I just found a bug when starting Skyrim which causes it to crash to desktop, it is caused by having the Windows sound sample rate set too high.
Just thought I should let people know.

15# Crash To Desktop Fix

Go to Start > Control Panel > Sound.
In the Playback tab, right-click on Speakers (or whatever has a green tick next to it), then click Properties.
In the advanced tab on this new window, select 24 bit, 44100Hz (Studio Quality) in the drop down menu.


Read more: http://segmentnext.com/2011/11/11/skyrim-crashes-freezes-sound-keys-errors-fps-lag-textures-and-fixes/#ixzz1dOyIgH7u

This seemed to work for a while then it crashed afew times

oh my lord...thank you. it is so stupid that it wasnt working because of sound.....god dammit LOL anyways THANKYOUSOMUCHOHMAIGAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWD

Have the correct settings tho mine also crashes (and graphical errors) , so guess there's more then just "changing some audio setting"

Well.
its not crashing for me, but the sound is REALLY distorted, i have to use sub' just to understand what the hell is going on.

If Bethesda cant make this game work, i want a refund

I have the exact same problem but changing the sound settings did not help me. I am pretty annoyed by this since I waited for the game to be released til 3.am whilst my friends played it from like 5pm (cracked version) but I thought to support Bethesda and buy the game since I am a huge Oblivion fan and I enjoyed that game so much. But at this point I feel that the least Bethesda could've done is use some lube while they [censored] me in the ass.

nope its not working for me...any other ideas? it keeps crashing at the new game loading screen with the epic dragon...

I like how no one can read previous posts and threads and have to keep re posting this fix, when its clearly not working for a lot of people, myself included.

same here.

I understand the select 24 bit, 44100Hz is for windows 7

any ideas for XP?

This is the one issue I've been having. The game CTDs randomly and there is no warning box or message or anything. It's just *poof* gone. I've fiddled with some settings so we'll see if it goes back to working. First one happened within minutes of starting the game, too, but after initially changing some other settings, it worked for a couple hours. So I'm not sure it's an overheating issue.

My first CTD arrived in Bleak Falls after 4 hours of gameplay, the second came a couple of hours after that (in battle), then there was another one only 30 minutes after the third (after initiating fast traveling) and just now I had my fouth crash, only about 10 mins after the third...I don't like how the frequency of CTD increases. I can live with one now and then (1-4 hours in between), but it really destroys immersion when you get afraid of turning left and right, not to say go into the inventory.

I'm not 100% on this, but if you go to audio tab, hit advanced for sound playback, and then click preformance, you get the sliders that adjust the same values that are listed there... the problen is that it just never tells you exactly what bitrate and hertz you've set it to.