Skyrim pauses every 3 to 5 minutes

[Blacklyte]

While it doesn't make it unplayable, it is really annoying. I just bought the game in the Steam summer sale yesterday and the game does it whether I run with or without mods, or on low to ultra settings. I have tried creating another character to see if it had something to do with save bloating, but it doesn't appear to be so. Can someone help me?

The specs for my laptop can be found here: Razer Blade (Yes, I bought one) I can typically run any game just fine, but Skyrim is... I don't know.

[bben46]

Could be an external program taking over the focus for a few seconds. Typically a program that either checks for incoming connections - such as a PM or VOIP (xfire) or one that calls home every so often to tell what you have been up to on the internet. Such as some malware, facebook or other social media that absolutely must tell people who could care less what you are doing all the time.

 

I found a Hewlett Packard program that called in to check for updates - If it was unable to connect it called every ten minutes. HP had changed the URL for the updates and was calling the wrong number - every ten minutes. And Oblivion was crashing like clockwork - every ten minutes. How often does a printer need updating? :pinch:

[Blacklyte]

I disconnected from the internet, uninstalled a bunch of programs that are required to connect to the net and put Steam in offline mode and it still does this. I am going to try it out with Gamebooster to see if it has any effect. I will update this post with the results.

 

EDIT: While it did smooth things out, the pauses continued. I think it might be helpful to add in that when the game pauses, the music and the sounds from the world still play like nothing happened.

Edited July 14, 2012 by Blacklyte

[Sherentine]

I have the exact problem, Skyrim will pause on me for about 10 - 15 seconds no matter what screen I'm on, with background sound/music still playing as though there's nothing wrong. For me, this was after I downloaded 2 extra games on Steam the other day. Skyrim has never done this before, so I tried uninstalling them but there's no difference.

[Blacklyte]

Well, I started a new save and now it is stuttering like crazy. It is starting to make me wish I never bought it.

[Sherentine]

I was told that too many new saves can clutter up the game speed, so a few hours ago I tried deleting all the old saves I made other than the one I was currently on and a few saves I made within my last 30 minutes of playtime, but no dice. It did increase my fps a little bit, so I guess that's a boon. It still paused on me every few minutes unfortunately. I'm going to try and flip through previous posts in this section to see if there's anything on the issue, unless you already have.

[Georgiegril]

Have you looked at your processes on the Windows task manager while playing? And also the performance? I agree w BBen that it could be an external program/process, and even having turn a lot off, there may be something you missed. Also, if you are coming close to your RAM, (or have a lot of reserved memory for other programs) it may be pausing to clear out available memory for you, and you can see that on the performance area of the task manager.

[Temple75]

This is the same issue I am having. Their is another post here as well with others with the same problem. For me about every minute i freeze for a couple seconds but the music and sound effects keep going as if there is no prooblem. Slowly but surely i am seeing more and more psts popping up over this in the last few days, but, not a huege amount. I have tried a bunch if different things I have seen mentioned as far as clearing the scripts or to help file bloating but to no evail. I finally got up to level 52 which was tough with a 2 year old, but now it looks like I will have to start over. I loaded my 1st save which is right before char creation and played for 25 minutes with 0 freezes. I have seen some mention it may have something to do with scripts loading from mods due to the last patch but not sure. It makes it unplayuable to me as every minute i freeze. I hope someone can figure it out as I would hate to lose all that time.

[bben46]

Here is a link to my mods troubleshooting blog. .

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 by invitation, please make your suggestions by PM (Private Message) at the Nexus.

[Sherentine]

For me, it turned out to be a problem with mods I had installed recently, and this solution will end up with having to get rid of all your data and start over, so use this solution at your own risk.

I first deleted all my mods just in case it was an issue that snowballed into a collective issue with all of them. After this, I encountered a stage where I couldn't even play from my saves because the game wouldn't advance past the initial loading splash screen after hitting "continue" or "load" in the main menu. This is the solution for THAT problem:

 

- Close steam (right click on the system tray icon and choose exit)-

- Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\ or whatever folder your steam is installed

- Go to Steam/steamapps/common/skyrim/Skyrim

- Delete (or move to desktop to avoid issues if it does not work) the SkyrimPrefs.ini file

- Open Steam and go to : Library > Skyrim > Right Click > Properties > Local Files > Verify Integrity of Game cache

- It will download a "missing" file, 22MB or something

- Ready to play

 

I got this from this site, http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/39409/i-cant-get-past-the-opening-splash-screen-when-i-try-to-start-playing-skyrim, but copied the instructions here for convenience's sake. You can find the same instructions in the top-rated answer.

 

Please check if there's another way around your problem first, it would suck if you had to start over. :(