Skyrim complete PC crashes

[dark27]

Only one crash was reported by Windows 7 relating to Skyrim that it caught out of 9 crashes all different kinds and of course the game says in binary code it crashed for "UNKNOWN REASON" just fabulous, thanks Skyrim for a lovely message. Edited December 2, 2011 by dark27

[IanHead]

I've compiled a fairly exhaustive summary of this thread on the Bethsoft forums, located here.

 

Below is a verbatim copy of my post on there:

 

PREFACE: Three things to note about this issue before I continue.

 

1. This is not a thread about crashes to the desktop.
   
2. This is not a thread about crashes to the desktop.
   
3. This is not a thread about the main menu not appearing when you start the game.

 

Symptoms:

 

I and a fistful of other players have been experiencing this problem since day one. At totally random times during gameplay:

 

• The screen will turn black without warning, with sound/music continuing in the background.
  
• Monitor gives a 'no signal' message like it would if the PC were switched off.
  
• Sound freezes and begins looping. At this point the PC has completely hung and the only way forward is to shut the power off and reboot the PC.
  

 

Demonstration and prior correspondence:

 

There are available a few videos on youtube which demonstrate this problem, one of which is

. There is a very, very long thread about this on the Nexus forums, located here.

 

Observations based on my own, and other peoples' reports:

 

• Symptoms are in line with the video driver crashing (black screen, monitor losing signal), then failing to recover (hard hang).
  
• There is no strict correlation between what the player is doing and how often the crashes occur.
  
• The crashes have been reported to occur anywhere between several hours of play to within seconds of starting.
  
• It seems to be mostly affecting ATI HD5xxx and 6xxx chips, but Nvidia users are also reporting the issue. (I have an HD6950 card myself)
  
• Both desktops and mobile systems are affected.
  
• Some (including myself) have reported the problem seems to happen at moments such as switching to the map, viewing the main menu/quest journal, or riding a horse -- however it also happens at random during normal gameplay.
  
• Some hypotheses suggest the problem lies either in the engine duping the card into entering some kind of powersave mode and then not switching back, or that Flash middleware used for rendering the menus (if there actually is a Flash binary blob in there that's used for the game's UI) is crashing the video driver.
  
• The problem has been there since version 1.0 and is still present as of 1.2.
  
• Video card temperatures are NOT a factor. This occurs when the GPU is at regular operating temperature, and also occurs on underclocked cards.
  
• Nobody has been able to reproduce these crashes in any other game, stress test application or any other general application of any kind.
  

 

Measures people have tried taking to address the problem:

 

• The sound fix (before the 1.2 patch came out)
  
• Underclocking/overclocking.
  
• Reinstalling Skyrim.
  
• Lowering/raising graphics settings.
  
• Turning off background applications.
  
• Changing 'Catalyst AI' settings.
  
• Updating video drivers to newer, older, or beta versions.
  
• The 4GB fix.
  
• Enabling/disabling Crossfire.
  
• Running in windowed mode.
  
• Contacting Bethsoft support. (most reports say that the techs who responded either asked for peoples' dxdiag info or suggested the 44khz sound thing. The technicians I dealt with, after extensive back-and-forth conversation, were extra patient with me and eventually admitted that they'd run out of ideas.)
  

 

Measures people have taken that were probably never going to help anyway:

 

• Reformatting, reinstalling Windows.
  
• Defragging.
  
• Messing with manual clock speeds in MSI Afterburner and similar applications.
  
• Switching between legitimate and pirated versions of Skyrim.
  
• Turning on/off firewalls, anti-virus programs.
  
• Changing power saving settings on the PC.
  
• Reinstalling/rolling back DirectX versions.
  
• Verifying game integrity via Steam.
  
• Messing with various BIOS settings.
  
• Messed with both skyrim.ini and skyrimprefs.ini files to disably vsync, etc.
  
• Running chkdsk.
  
• Disabling gamepad via ini files and the in-game menus.
  
• Adding different performance-related .dll files to the Skyrim game dir.
  
• Reformatting the entire drive and starting over.
  
• Opening the computer and blasting it with an air compressor to clean it of cobwebs, dust bunnies, dead rodents etc.
  
• Messing with processor affinity settings in the task manager.
  
• Running as administrator.
  
• Running in compatibility modes (XP, Vista, etc.)
  
• Running virtualised under Windows 7's XP Mode.
  
• Deleting any and all mods installed.
  
• Swapping out the Steam-ified TES4.exe for the pre-patch version.
  
• Playing online, playing offline.
  
• Sacrificing babies of various lineage in blood rituals.
  

 

I'm just hoping to get this to the developers' attention if at all possible, since there was the announcement made that these forums will be monitored following the 1.2 patch's release. I'm not really expecting a direct response from the dev team as I know a single response from a developer in a thread on here would open the floodgates for everyone to start going nuts about everything else that plagues them as well, but I and many others have our collective fingers crossed that by the time 1.3 comes around, we'll actually be able to play this wonderful game for an extended period of time without having to hard reset our PCs every half-hour or so, potentially endangering our expensive shiny hardware.

You might all want to head on over and get this thread noticed over on those forums again, the original thread about hard crashes was merged with their very generic 'Crashes to desktop' thread.

Edited December 2, 2011 by IanHead

[dark27]

Thanks IanHead that helps me a lot was going to try some of those scenarios too, appreciate it. Edited December 2, 2011 by dark27

[voldoman]

I've compiled a fairly exhaustive summary of this thread on the Bethsoft forums, located here.

 

Keep this thread up and going over there, maybe we can get through.

 

Edit: http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1301174-any-chance-of-a-fix-for-the-hard-pc-crashes-soon/

Edited December 2, 2011 by voldoman

[njemopogi]

Been playing Skyrim with the patch 1.2 now, fortunately, I didn't have a single crash even if my graphics are set to high. I'll report if I get a crash.

So wait, was it crashing before you installed 1.2 patch?

Crashes like hell. I had to lower the graphics and cpu power to play the game without getting full system crash (probably bad coding when you get hot temps) which looks real crappy. Now, I can play it on high, I hope that I will never encounter something like it again. By the way, I'm using the ENB patch of Boris Vorontsov, you can try it too.

[dreigner]

I know some of you posters said that the evil PC lockup happens even at low levels and with a minimal amount of quests done, but I'd really appreciate if someone could start a brand new character and, like with my miraculously freezeless orc, go for a long roam in the wilderness with the intention of triggering a freeze. If it ends up happening at random when you've literally done nothing, (no random quests, no putting items in containers or dropping them in the world, etc.), then I quit. (or at least I'll need a looong break from trying to fix skyrim :S ).

If it doesn't freeze then hopefully we're on to something. If it freezes right after doing something, anything, even if you did something hours ago and it was the only thing you've done, please share.

 

Thanks again for everyone's input.

 

i can confirm that after experiencing these crashes on my main save, making a new character causes the game to crash. i can get a short way into the initial escape and then everything stops with the black screen and hard reset being required. sometimes it doesn't even get that far.

[Jazhara7]

 

I've run multiple hardware tests and I know that my video card, PSU and CPU are all operating at perfectly acceptable temperatures. I've tried cleaning my PC of dust and reseating the RAM. Furthermore of those games you listed I play Brink and Rift on completely maxed settings and not ONCE has my PC crashed while playing them. This is NOT a heating issue.

 

My specs:

 

AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2GHz

64 bit Quad-Core Processor

8GB DDR3 1333MHz

AMD Radeon HD 6870

(Running Windows 7 - 64 bit)

 

Also if people could please stop posting about desktop crashes, BSOD, main menu issues and screen freezes. If you have any of those problems you should go make your own thread, this one is about a very specific problem that we're trying to troubleshoot. I don't mean to offend anyone but if you're PC isn't rebooting you aren't having the same issue as the rest of us and you need to troubleshoot with people having your problem.

 

 

Like I said in my post, I am aware this is likely not the solution for everyone's crashes - there's much too many configurations possible in this day, to even assume that for a second. Similarly, it's not really possible to say it's not a heating issue for everyone having this problem. I posted it anyway because it fixed the issue for me, and I thought others might want to check if it helps them too (particularly the suggestion to try and actually check the temperature through a program. Not everyone is aware of the existence of such a tool, so I thought I'd pass the information on. *I* am not ashamed to admit it's the first time I actually used such a program myself.). Maybe it could even be put on the list as a suggestion to try. It might not help everyone, but some.

 

If this doesn't help you, I am sorry. . But do me a favour and get in the habit of reading the post and understanding it properly before replying. It helps avoid misunderstandings (same for all the people posting here about CTDs :wallbash: ). This is not intended as an insult or anything offensive against you. Just a friendly suggestion for the future - not just on the Internet, but also in life. Otherwise you might end up reading a sentence like "All villains are German" as "All Germans are Villains". Similar sentences, but hugely different meanings. :wink:

 

 

Okay, enough off-topicness. Back to work! :laugh:

[VioleFalushe]

Only one crash was reported by Windows 7 relating to Skyrim that it caught out of 9 crashes all different kinds and of course the game says in binary code it crashed for "UNKNOWN REASON" just fabulous, thanks Skyrim for a lovely message.

 

This is a very thorough post I would like to ask of you if possible, to post it also at kotaku or with your permission to allow me to copy in its entirety to a new article publshed by Kotaku so it would allow us to have amore visible venue to our predicament.

 

Thanks in advance.

[Atreyuu2003]

Add me to the list! My game crashes at least once every ten mintues. It has since day one! I have an AMD Phemon II X4 945 Processor (4 CPUs) 3.0GHz Video Card. Hopefully someone will fix this problem quick! It is getting to be rather annoying for a $60 game.

[VioleFalushe]

I have taken the liberty to repost IanHead wonderful analysis on the Skyrim crashes in Kotaku.

 

I hope that someone there might notice this and maybe turn some heads our way so this issue can get the attention that it deserves.

 

Keep on spreading the word!.