Skyrim Freezes and CTDs Within 2 Mins

[Moncoh]

For the past few hours I have been experiencing freezes, crashing to the desktop after a few minutes. The freezing followed by a crash seems completely random as I've crashed while talking to an actor, standing still, and simply looking at my skill trees.

 

The most peculiar thing I've found is that my recent saves have gone way up in size.

July 13th, 6:26PM: 8,048KB

July 13th, 6:47PM: 15,236KB

July 13th, 7:19PM: 31,773KB

July 13th, 9:37PM: 44,062KB

July 13th, 9:57PM: 45,301KB

July 13th, 11:42PM: 49,087KB

 

^In a period little over 5 hours my save size has gone up 509.92%/41,039KB

 

Changes I've made to my Skyrim in that time:

- Deactivated "Convenient Horses"

- Deactivated "The Eyes of Beauty"

- Installed/Activated "ApachiiSkyHair"

- Installed/Activated "Natural Eyes"

- Installed/Activated "More accurate Khajiit chin and lips paint"

 

I tried disabling a ton of mods, including those recent ones and mods I expected to be taxing on performance such as "Improved Villages" and "Static Mesh Improvement Mod" but still experience crashes after a minute or two of playing.

It should be noted that all the crashes I experienced were at the base of the cliff path north of Ivarstead. I fast traveled to Whiterun Stables and ran around for a minute without crashing then returned to my original location and started crashing again. I don't have any mods active that affect exterior cells.

 

Note:

I tried enabling papyrus logs in the Skyrim.ini and no logs are made when my Skyrim crashes.

 

 

Update:

- Loaded from the save right before the first in that list (7,078KB) with most of my mods re-activated, played around for about half an hour and saved again, new save is only 6,951KB. It looks like my best option is just to just scrap those 5 hours of gameplay, perhaps my save got corrupted somehow. Still, it would be nice to know how I could avoid having this happen again.

Edited July 14, 2012 by DaltonTheHobo

[fume0101]

Everything you have outlined here is exactly the case for me as well. My most recent saves are also leagues above the previous ones, with only a few mod changes. I've gone as far as deactivating every single mod, and still freeze then crash within 2 minutes. Leading me to believe that I have garbage scripts corrupting those saves. I'm curious to know whether you ever found the direct cause in your case.

 

I might clean out my mod list, and attempt a more minimalist approach. I'm sitting at around 75 active plugins--down from 80 yesterday, which seems to be the most common tipping point for most users. In any case, I'll likely have to start a new playthrough now, but not until I have a mod list that I am satisfied with, as my daily fiddling seems to be the source of my woes.

[speed_toucher]

Ok, I think we have the same problem. I have been looking for a solution for days, not joking.

 

I think there are a few things that come together here, things like having an nvidia graphics card, running win 7 32bit, running the latest version of skyrim. I must also say that I had no problem at first, the game started freezing more and more often until it started crashing. Now it crashes after about 1 min.

 

If this is your case then don't bother trying any 4gb fixes or resolution/fitering/antialiasing changing, disabling Vsync is useless, same for firewall, antivirus and any background application, updated drivers = same issue, defragmentation or virus scanning does not work, neither does re-installing the game, starting the game from scratch, uninstalling mods or Nexus Mod Manager. Also tried different commands, but none seem to work. Please do not try hitting or screaming at you PC, as it does not have any favorable result.

[korkman]

When Papyrus logs are enabled for the first time, Skyrim must be launched twice (maybe to create the directory) and it will start logging immediately. Things to watch out for are event triggers left from uninstalled mods. OnUpdate etc. and amount of log entries in general. I am playing a new game now and for 1h 30m of gameplay only 85 KB papyrus log accumulated (I'm grinding, though).

 

When my previous savegame broke, it was infested by all kinds of mod remnants plus the Sheogorath quest bug and at the end the filesize spiked like reported here. At that time, it became obviously bugged: heavy script delays. But the corruption started long before. Spawned thieves stopped approaching me, I had to talk to them instead for the dialog to open. That was some 50 game hours ago. Then I found the blue palace arena lines in my Papyrus log and traced them down to a savegame about 250 game hours ago. That's when I abandoned the character and put it on a shelf for when (if) someone writes a savegame cleaning utility.

 

That being said, starting with empty .ini files and disabling hi res texture packs reduced CTDs for me, as well as disabling quest mods whenever I finished the quest (if the game crashes in a specific area, it's probably too many scripts active in that area). But be warned: Looking at your Papyrus logs may be disturbingly frustrating.

 

I will not uninstall a single mod in my new game. So when I play a quest mod, I will revert to the savegame from before installing. Skyrim really isn't designed for much movement in the mod list. And avoid that Sheogorath quest.

[speed_toucher]

So, you're saying that we should erase the saves and start a new game and avoid uninstalling mods?

[MrMaestrodeluxe]

Same issue, trying to fix a crash when using a certain mod to force NPCs to do...stuff... now my game crashes after 2 minutes (preceeded by a game freeze).

Upon reading this topic I checked my savegame size, yup, 55 megabytes for all saves made since I started tampering.

 

I suppose I now have to choose between starting from scratch or going back a to a save game 35 playhours younger (that one was 'only' 10 megs big)?

 

Well, this certainly teaches one to make a separate save when you're going to tamper with mods.

 

Now to find out why this has also knocked my sound off.

[korkman]

@speed_toucher: sorry I'm a bit pessimistic and grim about the matter since I "lost" my 350+ hours game just yesterday. In fact, some (many?) errors in the Papyrus log are harmless. But the whole concept of mod scripts stored in the player's savegame is asking for trouble. Modders have to be very careful and plan ahead removal / upgrade functions for their scripts. Errors happen and you end up with a timebomb in your savegame.

 

To test for the thieves thing, try the mod "You get robbed". If that thief won't approach you, but you can talk to him, your game is bugged the same way mine was.

 

Btw. my broken savegame was also 10 mb (it was for 100 hours or so), and then exploded to > 20 mb. But it was already buggy for 50 hours before that.

[speed_toucher]

I think you might be right on this one. If I remember right the game was working smooth before installing Sounds of Skyrim Civilization. The mod is great and works fine, but the problem is that I was unable to hear anything, so I tried re-installing the mods a few times. I think I polluted the Papyrus with the remains of the mod. I'm not sure if I'm right, but I will try erasing the save folder an see if there is any improvement. Not much to be sorry for, I'm barely level 8.

 

EDIT: I made the post at 5:05, it is now 8:32. I completely erased the Skyrim folder from "My Games" directory and started a new game with all the previously installed mods. Please note that when I first posted in this thread I was unable to end a conversation without a CTD.

 

But now, I played for almost 3 hours and a half without ANY problem what so ever, even the seldom freezes I had before are gone. What I suggest you guys should do is to backup your files and start a new game, if things are ok, then all we can do is wait for a save cleaning tool.

Edited July 15, 2012 by speed_toucher

[Tsewe]

Hello everyone,

I am (not so) glad to see other people have had the same annoying issues as me.

 

My savefile was only a bit more than 6 Mb big (around 10 hours of gameplay) so i just erased the game and reinstalled it, because of the freezing then crashing problem.

 

I have now reinstalled the game with a few mods (im going slowly to see if one causes particular problems). I started having freezing screens for 5 seconds each 2 or 3 minutes after installing several mods including SoS Civilization.

It might also be my savefile since i had uninstalled Better Horses once and it never went well after that. I have been looking for a solution for days but after reading this hread i begin to understand that savegame problem, even though mine is relatively small in terms of hours to yours.

 

I will try your "solution" speed toucher, and get back here to tell what i experience. Thank you all for your time.

 

EDIT trying an older savefile without SoS Civ, HQ Map and Enhanced Blood Textures seems to work fine! I'll give more details in time.

 

i have now played several hours without Enhanced Blood textures, Sos Civ and HQ Map with an older savegame and have no problem!

Edited August 1, 2012 by Tsewe