Has reinstalling game helped CTD's?

[Kodiak412]

Has anyone that had frequent or repeatable CTD's been able to reinstall the game and have that actually help?

 

I'm at level 75 and I have saves in the 18mb range and there arcertainan areas of the game that I cannot enter with CTD. The Reach area with the Jarl in Maraketh is the biggest culprit. I cannot enter this area without a CTD. Sometimes Dragonreach too. If I go back to a previous save I can get it to work but after advancing so far again I get the same thing. Once I went back about a week and started over, this time I went back about 3 days and started over. I tried doing different quests each time but eventually I get the same thing.

 

I would complete certain areas and fast travel to the Maraketh reach (with the Jarl) and try to enter. At first it worked every time but as soon as get to about the 390 -395 hour mark the next time I try to enter that area I immediately CTD.

 

My hope is that something within the game got corrupt and a reinstall with clear it out. My plan is the reinstall, start a new game, and then drop a backed up save game into the save folder. I hope that loading the game from that save will not mess up any of the quests and that the game will recognise everything that I have already done. Can anyone verify this? Any elaboration on reinstalling the game or reloading the new game with an old save will be greatly appreciated.

[maboru]

There are quite a few people having this problem. It seems to be caused by save game bloat in cells where a lot of stuff has to be loaded. That indicates to me that video card VRAM plus shared system memory are simply insufficient to allow the game to load everything that needs to be loaded while in (or approaching) these areas (even more so for the PS3). That's something that Beth will have to address in a new patch. Reinstalling the game would only help if you're going to start a new character.

 

I've managed to avoid the problem so far by using these mods to decrease the size of save game files -

 

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3084 - (Shortens the number of days for clean up/re-spawn.)

 

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4528 - (Makes corpses keep their inventory in their bodies as well as other improvements.)

 

Only take stuff I really want and sell it fast, except for any debris (bones, miscellaneous items etc.) that I've dislodged or kicked around which I...

Never drop anything on the ground, always dispose of stuff in respawnable containers or corpses.

Limit my total open quests to about a dozen or so.

 

This has kept my level 45 character save game size to @11mb (not sure how many hours I've played since I don't play online mode) and I've explored over 90% of the map and completed over 150 total quests.

 

I'm afraid that's not much help to you though since, at level 75, you probably don't fancy starting over again!

[Kodiak412]

You're right about starting over but wrong about being a help. Thank you for taking the time to give a detailed answer. My fear was that the game was just too bloated and regardless of what is done until the game can handle the bloat I am SOL.

 

I have a pretty substantial computer, i7quad w/12gb ram, GTX 570HD w/1.25 VRAM, WD Black HD (sadly no SSD, I was hoping for a Cherryville release but that was pushed back to Q1 2012) but even that is not handling the bloat I guess. I prayed the LAA 4gb Bethesda patch would solve it all but I guess that was just a pipe dream.

 

I think I will breakdown and install the Nexus Mod Manager and just go back to a certian level and pray that Beth can address this issue in the next update. Dang.

Edited January 2, 2012 by Kodiak412