First off sorry for creating a new topic. The game became unplayable for me. I got the Gears xbox, so it's a slim model.


So I tried the temporary solution.Clean cache, delete install Skyrim, dawnguard and dragonborn. Delete non-important saves.Delete patch Re-install. At first it looked really good. No freeze on my first draugr encounter. But in the next room (the one round room with several draugr deathlords) it froze again.
Restarted and used an earlier save and didn't bother with Raven Rock mine anymore.
Outside it worked like a charm, talking to people, buying stuff, no problem.Untill I approached some "ash people" and started getting at it. It froze again.

So now it is unplayable for me. Once the action starts (when 3 or more ennemies get at it) it freezes. Performance problem?

If this does not get fixed then I want my money back. I did not pay for dlc that freezes everytime the action begins.

I haven't tested it in Skyrim yet, but it doesn't look good.

So no the "temporary" solution did not work for me.

I also disabled all autosaves, so I think it does not have anything to do with saving the game. At least the freezes I get, they happen in game, anywhere once a lot of stuff is happening at once. A performance problem.

The ennemies are harder to beat, the fights take longer and adding potions/shouts seems to make the freezing worse.

If you see no ennemies everything's fine, the moment I see multiple ennemies that's when it starts, even walking away from the action will result in a freeze.

2 days ago it froze about 30 times, I was really determined, but gave up eventually.

Yesterday I restarted the box 3 times and that was it.

To me it is UNPLAYABLE!!!, unless all I do is talk to NPC's, buy and sell stuff and NOT act like a dragonborn!

I had similar problems after Dawnguard, it seems that the burden the DLCs place on the system can greatly exacerbate any inheirant instability that your character/saves might have.

The only way I "resolved" the issue was to delete my primary character that I had played since the game came out and start another one that has (so far) benefited from all of the patching in the year since release.

Additionally, I'm extremely meticulous when playing to ensure that everything is as tidy as possible (I pick up enemy weapons and put them on corpses to ensure there's no "junk data" following my character around). I play with autosave disabled as an additional precaution.

Like I said, so far, smooth sailling.

I definitely noticed huge improvements after doing this. I used to have huge amount of lag and noticed that there were weapons laying around the cells where the lag were the worst. I went around picking up everything and put them in the nearest container. I made more room on the hard drive by deleting old games and old saves. The lag actually went away! Now, I always picked up weapons and shields off dead bodies and put them in containers. I regularly delete old saves and monitor my hard drive usage. I'm playing Dragonborn with a character that has over 500 hours. I have the 360 Elite that's over 3 years old.

However, I think the OP's problem is hardware related. Combat with multiple NPC's will make the CPU/Memory/Graphics system work harder and generate more heat.

To the OP: Have you inspect the Xbox vents for accumulation of dust around the intake? My daughter's Xbox recently died. When I looked at it, the intake was full of dust!

I have the Gears slim edition. But my problem is resolved!


I finally didn't get one freeze yesterday!

After all it most likely was a disc problem. I did clean the disc a couple of times when I started having problems.
Never had a problem with the disc before, they really did start once the dlc was installed.

So I started up Skyrim but went back to the systems settings to clean the cache. Started up again and it gave me
the error "This disc is unreadable, please clean with soft cloth".

I did not take out the disc and just pressed ok, and the disc started spinning.

Loaded the game save that gave me "the freeze" and started getting at it. To my surprise it did not freeze.

So after that I went for the ultimate test and went into Raven Rock Mines. And yes it worked! No freeze after the second draugr encounter.

I did use my bow to minimize the action and killed the draugr one by one. There were 3 deathlords at once though, so the action did get intense.

Hopefully my problems will not return.

Now I can finally give it a decent rating!

I think the newer versions of the xbox cant handle Skyrim. I have the old Xbox Arcade and everything is working as it should. I downloaded Dawnguard, did exprience a few freezes. Downloaded the patches freezes seemed to be fixed. Downloaded Hearthfire, no sight of a freeze until Dragonborn. Downloaded Dragonborn, two freezes out of 30 hours of playing dragonborn. Seems the freezes have gone.

Out of 300+ hours of gameplay? I think i have encountered around 10 freezes due to overheating and probably memory leaks. Everything seems fine now. Dragonborn somehow improved my fps issues as well. Maybe they improved the engine for Solstheim to run satisfactorily.

Yes I have not come across threads that mentioned the old boxes that crashed. It was the slim edition everytime. Maybe it has something do with it.

Skyrim is (always has been) the disc that spins the loudest and longest out of all my games in my drive. Sometimes I fear my box will lift off

Old jasper model here and getting lock ups and neverending loading screens. So its not just slim xboxs

I ended up installing it on the HD because I got tired of the noise generated by the disc constantly spinning. Glad to hear you solved the problem.

I'm also having freeze problems. I doubt it's overheating, because I got one within fifteen minutes of turning on tonight. It also doesn't seem to be to do with high numbers of enemies on screen, because it did it in the home interior, with only my character and Serana. It seems to be a cumulative problem with the saves, because it seems to be happening more and more frequently. It didn't seem to start until late into the expansion ... I've completed the DB MQ.

Maybe its a memory leak or something.

It was already installed on my HD. I checked the box for dust and all was fine. It does have a lot more lag since dragonborn, but that's fine with me. As long as it doesn't freeze every 5 minutes I'm happy.

It's probably a combination of things. I started up a perfectly good save and it happened there too, so memory loss (as the former post suggests) might be the most logic one. But really I don't know.

You may as well say it's Nargles!

I notice that the size of the save file jumps from about 8-9 to about 11-12Mb as soon as you travel to Solstheim.

Anyway, just for 'fun', I've deleted my system cache ... interestingly when I booted Skyrim it didn't ask me to download any patches for the game, so I assume they're all in the Dawnguard download(?)

Clearing cache won't delete any patch I think. You can only delete it from your HDD.

actually it only doesnt delete skyrim i think. Also, delete the patch then clear the cache. or vice versa.

If you are going to clear the system cache to try and get the game to run better, you might as well do a clean sweep and delete the game if you have it installed, the patch and all the DLC. Then install everything again starting with the game and the patch, then the DLC. The game will run better with a fresh install of everything.

Well, I did all that, and haven't had a lockup since (touch wood). I'll update if/when they start creeping back.

I get freezes again now, some after an hour, some half an hour. Just got one after half an hour again after I got outside meathall I think and had to kill 5 Nords for those little creatures. Pressed start to look in my quests and it froze.