[LE] Sorry to ask such a basic question . . .

[ruvuk]

. . . but I'm a little fried right now.

 

I'm using a borrowed laptop right now. It's almost new, i7, plenty of ram. It will play Skyrim OK if I go light on the mods. But Creation Kit shuts down every 15 minutes. I can use CK this way, but I'm really not loving it. Is there anything really basic that I might be missing here? Or anything that might work as a patch 'til I get my new machine? (I'd be 100%-happy with a link; I have a hard time figuring out the darn search terms sometimes.)

 

Thank you for reading. And thank your for any suggestions. And no worries about roasting me or the question. :)

[candlepin]

I don't know about others, but the CK is pretty unstable for me. Always has been. Depending on what I'm doing it might crash every 10-15 minutes or every hour. Rarely can I get more out of it than that. I have found that it does depend on what I'm doing.

 

My only advice would be this: save very often. Like stupid, crazy often. Not only will you lose less work when the CK eventually does crash, but for some unknown reason the CK seems to like this and crashes less often with frequent saves.

[varkonasnorse]

Yeah, pretty much what candlepin said. Funny, though, it seems CK has no problem when I use it in a Windows 7, 32bit system, but sucks badly when I use it in a Windows 10 system. And it doesn't seem to matter what your CPU is capable of either. You could have the fastest, most efficient machine on the planet and it will still crash on you. It's insane and very frustrating at times. Just learn to save every time you do something. And hitting F5 doesn't always work. Go to FILE, SAVE. Folks have been waiting a long time for a better version of CK, but it is apparent Beth does not think it's important enough to waste their time on.

[agerweb]

If your using Win 10 you need to switch the sound off in the ini file. Can't remember which command, but googling will find the answer.

[varkonasnorse]

If your using Win 10 you need to switch the sound off in the ini file. Can't remember which command, but googling will find the answer.

 

I tried that, but it didn't make a difference. It always seems to crash when trying to place objects in the render window. I just use my Windows 7 setup. I can sometimes get three hours out of it before a crash. Weird. :dry:

[ruvuk]

Sorry I didn't get back here sooner, but I appreciate you guys taking the time to leave me notes.

 

I have to admit, though, that I'm at a loss for words over all the reports of crash-happy CK. I'd have guessed that 80+% of all users who encountered the constant crashes would have given CK the toss after a week. (I thought that my continuing use of the CK even with the constant restarts was an indicator that I might be turning into one of those brainless swamp creatures.)

 

Before I started using this laptop, I played and modded on a good machine that my brother made for me. (From leftovers he had cluttering up his apartment! :) ) That machine ran on windows7. The laptop uses 10. So maybe that's a big part of it.

 

I'm going to try switching the sound off in the .ini file. If that works, great; if not, no big deal. I'm not sure what it means to "switch the sound off in the ini file." I'm guessing that I'm supposed to be looking for a 0-or-1 setting for sound for the game. And that this would be something I'd need to do each time I used the CK. (Sure is an odd-sounding pach!) I'll post back here after I try this.

 

Thank you guys, again, for your help here.

 

Back soon.

[ruvuk]

I'm back, and the news is really good.

 

I got lucky and figured out how to turn off the sound on my 1st go-round. Can't remember the last time that happened. :)

 

With the sound off, I was able to use the CK for almost 2 hours. It never crashed. I quit when I did because I was ready for a break.

 

So thank you very much, agerweb. Can't begin to tell you how pleased I am and how much aggravation and discouragement this is going to save me in the weeks ahead. :)

 

ruv

 

 

_______________________________________________________________________________________

 

DETAILS of the FIX

 

1. I think there are 5 .ini files for Skyrim. The one needed here is the SkyrimEditor.ini.

 

2. SkyrimEditor.ini is found here:

C:\program files (x86)\Steam\Steamapps\common\Skyrim

 

3. The line you want is this one:

bEnableAudio=1

 

4. Change the 1 to a 0 (zero), and the sound is off. And, hopefully, CK will work better for you.

 

5. I use the CK a lot, so I wanted a shortcut to the SkyrimEditor.ini file. I made a shortcut the usual way, but when I tried to pin it to my Taskbar, Windows wouldn't let me. But I was able to pin the shortcut to Notepad (which I already had pinned to my Taskbar). The new shortcut doesn't show as a separate icon on the Taskbar; instead, I R-click on the Notepad icon, open the Notepad menu, and there's the new icon. (I'd still like an icon on my Taskbar for the SkyrimEditor.ini shortcut, but I have no idea how to make it.)

 

_______________________________________________________________________________________