I want to start off by saying I love this game to death. I have 270 hours on it since launch and level 59. I haven't beat the main quest at all (haven't even met the greybeards). I got the whole map lit up with locations and cleared almost all. Just recently reached Solitude and got my house. However, just this morning I decided to go to the last city on my map, Morthal. Now here's my problem- (Side quest spoiler from Morthal)

I did the quest in Morthal about the house burning and the little girl ghost, defeated the master vampire. Now when I entered the master vampire's lair, certain areas weren't there, just an open sky void. I payed no attention, just kept at my quest. After all that, the follower for that quest stayed in place. But anyways, after that quest, I can NO LONGER enter the Blue Palace in Solitude, my Solitude house or even explore the swamp around Morthal, without it freezing. The Rift also freezes now. Anywhere else is fine, however. I can walk forever from Solitude to whiterun, without a freeze. But if I even try exploring around Morthal for even 2 minutes, it'll freeze completely and have to restart my 360. When I try and load my house or the Blue Palace, it'll instantly freeze everytime on the loading screen. I done this numerous times to try and narrow down what's really going on, but found nothing that could be causing it. My house was loading fine even after that Morthal Quest (but Blue Palace wasn't), but then after I got the dog to lead me to Meeko's Cabin, I brought him into my house and told him to wait. After that, I can't enter my house (even though it said the dog left on the screen).

My file size is quite large (18 mbs, started doing this, this morning at 17mbs). I'm thinking it might be a file size issue. I tried to unload a lot of keys I had, but it didn't work. My game is indeed installed. I also tried those freeze up spots after taking the game off of my hard drive, didn't work. Cleared my cache too, nothing. I started a brand new file, went to Solitude and I was able to enter the Blue Palace and explore the Morthal are without any problems. So, I know it's my original file, something happened. It's either my file size or something glitched with that Morthal quest, I mentioned.

I came here to see if anyone else had this problem and if they resolved it? What's something that I might be able to try that I haven't yet? I do have a lot of quests that I didn't finish yet, because I was being a "good guy" and didn't want to do the evil-ish quests and let them be... Should I try and unload those quests, to try and lessen the load on the game file??? Any help will be appreciated, I would love to go through the main quest with my level 59 character, that I worked so hard with!

i solved the freezing problem by clearing the console cache in the dashboard

Yeah, I thought it might, but I already tried it (twice). Unfortunately, it didn't work out .... Thanks though.

Youre right, does sound identical to my problem. I really hope this gets fixed i want to continue playing this amazing game. Its torture not being able to play it, i have many other new games to play but i refuse, they just dont cut it haha. Ill try waiting 30 in game days and get back to you.

Nope it didnt work, still froze at the valthiem towers east of whiterun. Losing patience.

yes i have had freezing entering and leaving certain areas also, it started with leaving Jorrvaskar but has spread to 3 or 4 other areas with loading screens (could have been more) but then after 240 hours it did it when i went anywhere near helgen in the open world map, that was when I gave up and decided to sell it and pick it up 6 months down the line

whats with the freezing, quest glitches/bugs on top of all the minor glitches I just got fed up with it, deleting cache's, loading up old saves, reinstalling patches it all became a chore

I recommend Bethseda do a beta from now on cause it ridiculous releasing a game in this state,

Yeah, I spent most of my morning trying various things to remedy this problem. It's got to be our file size. I had no problems up until it reached a certain size. It's disheartening when we spend this amount of time in it, shaping our character's personality in the game, then it becomes unplayable. I will never trade it in though, I love it. Just hoping it gets fixed.

i think they will notice it, as more people play for longer and their file sizes increase it will become more popular. I just hope bethesda take notice now and not 2 months time

for those who cleared the cache, and are still having lockup issues with specific areas, it could very well be related to save file issues, something for you to try to clear it up:

• move your saves from the hard drive to the thumb drive
  
• fire up skyrim and load in your saved game.
  
• unplug the thumb drive After loading your saved game, it will give you a popup telling you you wont be able to save till you select a new device.
  
• go into the save game menu it should pop up the storage device menu, and allow you to choose your hard drive.
  
• save the game and exit skyrim, turn off console.
  
• turn the console back on, fire up skyrim, and load your save game from the hard drive.

This has solved specific area lockups for me, I think in my case it was caused when the game froze after long hours of play and the save game 'glitched' when it saved prior to the lockup.

Thanks, I'll try this tomorrow and will update if it worked or not.

Lukas Japonicus,

Well, that definitely sounds like a positive thing! Can't wait to try this out tomorrow now. Maybe my character won't be dead after all lol.

damn, it froze 20 seconds after leaving riften. I really thought that was it. Oh well thanks anyway. (kiss is no longer available lol) guess we are gonna have to just wait for a patch. I would say try it anyway just incase.

try saving (new save) after you get past your normal problem area, if the game gets 'jerky' before it freezes, stop moving when you notice and look down at the ground for a few moments, pop up the wait menu and wait 24 hours, then try moving again. I've had it get extremely jerky then pause for about 2 minutes afterwards, couldn't even get the xbox button on the controller to pop up the box but it would make the 'ding' sound for the box popping up, and is why i chose to wait rather then shut it off and reload. after sitting there for 2 minutes the xbox button menu popped up, I pressed b to get out of it, then out of the pause menu and the game was going normal, I saved at that point just incase then continued on my way and things stopped being jerky. and yep thats me.

all that sounds good, here's something easier I did and worked for me with the freezing thing a lil bit:

-enter a place (insides) not outside (like your whiterun home)
-hit the menu button, go to the saves and delete all saves all of them (shame if you have another chara)
-go back to the game wait a few seconds and enter the menu and make a fresh new save
-go back to the dashboard, hit start on the game and continue, you will notice your save number is now #001 a fresh new one, with less file size and less problem, at least this worked for me

will try now, thanks for the tip

Didnt work, i got further from riften than i usually do but it still happened. Thanks anyway. I give up now, just gonna wait for bethesda to decide if they are gonna fix it or not. The problem is simple....the larger the save file, the more [censored] up the game gets. SORT IT OUT!!!!

I believe i have the same problem, which has completely got me Screwed because i'm in a cave where any exit i go to freezes right when it gets to the loading screen.
I have tried all the suggestions that i could but i'm still stuck in Tolvald's Crossing.

I hope Bethesda Fixes this soon because I would rather not Re-do everything i did on my level 54

The only other suggestion that I have to resolve it, is get into one of your houses that you can get to without it freezing, then wait 30 day games inside your house, if its from a multitude of dead corpses, dropped loot from both the slaughtered or from yourself, after the 30 days the world cleanup script should kick in and clean up the majority of it, it takes 29 days for it to fire off from the last 'dropped' loot item, waiting the additional day gives it a chance to do its thing. Its also a good idea to just hang in your house afterwards just for awhile so that it can clean the data, then save the game, and see if you can get past those area's that wouldn't allow you. You may notice a decrease in the file size of the save after doing this as well. Thats the last thing i know of to clean up some of these location freeze problem, and takes the longest to try.

Thorgal suggested this in another thread, you might try this as well if you haven't tried reloading the patch yet:

Ill give it one last shot (im so desparate to play skyrim lol) how would i re install patch 1.3? If its by clearing the cache ive done that already like five times

yeah its by clearing the cache which clears out all the patches for all the games you've downloaded as well as stored cache data for those games (i.e. textures), forcing you to download the patch again when you start the game back up. sounds like you've done beaten that one to death with no avail.

tried it, got to 30 seconds outside of riften on horseback and it froze. Thanks for the suggestions man, appreciate it. The 30 days inside house is what i meant by tried it not the cache just to be clear

Yeah, I tried switching over my file to the thumb drive and taking it out and saving it to my hard drive too. Didn't work . I also waited for a little over 30 days inside my Riften house (had to fast travel). Unfortunately, it didn't work either. We might have to wait and see if patch 1.4 will fix it or not. What also svcks is the 6 Dragon Priest masks that I've collected is in my Solitude house, which freezes upon loading lol. Thanks for the suggestions, it was much appreciated!

Hopefully, Besthesda takes attention to this problem and that it isn't just limited to PS3. Maybe patch 1.4 or later will fix this.

I can say on my old gaming laptop, it would cause the system to crash out completely and do a reboot at certain times, but I couldn't tell you if that was because of the other issue that was going on with it, or if it was soley caused by Skyrim (the laptop is dead now) I'm not sure if other PC users had like issues, I never browsed the forum for it. Sorry that the solution that worked for me didn't work for you guys.

I am kinda curious if there is a common link to why the towns are locking up on people, perhaps certain items that have been stored at those houses or a combination of, I've always carried the dragon masks with me till I head off to labyrinthian to place them. I was only experiencing lockups with one area, now all i experience is the now and again jerky play, and i clear that up with the above mentioned methods. Hopefully patch 1.4 will address both of these issues (freezing game and jerky play) as they seem to be serious bugs within the system, grinding alot of people to a halt.

I just started having this problem tonight... out side of riften also... im like 415 hrs in on this character.... I'm gonna try n re-load a save a couple of hrs befor the problem started and see if mabey it's the result of a " corrupt " save.