REF:

• WinXP SP3 w/DirectX 9.0c
  
• Geforce 7900 GS 512mb
  
• Pentium 4 3.0GHz *Hyper Threading*
  
• Dawnguard & Dragonborn DLCs

When I first installed Skyrim it was comparatively stable, BUT after the 2nd general game update and installation of DLCs it has become MORE unstable and crashes.

I get 3 types of crashes, all without any error messages:

• Crashes directly to desktop
  
• Game locks up and I have to go into Task Manager, shows Skyrim "no response" only
  
• Game locks up and I have to go into Task Manager, shows Skyrim "no response" with Runtime C++ running

OBSERVATIONS:

- Skyrim tends to crash whenever I am running outdoors and I cross a area boundary (where new tiles are loaded) AND an NPC appears simultaneously. Note that Oblivion does the same thing, and this was the ONLY type of crash in Skyrim form the original install but was infrequent.

- Get more crashes when I have a companion NPC indoors or outdoors.

- I seem to get crashes when an NPC is supposed to be in an area but is not there. When I reload the game the game from last Quick-Save the NPC is in the area (I do frequent Quick-Saves).

- I can lessen the crashes by walking instead of running.

First, I know, I don't have a top-line rig. I'm on a fixed income and cannot afford to upgrade hardware and refuse to install hoggish Win7. My WinXP is very, very stable overall.


I am posting because the crashes have become more and more frequent with each DLC installed.

So, has anyone else had instability problems?

Have you 'fixed' them and how?

Your CPU doesn't even meet the minimum requirements for the game.

A Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz was a beast of a CPU back in it's day. Too bad that day was before Oblivion came out.

I used to try to run this game on that very CPU. Even with a Clean Boot, I had to crank back all the graphics and the resolution to get a game that was playable. It was not until I went to a Core2Duo (which I still have) that the game became playable.