Random Intermittent CTD

[vincent1333]

Hello, all

 

After perusing the Nexus and searching google thoroughly, I am coming to you fine folks for help. You see my issue is that while playing Skyrim I will suffer seemingly random crashes, with no clear cause. Sometimes I can play for over an hour with no issue, and sometimes the game crashes after only a few minutes. I'm rarely doing the same things when it happens either. To top it off, I am getting near constant stuttering during play, though my FPS read in the 30's most of the time.

 

I have been playing Skyrim on the PC for a few months now, including multiple uninstalls and re-installs, but I have never had these issues before, even with many of the same mods installed. I am not sure if it is a possible issue with the most recent patch, or if I have finally reached my systems capacity for running concurrent mods.

 

I do use NMM and BOSS, and even gave Wrye Bash a swirl to see if it might alleviate some issues. But no luck.

 

I will post my system specs, along with an attachment of my BOSS report. Hopefully one of you can see an issue where I cannot. In the mean time, I am going to disable all of my mods and attempt to test each one individually, though given how random the crashes come, this may prove difficult.

 

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

System Specs:

Windows 7 64BIt

AMD Athlon II X2 270 - Stock

MSI R5770 Hawk 1GB - Stock

4GB of RAM

All the latest patches and drivers

[bben46]

Background processes can cause crashes at seemingly random times. Especially IM or VOIP applications checking if there are any new messages. Other processes that can cause problems are things that check the internet for updates, An auto defrag starting, Windows indexing service.

 

One that got me in the early days of Oblivion, an HP printer driver that checked for updates every so often. How often do you suppose they actually updated the printer driver? Once a year? It turned out that HP had changed their update site and the old one didn't work - so the updater tried to connect about every 10 minutes, and when it couldn't make a connection, tried again 10 minutes later. :wallbash: When I killed that process, my crashes went form at least one every half hour to about 6 hours apart - when I was running out of ram. :rolleyes:

 

Grab a copy of Game Booster while it's still free. It will help shut down unneeded background processes. After next month it will no longer be free http://majorgeeks.co...ster_d5952.html

[vincent1333]

I already use the latest version of Game Booster. I usually manually close all applications then run Game Booster before I begin playing. I also defrag pretty frequently, especially once I install a bunch of new mods.

 

Thanks for the input!

[Damius]

That is quite a lot of mods, but i would suggest stripping out any high-res texture replacer mods to begin with, especially face and body ones. I've been testing my own game pretty heavily with various combinations of mods, and found the ctd rate goes up a stupid amount using eye, body replacers, face maps, face dirt and facial scar mods. Also you seem to have all three versions of balanced magic installed, you only need one, i personally suggest adept, delete the others or the bashed patch will try to import them all.

 

What i tend to do is half my load order and test for a while in a few places where i often ctd. If it goes away i add half of the remaining mods back in so im now running three quarters of them and repeat, and then the final quarter a few at a time. If i do ctd i remove the last bunch of mods a few at a time and repeat until process of elimination leaves me with the one bad mod, or the handful of bad mods. I then load just those mods and do one last test, just to confirm. Thats how i figured out that body mods were doing it to my game, the ctd stayed with only 4 cosmetic mods and nothing else.

 

Also worth noting is that gamebooster doesn't always help, i found it actually hinders certain games but have yet to actually use it for skyrim so own preference really.

 

SMCO http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=13529 helps a little bit just by saving processing power, but its still very much in testing. If you try it make backups first, and be weary of the .nif and the bsa .nif tools, .dds should be all you need.

[vincent1333]

Ok, I'll give it a try. And I will keep testing my mods as well.

 

Thanks!

[vincent1333]

I have an update for my crashing issue. I tested the game with all of my mods disabled, and still got a crash only a few minutes in. Any ideas?

 

Could a corrupt save cause these issues? I will attempt a new game with mods disabled and post my results.

 

EDIT: Started a new game without mods, and it seems to be running nicely. No crash after about 10 minutes. Gonna try adding mods a little at a time.

 

EDIT 2: Corrupt save idea is out. Experienced a crash after optimistically adding all of my mods back on at once. At least I am reasonably sure it is a mod conflict now. Now to find out which one(s).

Edited May 21, 2012 by vincent1333