The Stubborn Scrolls V: Skyrim, a.k.a any mods at all kill Skyrim

[Arbabender]

Large read incoming.

 

I've heard most of it, I've read most of it. I've tried as hard as I can and Skyrim still refuses to work with mods. I'm going to give you a big rundown of what's happened so far here. Cheers for reading.

 

I've been modding Skyrim since the start basically. Things were going okay, but Skyrim refused to work at all after a certain point and no matter what mods were enabled/disabled it would always crash randomly or on load.

Re-install 1.

Got Skyrim reinstalled, working great. Start adding mods and after a short time it quits out again.

Re-install 2.

I'm going to cut out this part of the story, I'm sure you can guess what happened, but numerous re-installs later I decide it's about time to upgrade my PC a bit. On the installation at the time I had around 120 mods, with around 90 or so enabled at once. Things were working okay, but I'd get common CTD's throughout gameplay, and it got to the point where I got the same problem I've had now, and with nearly every other install, I can start the game and select a save to load/start a new game, but after the loading screen finishes the game CTDs instantly.

 

Specs before upgrade:

NVIDIA GTS 250, 1GB (I'm fairly sure it was an ECS card, it had an Arctic Cooling fan on the GPU.)

430W Thermaltake PSU

Intel i5-750 2.66GHz, Quad core.

4GB of RAM, 3.55GB Usable due to 32-Bit limitation.

etc. etc.

 

After the upgrade:

NVIDIA (EVGA) GTX 670 SuperClocked, 2GB

600W Corsair GS600 PSU

Processor and RAM still the same.

 

A fairly minor upgrade, but I uninstalled and reinstalled Skyrim anyway, I had a feeling it wouldn't play nice to a hardware change like that. This was around 3-4 days ago now.

I let Steam reinstall Skyrim, then I downloaded the HQ Texture Pack. After letting that run, I started and tested the game. Everything checked out. Ok, things were going well. Then I added an ENB to it. (Tried both Skyrim Enhanced Shaders FX1.0 and Sharpshooters Extreme). Skyrim refused to start. Ok, I'll just take the ENB off and start going through the process of installing everything in the STEP guide. (Skyrim Total Enhancement Project). I'm doing everything mod-wise through Mod Organizer. After reading a few things I decided to relocate Steam from 'C:\Program Files\Steam' to just 'C:\Steam', figuring UAC might not get in the road as much. I downloaded and installed the mods 'Bethesda Hi-Res DLC Optimized', 'Skyrim Realistic Overhaul' and 'Skyrim HD - 2K Textures', and Skyrim refused to start again. I also installed the Unofficial Skyrim Patch. I disabled the texture mods one at a time, and still the game wouldn't work (crash after the loading screen every time) until I had disabled all three of them. The game ran after that with only the USKP enabled. I had made some changes to the .ini's but even deleting and refreshing those wouldn't let me use the texture mods. I'm stumped. It seems that my system, or Skyrim, or both simply will not tolerate the use of texture mods. Even with my brand-spankin' new 670SC the game still won't run. I've got a couple of theories, but that's just it, they're theories.

 

Theory 1: Skyrim believes that 64bit is master race. The limit of 2GB on a 32bit program/system is just far too low for the game, hence to use and eventual addition of the LAA flag to the game for 64bit systems. However, this flag AFAIK doesn't help 32bit systems due to the inaccessibility of RAM amounts higher than around 3.5GB in most cases. If this is truly the case, my fix is clear and simple. Toss my entire Win7Ultimate installation out the 'window', programs and customizations be damned and fork over the cash for a 64bit system. This fix is easy on paper, but having to start from scratch isn't something I want to do until I have/want to. (Windows 9, pray to the computer gods won't be a horrible mess like Windows 8 will be on PC's(Yes, I've used the Consumer Preview. It stinks.))

 

Theory 2: Something about Skyrim, whether it be a recent patch or the DLC I downloaded doesn't play nice with texture mods. I had them working fine during my last installation of Skyrim on the GTS 250, however none of them were anywhere near as 'severe' as Skyrim HD. I'd tried to use SKHD at an earlier time but uninstalled it as it was playing hell with my graphics card. The ones I had were smaller mods like Hvergelmir's Shield Retextures and things like that. Far more focused mods, no where near as broad as SKHD.

 

I've tried scouring the internet looking for solutions and fixes. I've tried changing settings in the .ini's. I've made sure my sound settings are normal. There's plenty of other things I've tried and nothing seems to work.

Thanks to those of you who read the whole thing, and thanks for any help you can provide. Hopefully I can get to the bottom of why Skyrim hates my so much. TBH I never had anywhere near as many problems modding Oblivion, although it wasn't until much later that I actually got around to modding it.

[bben46]

Skyrim is a 32 bit game. That means that even with a 64 bit computer it can only use an absolute maximum of 4G - no matter how much ram you have. With a maxed out 32 bit system you have that 3.5G available. Not quite as much as you can use on a 64 bit with more than 4G, but still a respectable amount of ram.

 

Here is a link to my mods troubleshooting blog on my own site.

http://s1.zetaboards.com/bbenlibrary/topic/4751769/1/?x=0#post631601

 

Currently still under construction - any suggestions will be appreciated. As the site is only open to comments by invitation, please make your suggestions by PM (Private Message) at the Nexus.

[Arbabender]

Skyrim is a 32 bit game. That means that even with a 64 bit computer it can only use an absolute maximum of 4G - no matter how much ram you have. With a maxed out 32 bit system you have that 3.5G available. Not quite as much as you can use on a 64 bit with more than 4G, but still a respectable amount of ram.

 

Here is a link to my mods troubleshooting blog on my own site.

http://s1.zetaboards.com/bbenlibrary/topic/4751769/1/?x=0#post631601

 

Currently still under construction - any suggestions will be appreciated. As the site is only open to comments by invitation, please make your suggestions by PM (Private Message) at the Nexus.

Yeah, I understand that the limit is 4GB anyway, but before the addition of the LAA flag Skyrim was limited to 2GB no? I've heard people are having more success on 64bit systems, but I can't be sure.

I've seen you posting that link around a bit on the forums, and I've had it bookmarked for a short time now. Good luck helping people with their problems, but from what I've seen and experienced, Skyrim is extremely unpredictable. There are some problems with sure fire fixes, but there is still a lot of instability which I doubt we'll ever completely bypass, especially looking at Bethesda's previous games. Here's hoping that Skyrim can be one of the more stable in the near future.