CTD's happening a lot

[Damius]

Warning ahead, this is a block of text, i can never seem to explain things in short.

 

My problem is simple; CTD's within minutes (even seconds somtimes) of loading my game. At first i thougt it was my mods, so i tried stripping away a few with no effect, then tried removing all of them, with no success. I saw it suggested that save game corruption was to blame, so i restarted both with and without mods and still having trouble. I even had it ctd on three occaisions; one mod free and two with different mod combinations in the exact same spot during the opening just after alduin does his second shout and the screen blurs.

 

The odd thing about these ctd's is they have no real pattern to them, at least until they happen. Once a crash happens i can replicate it from the most recent save every time, but not from any other save or even a fresh game.

 

The best example (out of many) i can think of is a save i made before fast travelling to riverwood; I can load this save perfectly fine, but if i fast travel there with this save instant ctd. But i can travel to riverwood in any other save with no problem, including ones made after this problem first appeared where i just walked there and continued questing regardless. I can replicate the crash from that one save no problem. I can redo the exact same things from an earlier save and not have the same problems. This consistant randomness isnt just with fast travelling, i have another save that ctds after about fifteen seconds even if i stay still, even with any combination of mods or fixes.

 

my specs according to canirunit, and i have enough to play skyrim.

windows 7 professional 32-bit

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Processor

3.5 gig of ram

AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series

 

Active Mod Files:

 

00  Skyrim.esm
01  Update.esm
02  ApachiiHair.esm
03  Unofficial Skyrim Patch.esp  [Version 1.0]
04  Better Dynamic Snow.esp
05  Realistic Lighting.esp
06  Weapons and Armor fixes.esp
07  Weapons and Armor fixes - Hacks.esp
08  Crimson Tide - Blood.esp
09  Dr_Bandolier.esp
0A  Furbag.esp
0B  Lost Art of the Blacksmith.esp
0C  More Craftables.esp
0D  Cloaks - Player Only.esp
0E  Cloaks.esp
0F  Cloaks - No Imperial.esp
10  1nivWICCloaks.esp
11  1nivWICCloaksCRAFT.esp
12  1nivWICSkyCloaksPatch.esp  [Version 1.1]
13  Craftable Artifacts.esp
14  LeatherBackpackBlack-50.esp
15  WeaponsOf3E_Replacer.esp
16  WeaponsOf3E.esp
17  Smithing Perks Overhaul - Balanced.esp
18  DeadlyDragons.esp
19  WARZONES - Civil Unrest.esp
1A  WARZONES - Optional Performance Pack.esp
1B  Ancient Spells.esp
1C  Teleport.esp
1D  Duel - Combat Realism.esp
1E  Balanced_Alteraton.esp
1F  Balanced_Conjuration.esp
20  Balanced_Destruction.esp
21  Balanced_Illusion.esp
22  Balanced_Restoration.esp
++  Balanced_Magic_Adept.esp
23  Bashed Patch, 0.esp
24  Passive Beast.esp

 

 

I played it for days at a time a few months ago with no problems using a lot more mods than i have now, but after coming back from a break its giving me nothing short of hell with only a few and even with none.

 

I tried the sound fix, my drivers are up to date, i reinstalled skyrim, i tried every combination of mods, i tried changing core affinity, setting compatability mode, running as administrator, i even tried IncreaseUserVa 3072 fix, tweaking the .ini, closing everything i could in the background, a few performance mods, the Skyrim Mods Complex Optimizer, and just about every other suggestion i could find here or on google.I am already using boss, and even tried wrye smash and making a bashed patch.

 

This is a final call for help, if my skyrim is beyond saving im retreating back into morrowind; mgexe and a few hundred mods is easier to handle safely than this.

[Xotana]

This game is really messed up. Like 80% or plus of all players have CTDs.....or other weird stuff going on.....besides the core affinity, most times i manage to get past crash areas running in windowed mode with a low resolution. Hail Skyrim, mother of all crashes and oddities!!

[Damius]

Already tried windowed, and lowering the graphics. I honestly though oblivion was bad for crashes until this.

[Xotana]

That's what really grinds my gears. I never had a single crash with Oblivion (none that I can remember of). Skyrim really needs a big patch overhaul to solve these oddities.

[uberness23]

That's what really grinds my gears. I never had a single crash with Oblivion (none that I can remember of). Skyrim really needs a big patch overhaul to solve these oddities.

 

If you never got a single CTD in Oblivion you are the single luckiest person I know. Seriously, go out and buy a lottery ticket.

 

In any case to the op, you say you are running the latest drivers, to clarify you mean 12.4 WHQL correct?. Guessing you are. Consider that some people have had better luck with 12.3 drivers. Some are still using 11.11. AMD's drivers seem to be a gamble more often than not, and your mileage may vary.

 

Do you remember if you made any major system changes between the time your game was running and the time it started crashing? Also, you could have been negatively hit by the latest series of patches; the game has been updated a lot since a few months back, and while -most- people seem to have less problems now, maybe your just unlucky.

 

When you uninstalled Skyrim, did you simply uninstall via steam or did you uninstall and then delete everything left behind? The uninstall process for Skyrim really doesn't remove much. If you want to be really thorough you can use a registry cleaner like CCleaner after removing Skyrim to remove its entries from the registry.

 

You could just have terrible luck. I was locked out of playing Fallout 3 for years until I got completely new hardware. It happens.

[Xotana]

Lol, I was being honest. Game always ran perfect to me. Luck I guess.

 

Skyrim on the other hand, is a total mess. I regret paying so much money for such a buggy game. Consumers shouldn't have to put up with this after paying 50€ for this game, in my case.

 

BTW, I had no mods in Oblivion, maybe that's it.

Edited May 9, 2012 by Xotana

[Thelios]

That's what really grinds my gears.

Priceless! :dance:

 

Yeah, Skyrim has been grinding the heck outta my gears.

 

Have a ATI6970 2GB card and Skyrim is running on Ultra settings 8x AA and 16x AF (set in the Launcher). Was using the 12.1 preview driver since January, but with the Skyrim 1.5.26 patch, started getting game freezes and CTDs. Tried the 12.4 beta driver, it worked for a while, then the freezing/crashes returned. Went back to the 12.1 preview driver after reinstalling Skyrim. Had the game make new .ini files. Skyrim was mostly fine, rare freezing issues after several hours of play.

 

Last night, still on the 12.1 preview driver, started getting game freezes/CTDs every 5 minutes. :wallbash: The freezing issues got really bad in the Fort Amol area.

 

So, installed the 12.4 WHQL driver and FPS dropped 15 to 20 FPS on my rig (did not play long enough to test for game freezes). That FPS drop is unacceptable ATI, so I uninstalled 12.4, and installed the 12.3 WHQL driver. At the same time I uninstalled the Realtek 2.68 sound driver I was using and did not reinstall it (just using the sound driver Windows 7 x64 installed). The 12.3 driver returned the FPS back to the normal levels I had, in the range of 40 to 60 FPS.

 

Now after 2+ hours of gameplay, in the same area of Fort Amol and eastward, I have had no more game freezes.

 

So it appears either, the 12.3 ATI driver fixed the freezing issues or not reinstalling the Realtek sound driver fixed the freezing issues or both, for now....

[uberness23]

I had decent performance with 12.1, although horrible crossfire scaling (6990). 12.3 fixed the scaling and shot performance through the roof for me. 12.4 had a very minor increase in performance, although I had to install it twice due to leftover garbage from 12.3 borking the install.

Still getting random freezes, though they don't seem to be as frequent as yours were. Setting my ugrids above 5 results in hang-on-load without fail. Frustrating because I have more than enough horsepower to run several copies of the game and still get 40-50 fps.

 

Also have you (Thelios) tried setting AA and AF in CCC? I almost always get better performance, more stability, and greater quality doing that rather than using Skyrim's built in settings.

[Thelios]

Also have you (Thelios) tried setting AA and AF in CCC? I almost always get better performance, more stability, and greater quality doing that rather than using Skyrim's built in settings.

 

I have not tried it on this driver, yet. I was thinking that the CCC settings were still borked and would not override the game settings. But I may just give it a try.

 

I am almost scared to try anything now that Skyrim is seemingly stable. :tongue:

 

 

Edit: I am running uGrids 7.

[shardiru]

One thing I haven't seen mentioned, nor did you say if you've done so or not, was to delete the ini files in your My Games/Skyrim folder. I've had problems sometimes of mods making bad changes in them, and they don't revert when mods are uninstalled, nor are they deleted if you uninstall skyrim. Just a thought.