to properties. Uncheck "enable steam community in-game

7. Click to play Skyrim. When the launcher starts, go to options. turn off antialiasing and anisotropic filtering. These will now be controlled via your vid card's software.

8. Launch the game. Once in load your most recent save (not the autosave).

9. In game, go to options. Turn off all of the save options. Also turn off the user xbox 360 controller and vibration options. Please note the only way to save now will be either a quicksave or a manual save from the menu.

 

 

I'm starting to think this might have to do with the game having the AA AF settings, and the card software as well. Who knows.

 

Just as an aside, and hopefully another possible lead. I was able to force a crash while in game by unplugging my usb headset, plugging in an ipad, and then plugging back in the headset.

I do have a utility called ASRock app charger that helps charge devices like ipads, so i'm not shocked doing this caused the game to freak out. It actually didn't hard lock my machine but the video never came back, so I did have to hard reboot.

 

Please give this a shot. Hopefully this helps someone out. I will report back if I crash again.

Good luck all.

 

FINALLY! THANK GOD i mean gjm777! This seems to work for me, I had the sudden reboot problem with my system.

 

Weird thing is that after disabling the other screen(HD-tv in this case) skyrim seems to hog a lot more GPU usage :blink: Before it was maxing out about 70% now its constant 95% or more.

 

I did not do all the tricks that are in the pervious post but what i did was: disabled the other screen, turn all the gpu controls (aa,af etc.) from the program to the nvidia driver, turn of AA completely(think the game looks somewhat even better now), turned off v-sync from the gameprefs and nvidia, removed all saving tabs from skyrim options and removed all but one previous gamesaves.

 

Good luck for everyone else, hope this cure works for many more ppl!

[psztol]

@gjm777

I have the same issue as you do, though my PC config is slightly different but still. I was able to track down the problem with Windows debugging tools. It showed that the game crashed because of hardware failure which I was able to narrow down to my... Dual-Core processor. When the game crashed, the CPU received a command that caused the whole PC to crash.

I posted my problem with logs from debugger on Bethesdas Beta 1.4 forum and got PMed by one of the staff members there, I was asked for my saves, and DxDiags didn't hear from them since.

 

But what I was able to find out on my own was that the problem we have comes from errors in game-code programming. The code of the game sometimes demands from CPU things that the CPU can't do, therefore the CPU gives an error, freezing the PC and only hard-reset helps.

 

But back to the topic:

I will try out your solution, I hope It'll help.

 

But I hope that someday in the future Bethesda will make a bug-free game... Though it's not as bad as it was in Buggerfall ;)

[gjm777]

@MonkeyOnJET

That's great to hear! I'll be happy if one person is able to play this as a result. Everyone who bought this and couldn't play it like me deserves to so hopefully it stays this way.

 

@psztol,

That's great you were able to get a minidump to send off. I might suggest you go into your BIOS and turn off power saving options as well as "spread specrtum" if it isn't already. This should allow the processor to maintain full power/voltage at all times.

Once you're back into windows, make sure to go to the control panel and then power options, and use high performance. Have the monitor never turn off on its own etc.

Good luck to you.

[SINFULBYNATURE]

This issue is also happening on my PC and I can usually play for an hour or two before a complete crash and reboot. This issue does not seem to be processor (or Northbridge/Southbridge chipset by extension) related as people have posted issues with i5 and i7 (I am using a Core 2 Quad Q9650) as well as AMD processors. It does not look video card related (posting of both ATI and NVidia cards including different models, crossfire, non crossfire, sli, non sli – I am using an Nvidia 560Ti not sli). Seems to be happening for the most part on Win 7 64 bit (with one exception that I have read through these postings)

 

The only relevant spec I have not seen posted is the audio chipset. If this is happening for example only Windows 7 64bit with a Realtek ALC888 Audio (as I am running) then we are getting close to the issue. If this is happening on systems using Sound Blasters and Realtek (as well as other audio chip sets) then we can rule out audio. It is a good Idea to post your complete hardware specs including audio (which is commonly overlooked and yes I have seen audio issues crash a computer and report back as a video issue – Been a computer tech over 20 years - ATARI 8 bit anyone?) to see if there is commonality at the hardware level to help make Bethesda take ownership of the software issue.

 

I am running

 

Mobo: MSI P43 Neo

Intel Processor: Q9650

Chipset: Intel P45/ G45/ P43 & ICH10

Nvidia 560Ti (no SLI – not supported by board)

Realtek ALC888 Audio (onboard)

Kingston HyperX DDR2 – 8 Gigs (4 sticks – 2 gigs a stick)

WD Velociraptor 250 gig HD

Removed all other onboard cards for testing purposes

 

Because I am relatively new to the game I will monitor the GPU as ireside807 noticed

 

I ran a gpu monitoring and reporting tool during my last play, which was mostly in a dungeon, but upon exiting, sure enough, it crashed at about 10 minutes. I noticed the gpu usage shot up to 99 percent at the moment of the crash, and did a little researching, not much:

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/310847-33-catalyst-usage-there