How can you tell corrupt saves from game bugs?

[Hoamaii]

Hi,

 

Sorry if this sounds like a dumb question to many of you but I'm farily new to this.

 

Question is in the title really, I never use quick-saves, only hard saves but sometimes overwrite older "buggy saves" (probably not smart, uh?)

 

Played the game on PS3 before and I know it is originally full of bugs that may sometimes pass, on PC, for mods glitches.

 

Therefore my questions:

 

- what exactly can help you make sure that the bugs, CTBs or CTDs you're encountering don't come from the game itself?

 

- how can you tell a corrupt save from a clean one?

 

Thanks a million to whomever finds the time to enlighten me! :0)

[Saratje]

- what exactly can help you make sure that the bugs, CTBs or CTDs you're encountering don't come from the game itself?

• There are four main reasons why a game might crash:
  
• You encountered a bug in the game, which shuts it down. The game tries to do something it can't, gets a headache over it and bugs out on you. Search google and these forums for known bugs that may crash your game. If entering the "Haunting Brownhoof" cave is known to crash the game, stay out of it until it is patched.
  
• You are using a mod that breaks the game, either by itself or in combination with other mods. One mod wants to go left, the other mods to go right, they don't agree on eachother. Turn off all the mods and switch them on one by one, trying to play for an hour seeing if your game crashes again. The mod that causes it to crash the moment it is reactivated is probably the culprit.
  
• Your video drivers and/or graphics card cause a conflict, crashing the game. Skyrim is a very complicated game, a lot can go wrong in the graphics department. Even more so when you use graphics mods. Search google and these forums for information on which video drivers are known to crash your game. Do not update your drivers just because a new update is available if your old drivers worked fine.
  
• When using an illegal/pirated copy of a game, people often 'crack' it so that it can be played without a license. This often means the game is somewhat reprogrammed and is generally always unstable. Playing pirated copies is never a good idea, they always break and mods often work different on them, causing problems.
  

 

Far less likely, but possible is:

• Your hardware fails in one way or another. This can range from a dusty coolant-fan to corrupt memory, a worn out HDD, anything. These forums probably can't help you a lot there. A hardware forum or even your PC store is of more help. See if you have CTD's and bluescreens outside of Skyrim also.
  
• You are out of memory because too many processes are running in the background. Don't do a virus scan, a drive back-up, a drive defragmentation and a game all at the same time. Shut down other programs when you play a very system demanding game such as Skyrim, or tune down your graphic settings in Skyrim's video menu.
  

 

- how can you tell a corrupt save from a clean one?

The best way to tell a corrupt save from a clean one is by testing the save with all mods turned off. See if the save still crashes. If it does, load an earlier save. Way back, when Skyrim was still around patch 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 many quests were broken. While these quests were fixed later on, many characters on saves which were created long ago remained broken. Some quests don't start, others can't be completed. Making a new character would fix these options.

 

Thanks a million to whomever finds the time to enlighten me! :0)

I hope this helps. It's not fun spending one or two days testing one mod after another but it is the only way to see what mod may cause a savegame crash. If you aren't far in the game, you can also create a new character to see if bugged quests and areas suddenly stop crashing for you now.

[Hoamaii]

@ Saratje:

 

thanks a lot for replying! Your explanations are very clear, I really appreciate this.

 

Yep, I searched Google for all this too - trouble is you can find everything and their contraries too, which is why I addressed this forum.

 

And just to be clear (didn't even think of mentioning the obvious to me): I run a fully licenced copy of the game - in other words I bought both copies, PS3 and PC - I'm a screenwriter, wouldn't dream of pirating anything.

 

GPU issues and background apps, I've taken care of from the start - and nope, no other problems outside of Skyrim. Conflicting mods are the hardest ones to pin down for me - and true, it takes hours to do this. Unfortunately, I'm pretty far in the game, several hundred hours and level 61 when problems started to appear (65 now). I'd hate to go back to level 20 when I had no mods at all!..

 

Thanks for giving me a simple way to test my saves - turning off all mods and see how it goes. I'll try that.

 

Truly grateful for the time you took to answer my questions :0)

 

Cheers from Paris.

Edited July 7, 2012 by Hoamaii

[Saratje]

Just don't overwrite any saves during the mod-testing. You don't want to corrupt the savegames. What also helps is to record what area crashes and to check the creation kit if anything strange happens in that area. If it tries to access, lets say an enchantment of resist magic, while your mod changes that enchantment to resist all elements, then it may crash on that too. It may safe some time, or then again it may help nothing or end up making things more confusing. :)

[Hoamaii]

Thanks again, Saratje.

 

Yeah, I'd love to check with the CK but even though I downloaded it, I'm not familiar at all with it. Will give it a try though, see if I can make any sense of it.

 

Cheers to you :0)