Blue screen Black screen of Death

[tnc420]

For those of you using ATI graphics cards and are getting BSOD. I have finally figured out why it is happening but I can only offer a cheap solution. The Blue screen, Black screen of death or when Skyrim causes your ATI card to hang is caused by your card overheating. There is no other reason, NONE I tell you. After putting in more time fixing this game then actually playing it I can assure you that I have tried every possible solution posted on any and every site I could find and still having the BSOD ruin my day I have finally narrowed it down to overheating. The list of things I have tried is staggering and I have had this issue since 11-11-11! So how do I know? Because I have tested and tested and tested and finally fixed it...sort of.

 

Here's what you can do to see if it works for you.

Open your Catalyst Control Center and set all the settings you can to low or off. We are trying to keep the temp as low as possible. So no overclocking at least for right now.

You can turn your fan on manual if you wish and set it to any setting you wish or leave it on auto. I tried both ways doesn't matter too much.

Also you can open your puter and place a house fan to blow directly into it to keep it cooler. I know what your thinking right now but sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.

Anyways, open your launcher and set the settings to low. To see what's happening with the temp you can set Skyrim to open as a window, keep your CCC window open so you can see the temp gauge while playing the game.

Now I crash and burn at 70 and higher. Anything below that, even at 69 and I can play for hours, FINALLY! Why? No idea. I'm not an expert, just someone who is very determined to fix this issue or at least keep others from wasting their time like I have been doing.

 

Now to see if that truly is the problem just up your graphics to high or overclock your card or both then go back into the game and watch your temp. If you crash when it reaches 70 (yours may be different higher or lower Idk) then there you go. You now at the very least know the reason why and knowing is half the battle :)

Next turn the settings back to low and see for how long you can play without the BSOD occurring. I'm 99% sure it won't occur at all. Note you'll still have all the other wonderful bugs Bethesda left for you however.

 

At this point you can start changing your options if you want until you find a decent setting that won't crash your card. Until Bethesda or ATI or any brilliant soul on this site fixes this I believe it's the only solution I can find.

 

Testing with mods. Well that's something you'll have to play around with yourself. Add it in and watch the temp.

I am also patched up to 1.7 however I assure you that I have had this BSOD with every patch, hell like I said since 11-11-11.

 

In my testing I installed Fallout 3 and guess what, the same damn BSOD. Really? I played Oblivion for years without a single graphic card BSOD. So I can only assume that whatever Bethesda did to Fallout 3 they never fixed it and incorporated it into Skyrim. Now they either don't care about it or they don't have a clue as how to fix it. However either way it's been 4 years figure it out already!!!!!

I have also been playing Deus Ex, Empire Total War, The Witcher 2 and KOA without so much as a hiccup from my puter. Hmm, that's interesting, no?

 

Things I have tried as suggested by others on all of the different forums I have tried. Note most of them had the same answers and tricks.

Also it shouldn't matter which card you got as long as it's an ATI. I have an ATI 4600. But so many others have had the same exact problem with different models.

Your puter specs shouldn't matter either since its the game and the card causing the issue and not your puter.

 

Memory check, done.

Registry cleaner, done.

Adjusting game graphics, done.

Adjusting graphic card options, done.

Updating every driver in my puter, done.

Updating windows, done.

Updating Skyrim, done.

Uninstalling and reinstalling the game, so many times :(

Uninstalling and reinstalling the ati drivers, done.

Changing where the file is located. C:/... C:/programfiles...etc.

Adding tesv.exe in the Data execution prevention exemption list, done.

Downloaded all the different cracked versions. Happens with them all.

Downloaded from steam again and again, BSOD is still there.

Steam cache cleaning, done.

So many other tricks I'm tired of thinking about it all, but you get the point.

Are you thinking to yourself, hey I've done all that too

STOP trying to fix it with bad advice cause I just gave you your answer. Your welcome.

 

Again this is only for those people who get the Blue screen, Black screen of death, Monitor goes blank then turns off, system restarts in the middle of a game (all the same thing) that are using ATI graphic cards.

 

My Gpu is set at 300MHz, I can go up but the game runs smooth with no lag so why bother.

My Memory Clock is at 400MHz.

While playing my temp varies from 50 to 69 but hasn't hit 70 and not one BSOD!

My fan is on auto but like I said you can turn it up to 100 if it helps you but I think they wear out faster idk I read it somewhere once.

As far as the game goes I have it set to low but I got the distance of actors, objects, and items to MAX oh yeah. Grass=0 hate the bushes for grass thing.

I can play on medium, high will burn me, but again what's the point. It's still pretty for me on low.

I do have some mods in but they are mostly cosmetic and nothing over the top like HD textures. Altho I havn't tried them yet so who knows.

 

So, if you are NOT using an ATI graphic card and you have NOT experienced this BSOD then you have read this for nothing and whatever you think I have said is wrong or stupid I honestly and truly don't care what you have to say.