Skyrim complete PC crashes

[TaygaGirl]

what he did to my PC, this stupid game?

 

if it happens again while playing with other games will make a System Restore

[Neverlight]

Finally since yesterdy i managed to play skyrim for 4 hours without a single hard reset or a ctd.

 

First time after i installed the game i was able to play for around an hour, but the next day the game was completely broken for me. The longest time ingame was NEVER more than 5 minutes until i had to hard reset my pc (black screen) and the shortest time was 3 seconds.

 

I guess i spent more than 15 hours in reading forumthreads and trying every hint i could get to solve my problem but to no avail since yesterday.

 

BTW i was able to play Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas and a lot of other games without a single crash so Skyrim was the first time i heard about the problems with this bethesda game engine.

 

So i knewfor sure my hardware was ok.

 

I tried EVERYTHING in correlation with this bug. Currently i'm running with these settings....

 

- Newest ATI drivers

- d3d9.dll

- enbdev

- no mods (since i wasn't able to play the game more than 5 minutes i never tried one)

- atiumdag.dll

 

So far i was still crashing

 

But then i found an article in a german magazine (PC Games) and i thought i have nothing to lose so i gave it a try:

 

- First off in Options , i choose ULTRA and unmark fxaa and "fade out object details" (not sure if its the correct translation for this because i have the german version)

- Now i opened SkyrimPrefs.ini (Under Documents -> MyGames -> Skyrim) and changed the following settings:

 

- bMouseAcceleration=0 (change it to 0)

- iBlurDeferredShadowMask=3 (change it to 1)

- iShadowFilter=3 (change it to 4)

- fShadowLODStartFade=200.0000 (change it to 1000.0000)

- fTreesMidLODSwitchDist=0.0000 (change it to 10000000.0000)

- fShadowLODStartFade=200.0000 (change it to 1000.0000)

- bTreesReceiveShadows=0 (change it to 1)

- uiMaxSkinnedTreesToRender=20 (change it to 40)

- iWaterMultiSamples=0 (change it to 4)

- iWaterReflectHeight=512 (change it to 1024)

- iWaterReflectWidth=512 (change it to 1024)

 

And now i added the following lines at the and of SkyrimPrefs.ini:

 

- bUseWaterReflectionBlur=1

- bReflectExplosions=1

- iWaterBlurAmount=4

- bAutoWaterSilhouetteReflections=0

- bForceHighDetailreflections=1

 

Don't know what exactly made my game run but before i find out , i will finally enjoy skyrim now first.

 

BTW i have a core2duo 2.66 GHz, WIN 7 64bit, 4 GB RAM and an ATI 5770 graphics card, but Skyrim runs like a charm with these settings.

 

Thanks for all the help guys....and shame on you Bethesda , to let us alone for this long time after the release of the game, without being able to play the game.

 

Only help i had was the community....

[EsburnMadeMeDoIt]

Guys, only post "IT WORKS" if you play more than just couple of hours without crash. Given the random nature of the crash, it can take minutes or hours for crash to occur. I've been able to play for straight 5 hours, just to crash after 5 mins the next day.

 

You can not fix all black screen.

Because the cause is not only one.

 

Obviously, we cant have a definitive solution,

Bethesda can only put the final solution (maybe).

 

But I'm playing for three hours and I did not crash,

First always crash after 3 minutes of clock.

I can also put ultra setting.

 

However, it works (for me)

 

work does not mean to be fixed

 

No, i just meant that it might not even work for you, if you only test it for one or two hours. I've seen plenty of posts, that were stating that "It works", just to find out they edited them later and find out it doesnt work. Wastes other people's time, if you ask me. I've tried countless of "fixes" and nothing ever worked. I could get the game to run for 2-3 hours without crash, then on the next run it would crash in 5 minutes. If what you posted really works (for you or anyone), then i am only happy though. Dont get me wrong.

 

Obviously there are people here who dont experience THE crash, but their GPU is just overheating or they have piece of crap computer. I was not speaking about those people in my previous paragraph.

 

As I previously mentioned, has anyone had any freezes outside of Skyrim, when playing other games recently? I've noticed that the instability has spread to other games as well. I am now experiencing the exact same type of crash in all 3D games I play.

Reply would be appreciated.

 

Nope, i havent noticed this behaviour in any other game.

Edited December 5, 2011 by EsburnMadeMeDoIt

[dreigner]

To me

it workssssssssss

 

Thanks I love youuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

I did a little test but I crash after 5 minutes. Now have passed 30 minutes and have not crashed!!!!

I hope it is completely fixed now. I have to play hours to be able to say.

 

I have questions:

 

1)before the latest patch, I could play with ultra settings,Redeonpro calculates average setting,

I can put high or ultra?

 

2)How many hours have you played?

 

3)I can put the old save or mods?

 

You can post this solution in the Bwethesda forum? many others like me can be helped

 

Thanks again for your help!!!

 

1 - you can most certainly use higher settings if you'd like (but seeing as crashes are still present, that's entirely up to you whether you even want to keep playing)

2 - i was able to play almost 20 hours into a new save before i got the first crash

3 - i'm using texture mods, but nothing that modifies the d3d9.dll. i'm unsure as to whether certain mods can be used.

as for old saves, i haven't checked mine yet. i wanted to start fresh to see if there was anything in particular that started the chain of crashes.

 

 

for anybody who wants to repost my instructions on the bethesda forums: go ahead! i can't be bothered to create an account and copy and paste on there. just link back to this thread so that people who aren't lazy can sift through the replies. please also add a disclaimer that it is not a permanent fix and that crashes may still occur at random. bethesda better be whipping their programmers for how long the game has been out and riddled with faults. i expect better quality with a high budget on development.

[writer2036]

ENBSeries AntiFreeze Patch 8 fixed those Horrible Hard Reset Black screen crashes for me so far had no crashes in 2 days. I also noticeed ENB now has Patch 9. But I don't want to update it any further as it works so well now = D

 

Here is the Download page link for ENBSeris Anti Freeze patch 9 for anyone who wants quick access to it: ENBSeries Patch 9 Update

[zatro]

ENBSeries AntiFreeze Patch 8 fixed those Horrible Hard Reset Black screen crashes for me so far had no crashes in 2 days. I also noticeed ENB now has Patch 9. But I don't want to update it any further as it works so well now = D

 

Here is the Download page link for ENBSeris Anti Freeze patch 9 for anyone who wants quick access to it: ENBSeries Patch 9 Update

 

 

Tried that and just black screened.

[IanHead]

My big summary of this problem on the Bethesda forums has been updated a bit. We've tried a registry tweak that increases the time Windows waits for a driver to recover before trying to kill it and restart it... and yes, we tried the ENB mod too.

 

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

[AliceD1977]

hello people,

 

i just registered. English isn’t my native language, please excuse for mistakes.

 

At first big thanks to all who help working on this.

 

I also have blackscreens which require hard-resets in skyrim.

 

My System, for now only few specs, I’m not at home right now:

 

AMD Phenom II X3 740 3.00GHz AM3 7.5MB 95W

PSU 500W OCZ High-Performance ModXStream (should be enough for the ATI 5870, meets requirements)

Sapphire ATI 5870 1GB

2x2048MB OCZ Platinum Series DDR3-1333 CL7

Asus M4N68T nForce 630a AM3 ATX

Windows 7 32 and also 64 bit, crashes on both

ATI Catalyst 11.9

Skyrim Patch 1.2, before that patch 1.1, also crashes there.

I would like to answer further questions about my specs, just ask me.

 

I’m following this thread for quite a while now. I tried most if not all of the things discussed here.

 

Now I maybe found something interesting:

 

One thing I can say:

 

With the atiumdag.dll from this thread downloaded and put into my skyrim-folder, my Skyrim works.

 

No crashes –

 

but if I set some living thing on fire, it burns with blocky black flames. I saw this was mentioned at least by two others in this thread.

 

I googled a bit and found a workaround: In ATI Catalyst I have to disable Surface Format Optimization.

 

This will burn living things with correct looking flames -

 

But it brings back the crashes

 

I also tried Radeonpro, disabled surface format optimization there, launched the game from there, correct flames, but crashes.

 

And I also tried this with and without ebndev, didn’t help me.

 

My friend has a win7 32 bit machine,

Asus M4A79T Deluxe 790FX AM3 ATX,

2GB (1x 2048MB) Kingston ValueRAM DDR3-1333,

AMD Athlon II X2 250e 2x 3.00GHz So.AM3 BOX,

800W Enermax Modul87+80+ Gold Modular,

ATI Powercolor 5870 1GB,

 

and he plays skyrim 1.1 without a crash ever. Not even a ctd.

 

At first I suspected his better PSU causes that, but since my machine works with atiumdag.dll I don’t think so no more.

 

If now I could get rid of the black blocky flames without bringing the crashes back, I could finally play skyrim. Well, I could play it with the black blocky flames, but I would like to get real flames and I’m willing to spend some more effort in that, since I started a mage-character who uses fire-spells mainly.

 

I think it’s really not good to sell a game for pc which causes lock-ups and hard-resets. If my hardware would get permanent damage from that, I can’t say how I would react.

But the game, once it runs crash-free, is really great, imho.

 

When I’m home this evening I’ll try the ini-file-changes neverlight posted here.

 

Good luck to all getting skyrim running.

Edited December 6, 2011 by AliceD1977

[writer2036]

Started crashing again today after about two days of no black screen and hard reset crash. It was trying to crash during that time though as I could hear the audio stuttering for about 5 seconds and then it stopped.

 

Does have anyone have any idea as to what is causing the Black screen Hard reset crash?

 

Is it a memory leak problem or just hurried and poor coding on Bethesda's part?

 

I was going to try Patch 9 but not so sure now as Zatro said he tried it and it just black screened. So the likelihood of it crashing mine too is pretty high.

 

I do hope Bethesda makes it a priority to fix this major problem in their next update instead of fixing rare bugs and minor gameplay bugs that barely effect the game at all. I don't understand why Bethesda doesn't tackle all the critical bugs and issues first although that would be sensible and the logical thing to do. Bethesda appears to be sorely lacking in those departments.

Edited December 6, 2011 by writer2036

[Niskiss]

As I previously mentioned, has anyone had any freezes outside of Skyrim, when playing other games recently? I've noticed that the instability has spread to other games as well. I am now experiencing the exact same type of crash in all 3D games I play.

Reply would be appreciated.

I have the same black screen crash with Assassin's Creed Revelations. Unlike some other person here, Saint's Row 3 worked flawlessly on my laptop. So only AC

 

Okay, do you think it's related? I haven't had any problems with my games before, until I got Skyrim. In major my graphics card has been acting strange.

 

hey, I too have a crash (Black Screen) with an online game Guild Wars

 

never had before this damn Skyrim.

 

I had the problem with BF3 when it was a Demo and after it went live. After the first fix, the problem was gone...I have no problems with BF3 now, but Skyrim...its a crash monster on my system no matter what I have tried.

 

Okay, have anyone tried uninstalling Skyrim and then run the games? In fact the question just struck my mind, havn't got that far yet myself. Might try it, would at least make my computer stable and enable me to use it as normal...

So sick of Skyrim.