Skyrim complete PC crashes

[gjm777]

Ok guys after a bunch of game time, I did have another crash.

At this point I'm almost 100% sure this has much to do with autosaving and the save corrupting in some manner.

After some game time, say 30 minutes I decided to hit tab to check on some items. In the upper left I saw Autosaving.

Moments after I hard crashed.

When I rebooted, I didn't realize that even though my second monitor was turned off, it wasn't disabled via the ATI software so I crashed again.

After trying some other things, I decided to turn off the DLC for the High Res textures. I also renamed my autosaves.

Upon entering the game, I rolled back to the last manual save I had done,(note the game said I might be missing some things due to items missing. This is because i disabled the high res mods) even though it hard crashed before, It did not crash this time. The only problem was now, upon entering any buildings I could hear items and doors banging like crazy.

After troubleshooting this some more, I fixed that by re-enabling V-sync. So, I went back into the skyrimprefs.ini and changed back to iPresentInterval=1

I have now been playing again for over an hour.

I suppose for me at least, the solution I posted seems to work, however I can't find a true way to disable all autosaving completely. I believe this to be at least 50% of the problem. Corrupt saves.

Whether its fast travel, memory leaks etc, at it's core the saves seem to be affected, and once that happens, the crashes ensue.

 

So for a revised fix, I propose the following:

1. disable the second display if you use one via your vid card software

2. set all of your AA and AF etc settings via your vid card software

3. Turn off all AA and AF settings via the skyrim launcher since your vid card software should be handling them now.

4. turn off autosave options. If we can find a way to perm disable them, id be curious to try

5.if you do still crash, experiment with different manual saves you have done.

 

If you have any results please post back. Even if you are lurking, and this works, please register to provide feedback. Hopefully we will narrow this down.

Edit** I do recall never having this issue until I had put about 15 hours into this game. Perhaps at this point with the settings I've changed, a new game would run great the whole way through, who knows. One thing It does point to though is that the saves must have gotten corrupt to a degree over time.

Edited February 10, 2012 by gjm777

[GPYRoader]

Hello guys, I'm just posting because I noticed something interesting:

I was playing Skyrim, trying out the autosave fix gjm777 mentioned - and crashed again. After switching my computer back on, I went into Steam because I wanted to uninstall Skyrim but then I opened Firefox and watched a video. After about four minutes the screen suddenly went black. The sound of the video stopped a few seconds later. It was the exact procedure that we all know from Skyrims Black Screen Crash. I closed my laptop to go into Stand By Mode and opened it again. Windows continued and I also continued watching my video.

But after two minutes, it crashed again!(Steam was still running at this time)

I did the same as before, but then closed Steam. After that, I could watch the video without any special events, and nothing happened until now as I am writing this.

 

So I think Steam could be a possible root of this problem. I remember a forum topic where a lot of people got rid of their crashes by running the game without Steam. Unfortunately, this is not possible anymore...

However, the strange thing about this is that I never experienced any kind of crash just because of running Steam. I have no idea what could have caused that.

 

I would be glad if this post helps someone to fix this really annoying problem.

[GuardianPL]

 

@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:

Thanks mate, it's nice of you :)

 

Now, I don't know what is it really about, but playing on patch 1.3 while applying boba321471 tips from the last page allowed me to play with black screen freeze occuring rarely (once every 2-3 hours which was not bad compared to earlier cases). Most notably when hitting Tab to get into my skills screen for level up etc.

 

ANYWAY,

 

Got myself a 1GB Gainward GeForce 560 GTX, installed it with latest beta drivers (the ones from 31st January 2012) and been playing without a single freeze ever since. Everything runs smooth, problem disappeared. So now it's time to install latest patch (1.4) and see what happens - I'm looking forward to SkyUI, this inventory and UI is killing me ^^

 

I'll keep you posted, for the time being I'm happy from my purchase (100 quid gone but it was time to upgrade from my 9600GT 512MB anyway xP)

Edited February 10, 2012 by GuardianPL

[aerinqq]

My game keeps crashing all the time. When I started the game it wasnt crashing at all, but after I advanced a bit the freezes started being more and more frequent...Now I am in Bleak Barrow Temple and whenever I load the save there, walk a few meters my game immediately crashes (like 5 seconds after the load). My monitor just suddenly becomes black, only thing I can see is blinking message analog/digital and fan goes like crazy and I cannot do anything but manually restart. I have played a lot of games, currently Battlefield, Starcraft II, nothing like that was ever happening to me...Its definitely not overheating, run furmark and 3D mark tests, the game crashes almost immediately after the load so kinda obvious its not overheating...I tried the unofficial patch, the sound Hz change, going from 1.3 patch to 1.4 doesnt help, Vsync, AA disable, nothing works...

Can anyone give me an advice what to do? I heard someone that its purely game problem that game cannot handle the increasing size of save is it true? If so how come its not happening to everyone?

 

Also my system spec:

AMD Athlon X4 2.8 GHz

ATI Radeon HD 5850 1 GB

4 GB DDR II

Win 7 64 Ultimate

 

using newest drivers

 

Any help appreciated

[Daz010]

My game use to shut down my PC every so oftern, some days it wont at all so its never really been a big problem but what has started to annoy me is that the creation kit does the same thing only it does it every time 5 minutes after launching it, can't even start making a mod before my PC shuts down.

 

Anyone else having the same problem with the creation kit?

 

Don't actually know my specs, bought the PC off my brother and he said it had some problems crashing with skyrim but as I think everyone has gathered it's not a problem with the PC, never runs hot and has no power problems.

[dreigner]

Hello guys, I'm just posting because I noticed something interesting:

I was playing Skyrim, trying out the autosave fix gjm777 mentioned - and crashed again. After switching my computer back on, I went into Steam because I wanted to uninstall Skyrim but then I opened Firefox and watched a video. After about four minutes the screen suddenly went black. The sound of the video stopped a few seconds later. It was the exact procedure that we all know from Skyrims Black Screen Crash. I closed my laptop to go into Stand By Mode and opened it again. Windows continued and I also continued watching my video.

But after two minutes, it crashed again!(Steam was still running at this time)

I did the same as before, but then closed Steam. After that, I could watch the video without any special events, and nothing happened until now as I am writing this.

 

So I think Steam could be a possible root of this problem. I remember a forum topic where a lot of people got rid of their crashes by running the game without Steam. Unfortunately, this is not possible anymore...

However, the strange thing about this is that I never experienced any kind of crash just because of running Steam. I have no idea what could have caused that.

 

I would be glad if this post helps someone to fix this really annoying problem.

 

as someone who has been using an "alternate" version of the game (yarrr!), i can say that steam isn't likely the cause for this.

 

Admitted to piracy :rolleyes:

Banned

bben46

[gjm777]

I don't believe this is steam related as this has happened to me even before they made it mandatory to have steam open to play with a patch. I was able to figure out how to eliminate autosaves completely and have been playing for over 5 hours without a crash.

I'll start a new thread for the fix here in a bit.

Good luck all.

[Deleted3946119User]

Anyone have a fix for win64bit+AMD radeon HD 6000 series yet? Just bought it for 60$ and I hard crashed upon exiting a dungeon :( tried everything OP has posted. If anyone has any success let me know :(

[SpacemanSpIiff]

Disabling all auto saves helped me out, thanks.

[KurianOfBorg]

Permanent fix for crashing on my PC:

It is related to auto-saves like gjm777 stated. However disabling auto-saving is insufficient (and not required; leave auto-saving enabled as it was). I noticed that once the game started crashing, if I fast-travelled to another location, it said "Autosaving" and after a few minutes in the new location it crashed. However after I rebooted and clicked Continue game, it started from my old location and not from the auto-save after I fast-travelled, which meant that the auto-saving failed completely and it subsequently crashed. So I fast-travelled to a new location and created a manual save (Escape->Save) and then quit to desktop. I then went to the "My Games\Skyrim\Saves" folder and deleted all the auto-saves and quick-saves and left only my manual save. Now when I continued playing everything worked fine including future auto-saves and it hasn't crashed in over 2 days. I had inadvertently done this 2 weeks ago while trying to clean all traces of the game and it started working properly back then, so it's worked successfully on two incidents.

 

Basically:

1. Continue game

2. Fast-Travel to new location

3. Save game manually (Escape->Save)

4. Quit to Desktop

5. Delete all saves from "My Games\Skyrim\Saves" except your manual save.

6. Continue game.