Complete computer crash, oddest cause ever, can't find anywhere on

[Rakaesa]

So, I'm playing Skyrim normally with a bunch of mods installed (The mods aren't the cause, keep reading,) and decide to be a dick and have my character be evil for roleplay reasons.

 

I Head up to Dawnstar, the most isolated capital in Skyrim to mass slaughter everyone there. I'd been playing for two days without any crashes except for two or three mods I had to uninstall causing game crashes.

 

I Go far out on the path and crouch in some trees with my bow out. Sure enough, three adventurers come walking down the path thanks to a mod.

 

Shoot the first two, third doesn't notice, everything's going fine.

 

I Take aim on the third one, pull the bow back, let the arrow fly-

 

Just as she dies from a one hit kill before she has a chance to fall to the ground, my entire computer crashes. The computer makes whirring and hissing noises, there's no game sound, it is replaced by a static mechanical noise that almost breaks my eardrums thanks to my earphones.

 

I Instantly cut off the power to my computer.

 

I Go back to the game, kill the same three people, nothing bad happens. Okay, problem solved.

 

A full real two hours later, I've joined the dark brotherhood and I'm doing my first side contract to kill the miner boss in, you guessed it, Dawnstar ironically enough.

 

I Head over with a few more levels than before and plenty of damage to one hit almost anything while sneaking, take position in view of the mining boss lady.

 

Pull back my bow, let the arrow fly-

 

The same exact thing happens. It makes contact, and instant computer crash with the exact same identical noises, and me cutting off the power to my computer.

 

I've been shooting people all day with my bow, and a lot in between those two kills. I googled this problem, I can't find anything.

 

My main worry is that it damages my drivers or my physical PC, because the noises it makes when it crashes are LOUD.

 

This is the first time I've heard about this bug, and I know what the cause is, but I have NO IDEA Why shooting people with arrows rarely is the cause.

 

Could it be Dawnstar specifically? Even then, I had killed guards with my bow too and nothing happened then.

 

Ideas? Could this damage my computer?

[Kalpon777]

I had a similar problem on my old Toshiba rig, which also got quite warm when gaming. I would get this randomly when doing almost anything graphic-related on that PC. Did some serious digging as I had a feeling it wasn't the overheating causing it (although it certainly didn't help).

 

Ended up being High-Definition Audio Codec spiking to 100% usage and completely killing my resources causing the PC to go black-screen and make crazy repetitive noises.

 

• Start > Control Panel
  

• Hardware & Sound > Device Manager
  

• Navigate to System Devices
  

• Look for High-Definition Audio Controller > Right Click > Disable
  

 

Do this before starting Skyrim. When you restart it will automatically re-enable this codec so no harm done. It's worth a shot to see if that's causing the problem, although I have heard of this happening for a number of reasons. Mainly overheating the GPU. Download HWmonitor and check your temps when gaming, make sure they don't rise above max temp. Safe range is around 40-50°C for either CPU or GPU.

 

I also highly recommend checking your Event Logger and see if you can't find an error to post on this thread. Goto Start > Run > Event Viewer (For Windows 7).

 

Let us know

[steve40]

I have had crash problems like those described above while playing various games. I tried a latency checking program and kept seeing these large spikes every 30 seconds. It turned out to be caused by my harddrive monitoring software that was locking up the system every time it polled the hardware drivers to check on their health! It was polling every 30 seconds, causing a slight stutter, sometimes a loud buzzing noise. On the random occasion it would freeze completely with a loud stuttering/buzzing noise or even crash my PC (this would only happened while playing games btw). I removed that nasty software and all problems gone. Edited July 25, 2012 by steve40