Game Skyrim Forum

I'm really hoping someone can help me. I'm kind of at my wit's end at the moment.

So I updated Skyrim to 1.4 and installed the official HD textures. Immediately when I play, I get purple textures and CTDs after about 2-5 minutes of gameplay within towns (going into the main worldspace causes instant CTD). I pruned out some of my non-steam workshop mods (ones from nexus) in case they conflicted with 1.4, and tried again. This time, none of my saves will load at all without immediate CTD because of missing content. So I think ok, time to start over anyway, so I do a total reinstall. I update my drivers make sure everything's current, and start up a new game.

Problem? Now Skyrim CTDs right on the loading screen, before the menu options appear. Every time.

I don't know what else I can do. I have updated my ATI drivers. I have verified the game cache, must be, 20 times. I have no mods installed at present. I found something on google saying that having your sound card quality set too high can crash the game, but I'm using WinXP 32bit and all the tutorials I can find for cranking down your soundcard quality are for Win7, so I don't understand what to do. Here are my specs:

Windows XP 32 bit
Intel Quad Core 2.83ghz
Radeon HD 4870 graphics card
Realtek soundcard

I hope that's all the info that's needed. I really hope someone can help - I just want to play the game but nothing I do seems to work. I'm really tearing my hair out over this. Thanks very much in advance for any replies or help anyone can give.

Your system is not up to the task, it looks like, to use the texture pack. Disable the ESPs in the Data Files screen in the launcher. If the issue persists:

1) Verify files
2) Refresh the INI files in (My) Documents/(My) Games/Skyrim

Thank you very much for the advice, I'll try that out now and see what happens.

Uninstall the official HD textures to start with (just unclick the .ESP in the skyrim launcher). 32-bit OS and 512MB GPU are known to have issues with the high-res pack. If you're still having problems after that, let us know, if the game runs but you want to use the high-res pack you will want to:

1) Upgrade to a 64-bit OS
2) Upgrade to a 1GB+ GPU that's fast enough to take advantage of the extra VRAM (GTX 460/560 or 5870/6870 or better, imo).

Also, it could be a missing master issue as well. Make sure that all mods are gone, outside of the official content of course, from the Data folder.

Looks like it must have been the HD pack. It's playing now, although I still get a couple of funny glitches (I've had the disappearing-walls-in-interior-cells bug a few times since I restarted), but it's nothing I can't live with. Thanks very much everyone for your help, it's much appreciated!