Has anyone else had this problem? The game has been working fine for me until I started heading to Winterhold. No matter what I do the game seems to fall apart. Textures for fire disappear and then sounds don't work. Next thing you know, it stops working. I'm a mage so I would really like to go to the college of winterhold :3 but as of right now, there isn't a way..

I have the exact same problem. I can get close enough to see Winterhold but as soon as I get too close, I crash to desktop.

latest drivers?

Yep. I have a GTS 250.

Have you modded anything or is it a vanilla game?

i.e. altered INI settings, installed mods, changed fov, etc.

It's a vanilla install. I installed from CD into Steam. No mods or altered INI settings.

Here's what's weird. The game has run flawlessly with the exception of a couple of random crashes that were not repeated. However, no matter how I try to approach Winterhold, it crashes immediately to desktop. I noticed it first when I tried to take a carriage to Winterhold from Whiterun. It crashed every time I tried it. So, I thought perhaps it was related to the carriage function. But, it worked fine when I took the carriage to Riften.

Then, I decided to walk to Winterhold on foot. As I stated previously, I get close enough to see what appears to be a bridge across a chasm to Winterhold and then it crashes to desktop again. I saved right before that spot and I tried to approach from different angles, but it made no difference. There's something about that area of the map that is causing it. Kinda svcks for me because my character is primarily a magic user.

Try using the Large Address Aware trick if you are using Windows Vista 64bit or 7 64bit (not sure about Windows XP 64bit). On another forum that I read several people were having the same problem as you, and doing these instructions below fixed their problem, they no longer get any crashes at all, even when playing for 6 hours straight. The game peaks in memory usage while loading up new areas, which in this game happens on the fly, except going between inside and outside areas. Bethesda has had the same problem with Morrowind and Oblivion and this fix worked for those as well.

Download http://download.cnet.com/CFF-Explorer/3000-2383_4-10431156.html

Next, make backup copies of any file you intend to change. You'll be glad you did, if anything goes wrong.
1. Make a backup of the tesv.exe (an easy way is to just copy the file, then paste it into the same directory, or the Desktop, or anywhere else).
2. Download "CFF Explorer" from the URL above.
3. Launch CFF Explorer and open tesv.exe (File -> Open -> navigate to the skyrim folder and select tesv.exe)
4. In the left side of the window, choose the "File Header" section under "Nt Headers"
5. Look on the right side for the row starting with "Characteristics" for the "Click here" field. Click there.
6. Select the checkbox for "App can handle >2gb addresses" and click Ok
7. Save the file (File > Save)
8. Exit CFF Explorer and start up Oblivion normally through Steam. No more out of memory errors!

I'm also getting this problem as well, and after playing Skyrim for at least 15-20 hours I haven't had any problems up to this point. If I try to fast travel to Winterhold or try to walk within a certain range of Winterhold (I've tried this from two different directions), my game instantly crashes to desktop.

Going elsewhere and all over the place seems to work just fine, but it looks like Winterhold and its surrounding area is off limits for me...

What I have tried so far: I've tried the "Sound" fix (change Windows sound setting to 16-bit 44K), I've tried lowering graphics settings to Low, I've tried Verifying Cache Files in Steam, I've tried fast traveling to Winterhold and nearby areas at different times of day, I've tried running in Windowed mode, I've tried running in Administrator, and I've tried running in Compatibility with an earlier version of Windows.

I have the latest video driver for my ATI card and my OS was recently reformatted about a month ago, clean install.

Here are my system specs:

OS: Windows 7 (32-bit)
CPU: AMD Dual Core 3.2 Ghz
GPU: ATI Radeon HD 3870 TOP
RAM: 2 GB DDR2
Sound: Realtek (motherboard)

My game is the Steam digital version. It is completely vanilla. No mods, no changes, no cheats used.

I generally play the game on Medium with some tweaked settings.




Context of the crash (***MINOR SPOILER ALERT***):

Winterhold worked just fine for me for a long time and I had zero crashes until I obtained the Staff of Magnus in that Labyrinthian dungeon (however you spell it). Now any sort of travel to Winterhold will not work. This is part of the Mage's Guild line of quests. Since I can't get to Winterhold, I can't complete that line of quests. Like an earlier poster said, this is sorta bad since I'm a caster, too! My personal theory is that obtaining the Staff of Magnus has changed something in Winterhold for plot purposes, and for whatever reason my client thinks it is buggy or something like that.

/spoilers



Any help, comments, suggestions, or fixes from the devs would be much appreciated. Thanks for reading.