I posted this on http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1606344&postcount=932 and was advised to post it here as well.

My save game has somehow reached the point where loading a new "grid" causes the game to instantly crash. That's my theory, anyway. It's difficult to debug what's going on since there is no form of logging (which is stupid). Anyway, if anyone here would like to try and reproduce the crash I (and two others who tried my save) constantly face, here is a test save game:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/21633524/s182.7z

Step(s) to crash, consistently:
1. Follow the road, going past the horse.
2. After following the road a bit you'll hit a crash.

Some other stuff: saving just before the crash sometimes allows it to be bypassed, but this is suboptimal because it just defers the crash to the next grid (or whatever else would cause the crash). I'd have to inch my way along, discovering crashes by crashing, and saving just before they occur the second time around.

I'm posting this in hopes of getting more confirmation on this kind of crash. If this is confirmed by others, it would mean Bethesda can use this file for fixing this particular crash. My game may still be lost, but a future patch could help prevent this from happening to others.

Iam on it will post in 5 min back

Yea it crashes for me the moment i want to load, might be a ugrid problem let me find out.


Edit:

Pfff I tried all ugrid settings possible, but the whole savegame just wouldnt load. I dont know why, i usually have these errors only when tweaked on ugrid but in ur case ur whole save file seem corrupt. Do u have an overclocked computer?

Are you using the increased ugrids tweak? If so, it might be why you crash even earlier than I do -- it's loading the grid ahead of time and crashing. I'm running on the default ugrids configuration and so I have to walk along the road a bit to induce the crash.

Thanks. Have you ever made any changes to the ini files or used third-party mods/exes?

Ah i got it working on only ugrid 5, on ugrid 7 in which i play my game on it instanlty crashes. It looks some inert error is in ur save game but with ugrid5 it works perfect got no crash now. Iam riding ur yellow/white horse with that daedric armor u got.

Edit:

Oh noes it crashed right now, when i advanced farther thru the road :s

I've done some graphical tweaks in the ini and used a large address aware binary. I would like to imagine that neither of these are influencing the save data, but I suppose they can't be ruled out (the latter in particular).

Hmm its definatly bethesda who is to blame for this error. Got no problem with mine save file yet.. So at some part thru ur savegame u might have used a wrong mod or when playing something went corrupt which stored that corruption in ur save as well.

Iam sorry man i cant help u further than this :/

Thanks, it's good to know that this can be reproduced on other setups. One of my initial suspicions was that my game files somehow became corrupt and I'd have to reinstall, so I made that test save game. Seeing as it doesn't just happen on my machine, it's pretty safe to say that this specifically has to do with the save data itself, and not any particular setup. That's unless save data can be influenced by what kalniel mentioned (mods, binaries, etc.). I know that custom plugins/mods are saved and associated with save data, so if you attempt to load someone else's save but you're missing mods, the game will warn you. This save game should be pretty much vanilla (i.e. no mods), as far as I'm aware.

Indeed, it didnt gave me any warning about missing any mods when loading. Besides did u try to reproduce this error with an older save game? Sometimes u might find a save file older which doesnt crash, meaning in between the "crash" and the "stable" version something went wrong.

I had a similar corruption in my save file due to darker dungeons mod, so I loaded an older save game, went to the same location and voila didnt had that problem anymore.

I tried to reproduce the error from a save game of about 4 hours prior. Somehow, once I get around the same point as the test save game the conditions are just right for the game to start crashing whenever a new grid loads. This happens regardless of what quests I'm trying to do, by the way. The test save had me trying to do a Falkreath related Companion quest (Clear Greywater Grotto).

Going back several hours and playing up to around that same point, but instead trying to do a quest in Mzinchaleft still leads to the crashing issue. It's weird, and really it's impossible to determine why it's happening because there is no form of debugging.

Hmm, it's not that unusual for games not to ship with debugging tools to the customer.

This does sound like a corrupt save, but odd that it goes back so far as to affect earlier saves as well. Hopefully they'll be able to anolyse it and see if there's a problem.

Try the oldest save game u got (really old, for instance when u where still at level 10). Than go to the same location and if it still crashes i can only deduce that ur game is corrupt from the beginning.

I can go back a fair ways and have a playable game, yeah. Going back hundreds of hours allows me to go anywhere / complete any quest as normal. That said, I have no idea just how far back I'd have to go to avoid this perfect formula -- maybe it is as you said, corrupt from the start and essentially a ticking timebomb. Either way, it isn't really practical for me to go so far back -- I'd be better off restarting altogether, I imagine.

And while no debugging is normal, most games in my experience *at least* provide some kind of crash log to give some idea of what happened. I would love to be able to fix this myself, or at least understand why my save game crashes.

So I tried playing differently and abusing the heck out of fast travel. I was able to get some stuff done, but unfortunately walking around even just a few paces can still lead to a crash. It seems even fast travel isn't enough. :/

Hi,

Just tried your save.

My game is totally vanilla v1.3, running on an older machine with LOW detail preset but all the sliders to the right.

The very first thing I noticed is that the game takes ages to load, much longer than any of my regular saves. Also, the second the load is complete, the game crashes to desktop with no messages whatsoever.

How is your game modified? Would I need to up my uGrid to be compatible?

Scoob.

Best advice is to not touch your uGrid unless you know very well what you're doing since it could cause major instability and major issues if you don't revert it back properly (or just have bad luck).

Hi,

Thanks for the tip, certainly a valid point. However...

Actually I've kept my Skyrim install totally vanilla just on this machine. My gaming rig is running uGrid=9 and a fair bit of other stuff too. Just wanted to confirm that there wasn't something obvious stopping my vanilla Skyrim build from loading this save. I thought that testing it on my modified setup might just muddy the waters too much.

Oh btw: I used to get the odd crash with v1.1, but they were rare - even after I modified. However v1.3 appears to be less stable, even though I actually started a new game so to avoid anything in my saved games that might cause issues.

Cheers,

Scoob.

The save game is essentially unmodified meaning no ugrids tweaking and no custom mods. It's meant to be testable by anyone regardless of their setups.

Interesting that it crashes immediately for you on a vanilla setup. A mentioned before I tend to have to walk some ways to (in theory) allow a new cell to load and induce the crash. Thanks for giving it a shot. I'd say the more people who can confirm this on various setups the better.

Hello, I haven't tried your save but I know exactly what you are experiencing. I agree with you in that it seems to happen when loading a grid. My playtime is 170hr and my save file is just shy of 18mb. I have no mods installed, I use the third-party 4GB launcher, and a uGrids of 5. I also don't use auto-saves and have them all disabled.

Right now in my play-through, I know of two external areas with a 100% chance to CTD when getting near them: starting in Morthal then traveling east and another near Goldenglow Estate near Riften. I have been experiencing increasing random CTD's in other areas as my overall play-through time increases. I went back to a save file about 100 hours ago and can access these areas with no trouble. CTD's were very rare for me up until this point.

I've also noticed missing walls (textures) and other abnormalities in interior cells (dungeons mainly) when first zoning into them. Saving, exiting the game and then loading the recent save fixes it.

As far as the land mass crashes, I've tried lowering all graphics options to the lowest settings, waiting 35 days in my house, verifying Steam cache, deleting the folder where it puts our saves and ini files then letting the game recreate them. Nothing has had any effect on the stability.

I've read many posts from others who start experiencing similar issues around this time in their playthrough. I really hope it is something that Bethesda can fix. These problems just kill the experience for me and haven't been able to play the game.

Ok, sorry I couldn't add anything useful! I may try to load it on my modifed (and a lot more powerful) machine when I get a moment just to see if it makes a difference. I have been lucky that Skyrim has generally been not too bad for me. I've had glitches sure, but not any show-stoppers like this. Something obviously is corrupted in your save though, rather than there being just a random bug else others would be fine. I'd be a shame to have to load an earlier save after getting so far in the game. Saying that though, my 2nd playthrough (pure mage vs. my earlier archer but-can-do-anything), has proven to be a blast.

Good luck getting to the bottom of this. I do worry that once a glitch has gotten its self into your saves you might struggle to recover from it

Scoob.

Reread your question as I was posting my response so I tried to remove my post before it was too late but obviously...it's too late.

I thought that you had asked how to change the uGrid for the save and it just seems like there's a lot of issues cropping up from those that do so without much knowledge on the subject. I was only trying to save you some potential headaches but it seems you know what you're doing so I'll shut up now.

Just as a suggestion: It might, or might not, interest you to try the pcb (PurgeCellBuffers) console command, either once or occasionally, to see if that has any effect on the issue. I found that it would help me avoid an otherwise unavoidable quiet crash to the desktop when entering Understone Keep in Markarth, at least for now.

Got the same issue. After my savegame got around 19 Mb I started experiencing frequent CTD's (one every few minutes at worst). Tried pcb, did not work.

I did manage to play without any CTD's when I found an exterior location (Arcwind Point) were I hadn't been yet. But as soon as I moved to a location where I'd already been (fast traveled to Whiterun, Riften, Solitude etc.) I CTD'd in a few minutes.

So I guess the method that checks your savegame for any persistant items when you re-enter an exterior (or interior) cell starts crashing when your savegame gets to large. (Maybe its a simple timeout because checking the savegame takes to long)

I'll share this save with the team so they can have a look. To be sure, are any mods installed?