CTD before logo - (new issue, running great for months)

[RaxeAnyael]

Very weird. Just tonight, Skyrim began crashing. I was playing fine earlier today. Now it crashes before even the logo displays.

 

I've been playing with this same configuration (see bottom) for 255 hours over several months with no issues until today.

 

I'm not sure where even to look (logs, etc.) that might give me clues as to what is causing this. There is nothing in the Windows logs which are indicative of an issue.

 

What I've tried:

1. Reducing the audio quality (as some posts indicate) and that made no difference.
   
2. Reducing the video quality and that made no difference.
   
3. Removing all the extra plugins and mods and that made no difference.
   

 

Events which may be relative:

1. Yesterday, just after I started Skyrim, while it was loading my game, I heard an audio pop and lost my audio.
   
2. I shut down Skyrim and found a chat window from a friend.
   
3. We chatted for a while, we quit, and then I restarted Skyrim -- but still no audio -- so I rebooted the system.
   
4. Following the reboot everything seemed fine.
   
5. When I came up to play today, I was notified there was an antivirus update.
   
6. I did the update and then rebooted. Following the reboot, it notified me of an AMD Catalyst update.
   
7. I did the catalyst update with no reboot (none was required).
   
8. I played for a couple hours and, when done, did a quicksave followed by an explicit save (just my practice).
   
9. I then exited to desktop (via the menu) and noticed it hung at the last click to say "Yes" to exit with the "busy" mouse cursor.
   
10. I left to go check on something else and when I came back it had closed down.
    
11. Now when I attempt to start, the screen goes black (as it always has) but instead of coming up with the logo, it flickers a few times and then goes back to the desktop.
    

 

System configuration:

OS: Windows 7 x64, SP1

DirectX: 11

Motherboard: Gigabyte

BIOS: Award v6.00PG

CPU: AMD Athlon II X4 600e, 2.20GHz

RAM: 4GB

Video adapter: AMD Radeon HD 6850

Video driver: AMD 8.980.0.0, 6/11/2012 (Catalyst 12.6)

Video resolution: 1920x1080 (using my HDTV), 16:9, antialiasing: 8, anisotropic filter: 8

Audio: 16bit, 48000 (DVD Quality)

Audio driver: AMD HDMI Audio

 

Game configuration:

Skyrim Mods: AutoUnequip arrows, SkyUI.

Syrim Plugins (in order): Skyrim.esm, Update.esm, HighRes Texture Pack01.esp, HighResTexturePack02.esp, Auto Unequip Arrows.esp.

Edited June 30, 2012 by RaxeAnyael

[RaxeAnyael]

I confirmed that the issue is the AMD 12.6 catalyste release. I did a system restore that took it back to when I was running the 12.3. I then moved forward adding the other changes which had occurred EXCEPT for the catalyst update.

 

Skyrim is working again. SO: BE CAUTIOUS ABOUT USING THE AMD 12.6. Some folks have had no issues, some (like me) have had problems. Note my system configuration in the original post.