Dragonborn CTD and Freezes

[HRRoach]

ok i am a noob...

 

My skyrim.ini does not have anything about ugrids.... niether does my skyrimprefs or any other .ini i can find.

 

Same random ctds

[TheScytale]

I have the same problem, and my .ini files don't contain the uGrids lines. Need some help please ...

[AH1]

Yup, I'm experiencing the same problem. Browsing the Internet, it seems this may be a bug in the game itself and not necessarily mod related, although perhaps mods make it worse. People playing the XBox version are also experiencing it.

 

I've NEVER had Skyrim freeze on me before. I've had more than my fair share of CTDs, but never a freeze. I wonder what is causing it.

[IndianMoon]

I always get a CTD whenever I take their armour. I can take their boots, gauntlets, etc...but once I try to take the armour I get a CTD.

[AH1]

That sounds like an item issue to me. Are you using any replacers?

[thedutchguys]

Same problem here, but it's not a local problem, like CTDs only in a special area. I got dozens and dozens of CTDs since I downloaded Dragonborn, the only pattern I found was that the CTDs occurred most likely if I attempted to fast travel with lots of followers. As more followers as more CTDs occured and if I was that lucky that the fast travel succeeded I got sometimes violet or black texture grafic bugs. This already happened in the "old" Skyrim, no need to travel to Solstheim at all to make this experience. CTDs were dependant on how much textures/grafics were to load at the fast travel target (loads of trees and grass for example, fast travelling to somewhere near Falkreath or Riften was just a pain...)

 

I did the same as always, I deinstalled all mods, parked my toon in an interior cell, created a clean save and installed mod per mod anew and tested for CTDs.

 

All I can say so far is, it's not a mod problem, at least for me. I downloaded the new Dragonborn HD pack and maybe this was the bit needed to get over the top concerning the stableness of my system, grafic settings and .initweaks.

 

I played Skyrim with higher than ultra values, tons of high rez mods and loads of .initweaks.

 

The most stressing adjustments:

 

-playing with 2 x 670 GTX SLI (4 GB VRAM...and yes, I know VRAM isn't doubled by SLI mode, one card has 4 GB VRAM) but on 2560 x 1440 resolution (this resolution makes a big difference, but if you ever played Skyrim with loads of high rez texture mods at this resolution, you never want back, never, it's a dream)

 

-uGridtoLoad 7/64

 

-AF x 16

 

-AA x 8

 

-Transparency AA x 8

 

-Ambient Occlusion On and on high quality lvl

 

-triple FXAA (Skyrim's own, RCRNv36 FXAA and Nvidia FXAA)

 

-alone my mountains and rocks have 8k rez textures, NPCs 4k (CBBE)

 

 

I downgraded uGridtoLoad 7 to uGridtoLoad 5 and decreased some other values (treeload from 100.000 to 75.000, LoDs from 20 to 15, decreased DecalsperFrame, SkinnedDecalsperFrame and DecalLifetime and maxParticles from 1000 to 750) and kept the grafic card settings and my mods and now

I will get a CTD here and there, but maybe one per hour and no need to load a game thrice for one fast travel as before. I deinstalled SFO Summer Edition and changed to the normal edition, too.

 

I have no idea what Dragonborn did, but it increased system pressure, defintely....and to be honest, there must be some sloppy coding within Dragonborn...I expect some more performance for my machine (i7 2600K, 2 x Asus 670 GTX SLI, 16 GB 1600 DDR3 RAM, 256 GB SSD), really... My suspects number one are scripts that came along with Dragonborn, I really think that some of them aren't running smoothly and therefore claim performance.

 

Now I am able to play again and I am able to keep the "real important" settings (that's not the .initweaks, the texture mods in combination with your grafic card settings make your Skyrim shine).

Yep got the same over here, Dragonborn did definitely increased the load on the system in some way, but that shouldn't cause it to have ctd's. Especially with my setup : (Intel i7 3770K @ 4.7 Ghz, 1x AMD Club 3D HD7970, 16 GB Ram @ 1.9 Ghz*, 125 GB SSD) so, not just a Nvidia Problem ;). I'm also going to try lowering the Grid and -Treeload and Particle LoDs but honestly I don't think it will help much, since friends of mine without such high settings are also having this problems, some of them even had to lower the gridload to 3 O.o!. So I'm going to assume this is just bad coding and I'm even considering to de-install Dragonborn now that Epic mods like Valenwood-Rangers are being released.

[aviform]

No Ugrids here either, and it's not just in Solstheim, I freeze and crash EVERYWHERE since dragonborn, though no problems before.

[TonyTitan]

Ugrids are not listed in your Skyrim.ini by default.....the reason being that Bethesda doesn't want you changing that value as it can create greater instability issues for the player. So if you're wanting to add some of the .ini edits/tweaks that have been posted in this topic, I'd suggest that you research on what each does, and where you place it within your .ini. One thing that I did experience when I used an edited .ini file (especially with a modified ugrid) was that once I changed that value and started playing, when I created saves, they HAD to be loaded up with the same ugrid value they were created with. So if I had a character that I was running around with my Ugrids set at 7....and then I started having stability issues again and wanted to change it back to 5....Once I made that change and tried to load that save game that was created with the setting at 7, I would immediately CTD.

 

It's something to think about....you might lose a bunch of saves over a setting that may or may not get you the results you want in the long run.

[AH1]

At least in my case, I never modified the uGrids, either in an ini or via a mod, so that wasn't the case.

 

What I've found is that in areas where the game freezes a lot (and they seem random), I can get past it by saving frequently (not quick or auto, mind you), and reloading these saves until I either get past the problem or it randomly stops freezing. Some "old tricks" from Oblivion help here.

 

One thing you can try is looking at the ground until you are out of the area that is freezing. This isn't a guaranteed fix, but it does seem to work quite often.

 

Another trick is to keep the sky out of your FOV. Though I cannot confirm it, I suspect the sky is the culprit. So, in other words, don't look into the distance at the sky, and keep the sky off your screen, and it minimizes the odds it will freeze.

 

Still another trick is to frequently enter and exit internal cells. If you are traveling around the island and you see an internal cell, go in even if you have no reason to; save in there; and then exit. That seems to at least move the freeze zone to somewhere else. I also frequently typed "PCB" and "clearinvalidregistrations" (if you are using SKSE) just to make sure, though I don't think it was helping.

 

If you need to leave/return to Solstheim, you have to avoid the in-game travel. The only way I've found to leave is to go to an interior cell and COC to another interior cell. After, you have to make a new save, exit to desktop, open Skyrim again, and then load that save. This is the only way I've found to avoid the travel freeze.

 

Theories: Well I've already said the sky seems to be a problem. I've heard others suggest it is a conflict with ENB--possible, but my tests didn't bear it out. Since going into interior cells seems to temporarily relieve it, I do suspect a grid load is the issue, even for those of us not using uGridstoload. The default uGrids of 5 may be too much for Solstheim, though I did not test below 5 since that makes the game unstable. It does not appear to be related to vRAM or physical RAM, processor speed, or power, though if you are low on those things it may exasperate the problem. For now, I have to think that this is something hardcoded into the game by Bethesda. Until they fix it, or until someone else figures it out more fully, we just have to adapt.

[MShoap13]

Ugrids are not listed in your Skyrim.ini by default.....the reason being that Bethesda doesn't want you changing that value as it can create greater instability issues for the player. So if you're wanting to add some of the .ini edits/tweaks that have been posted in this topic, I'd suggest that you research on what each does, and where you place it within your .ini. One thing that I did experience when I used an edited .ini file (especially with a modified ugrid) was that once I changed that value and started playing, when I created saves, they HAD to be loaded up with the same ugrid value they were created with. So if I had a character that I was running around with my Ugrids set at 7....and then I started having stability issues again and wanted to change it back to 5....Once I made that change and tried to load that save game that was created with the setting at 7, I would immediately CTD.

 

It's something to think about....you might lose a bunch of saves over a setting that may or may not get you the results you want in the long run.

The workaround for this has been known since Fallout 3 (at least).

 

Load your save, alt+tab out and open your Skyrim.ini, set uGrids back to the default of 5, save the .ini, alt+tab back into the game, open the console and run "refini", make a new save.

 

It's advised to backup your old save (or at least not overwrite it). It's also advised to immediately exit to the menu and then load the new save you just made to make sure the uGrids change took.

Edited April 29, 2013 by MShoap13