basically my computer can run the game pretty well, it defaults to high and runs pretty smooth. just every 5-10 minutes my screens flash and go black, cooling fans go berserk and sound loud and the computer restarts. however it doesn't manage to do it and will just sit where it is until i hit the power button and start it again. when i do it comes up with 'Windows has recovered from an unexpected shutdown" details below. like i said game runs fine until this happens.

ive tried the sound card thing, and the vista service pack two as well. i run the game through steam

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48
Locale ID: 3081

Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: 116
BCP1: FFFFFA80050774E0
BCP2: FFFFF8800F9C763C
BCP3: FFFFFFFFC000009A
BCP4: 0000000000000004
OS Version: 6_1_7601
Service Pack: 1_0
Product: 256_1

Files that help describe the problem:
C:\Windows\Minidump\111111-19234-01.dmp
C:\Users\Hayate\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-65957-0.sysdata.xml

Any ideas would be great! .

bump

Nowhere near enough information to work with.

would more would you like?

comp specs
Intel Core™2 Quad CPU @ 2.40Ghz
Nvidia GeForce GTX 460SE
6g Kingston DDR3 RAM

anything else that could effect it?

It might be your graphics card (or another piece of hardware) overheating, causing the system to attempt a safety shutdown. Try lowering the settings and see if that fixes it.

Have you done anything to your computer recently?

Does this ever happen while playing any other games?

just happened to me too, just as I started the game, after fighting the firs guards BSoD and restart (I was in my inventory hitting the key for favorites)

Also might be a chance that the inside of your computer and your graphics card are dirty and thus overheating. I found this out the hard way when my screen kept going dark with an "Entering Power Save Mode" message on the screen. I had to force shut it down manually once it did this. Oblivion and Fallout 3 were both crashing every 5-10 minutes.

I didn't even know that there was a small fan built into the underside of my graphics card until I did a more thorough cleaning and found it by accident. It was very dirty. My card is nearly fried now and it's fan was removed because it became warped from the heat. I have to use a separate fan with the side of my computer open to keep things cool. Limping along and hope to run Skyrim on what I have until I get a new card. We'll see...

Good luck!


Signed,

Dumb Blonde

Do you have the required power supply for you GPU?

Power supply check is a good suggestion. Cheap-o crappy power supplies can cause problems too; These are the unbranded bargain ones. They can have faulty connectors or cables, or sometimes provide fluctuating voltages and stuff. It's worth buying a branded, decent PSU like Corsair or Coolermaster or whatever.

What would be useful is to know the BSOD error code (0x########). Blue screens are usually caused by hardware faults. You should do a CPU and GPU stability check. For the CPU you can use Prime95's torture test. Running it for 5-20 minutes should be enough, although memory errors usually show themselves in a matter of seconds to a couple minutes. As for GPU stress testing, I know there's some software out there but I can't remember what it's called. I'm sure you'll be able to find something.

The STOP code is and BCCODE are the same thing. 0x116 is VIDEO_TDR_ERROR, BCP3: FFFFFFFFC000009A is the NTSTATUS code - in this case ' Insufficient system resources, typically indicates an out-of-memory condition'.

Typical reasons (from internet search, I've never experienced this issue) are a GPU that's overclocked too much, a GPU that has RAM that is failing, or a GPU that is failing due to not enough power from the power supply.

When is the last time you updated your video card drivers?

You can use a program called Furmark to stress test your gpu.

http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/fur/

To me it sounds like your gpu is overheating, but I am not an expert (just a hobbyist). Bad power supply sounds plausible to me too.

great program, after going to nearly 95 degrees I thoroughly cleaned my power source and video card and now it goes around 87. I doubt it will help the game as I doubt it is hardware related

It seemed to be a overheating problem, i cleaned out all the fans and turned down AA settings, now it seems to be running fine, no crashes since. thanks for all the help

Good to hear your got it running.

If your going to try running prime95 5-20 minutes is not enough. I've had it fail at 20 hrs., thought that was ok, yet still experienced crashes. A few more tweaks to my CPU voltage(I was overclocking) and it passed 24+ hours. Do it right, or risk bsod.


If your not getting a bsod, and the pc is just shutting down, it's 99.9% overheating. I had a gateway pc, lx something or other, and the fan on the CPU wouldn't spin up and the CPU would overheat and did what your describing, pc shuts down. Gateway released a bios fix so the fan was ALWAYS on full blast. It was loud, but no more overheating/pc shutting down.