Skyrim Stuttering/Freezing/Crashing

[Cormiick]

***FIXED***

***SCROLL DOWN FOR RESOLUTION***

 

 

While playing Skyrim on my PC for the first time, I added a bunch of mods. During gameplay however, for some reason, the screen would go black for a few seconds and then go back to the game (I'm not sure if this is considered stuttering or freezing). It was usually outdoors, rarely indoors. This happened a lot, so I tried disabling a bunch of mods and testing it but I still had this problem.

 

After disabling every single mod I had, I gave up and re-installed Skyrim. Completely vanilla, with no mods. I made a new character and during the first part of the game it did the same thing, and a few minutes after that it even crashed completely. At first I played at Ultra, 8x anti-aliasing and 16x anisoptric filtering. I figured this might be the problem, so during all of my test runs using the vanilla game I tried High with 2x anti-aliasing and 8x anisoptric filtering. Still had the issue. Then I tried it at medium with 2x anti-aliasing and no anisoptric filtering... Still no luck. At this point I know it's not a performance issue, because I know for a fact my computer can handle Skyrim at Medium with no problems.

 

Then I tried downloading NVIDIA's latest Beta drivers (320.14). After that it still happened.

 

Any suggestions on what I should do? I've already ruled out my mods, my specs, and my drivers as issues (unless you can tell me otherwise) and I have no idea what to try next.

 

System Specs:

 

GPU: Gigabyte NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti

CPU: Quad-Core Intel i3 540 3.07GHz

RAM: 8GB

OS: Windows 7 64-bit

Edited May 17, 2013 by Cormiick

[Monkinsane]

From what you've described, it could be three possible things:

 

1. Driver issue - try redownloading the latest stable drivers from Nvidia.

2. DirectX - Try reinstalling from the Redist folder inside your Skyrim installation folder.

3. Flakey Graphics card.

 

Also make sure your page file is not disabled.

 

Does this only happen in Skyrim, or other games as well?

Edited May 15, 2013 by Monkinsane

[prod80]

Overclocked Gfx card can do this or VRAM overloaded...

 

Any other tweaks you done to the game except mods? eg. INI file editing?

[Cormiick]

I tried the 3 latest stable NVIDIA drivers and none of them did the trick. (I installed them as safely as I could and restarted each time I installed)

 

I used all 3 of the installers located inside the Skyrim folder. (Microsoft Visual C++, DirectX and DotNetFX) (I also rebooted after these were installed)

 

My video card is not overclocked, nor has it ever been.

 

My page file is enabled.

 

Skyrim is the only game this happens to. I've played games higher end than Skyrim with perfect results.

 

Also my Steam folder along with Skyrim is located at C:/Games/Steam. I moved it here from Program Files after I started encountering the issues.

 

 

Finally, just another detail, last year I played Skyrim on the exact same rig I have now and had zero issues. It was a pirated version (I've given up piracy now and I own the game, please don't judge) and nothing like this ever happened. Therefore it's highly unlikely that this is a hardware problem.

Also the pirated version I had was Skyrim patch 1.5 I believe

Edited May 16, 2013 by Cormiick

[prod80]

good you switched to a non pirated version :p

 

anyway, dont try and compare a modded skyrim to any other game... skyrim with mods can be extremely heavy on your system, potentially much heavier than what is currently on the market. It might not look 'as good as' but looking good and being extremely demanding on your system are 2 separate things.

 

can you at least try to disable all your mods except whatever official you have (skyrim.esm, update.esm, dawnguard.esm, etc) and after that start a completely new game... see if you still have this issue on a (sorta) clean game?

 

At least then you know in which direction you can test things...

[Cormiick]

Sorry if I sound rude, but...

 

If you read all of my original post you'd see that I took off my mods after I first encountered the issue. Then I reinstalled Skyrim and continued my troubleshooting from there.

 

Please read everything I've posted before answering please.

[Georgiegril]

Having had 0 issues last year doesn't mean that it isn't a hardware issue or driver issue.

Skyrim is extremely resource-intensive, and problems with hardware or drivers may well show up there before anywhere else.

 

There is a very good and detailed pinned thread on the Geforce boards (It's old but has been updated) about your type of crash (Timeout Detection and Recovery) with an explanation about the mechanics of it and solutions to consider.

[Cormiick]

***RESOLUTION***

 

I fixed it, for the most part. It still happens sometimes, but I played for 2 hours straight before it happened. And it was only once.

 

For anyone else having this issue, I used this guide to tweak my .ini settings and get better performance.

 

Then I started using the Razer Game Booster to launch my game. I'm sure this helped a lot.

 

Then, after I installed a few mods the problem started coming back. So I installed this mod called Project Optimization. Its main purpose was to increase performance in games that had low frame rates while having resource-intensive mods installed. It can also be used for just the vanilla game to run smoother.

 

With all of these solutions combined the issue has practically gone away. I went through all kinds of trouble, but it ended up being so simple to fix, haha.

 

Thanks everyone! I appreciated the help and suggestions.

Edited May 17, 2013 by Cormiick