Well this is an issue i've been having for about a month now, and the best way to avoid the crashes is by just fast traveling from one place to another or avoiding trouble areas (certain areas that crash 100000% of the time i try and go past them)

To be exact the crashes happen near Riverwood, Windhelm and a few other areas - there are probably more i've yet to discover.

The crashes are either freezes with the sound still playing but the game has frozen (I then need to ctrl-alt-delete to get out of the game or it's stays frozen forever), or CTDs without the error report.

I'm running plenty of texture mods, and the game indoors and in cities is stable but it's as soon as I get outside It's only a matter of time before the game crashes (which makes playing skyrim a very fustrating experience)

I can't name all the texture mods I'm using but the biggest one is Skyrim 2K HD, I've had for longer than the amount of time the game has been crashing or at least before I discovered the problem areas, tried downloading the LITE version but made no difference.

Ambient Occulsion and 8x Supersampling on in Nvidia control panel, tried turning both off and still the issue arises.

Also using TESVAL and have tried Skyboost.

I'm stumped, I know it might be related to texture mods, but i'm hoping it won't be because it can be quite a chore going through all of them and deleting some so I thought I'd post here to see if anyone can help resolve the issue.

Oh and brief specs (I'm no PC expert): Windows 7 64bit, GTX 580 in SLI (Yes tried enabling and disabling SLI, no luck), Gamebooster on, 16GB RAM and i2500k CPU.

Really would appreciate some help! Thanks

I'm having similar issues as well (specs in sig) but unlike you I actually spent a good part of several nights removing / replacing texture mods -- all to no avail. Just when I think I've removed the textures causing issues....I end up crashing in a subsequent load-and-test. One mod that is definitely causing issues is the Deadly Spell Impacts one, it seems. Another issue appears to be when I am near Whiterun. I'm not sure what it is, whether it's the way the textures are loaded into video memory, or how they're handled by the engine, or just very poor compression by modders (I suspect a combination of all 3, but like you I'm no expert either) but it is extremely frustrating. One quick method to test mods, is to delete folders from the Data/textures, running previous saves that were CTD, and then restoring folders from the recycle bin one by one. Hope you get it solved too, I feel your pain!

Good chance it's not your fault at all. Lot's of people, myself included, have run into saves that are myseriously corrupt. The saves load, and you can get around in the world, but after 15 to 20 MB in file size the CTD's just start increasing.

Try starting a new character. You'll probably find that you mods and setup are just fine. Until you hit ~20MB save file size . . . I just hate to see anyone go through the rigamarole of changing out texture files, drivers, etc, only to find it fixes nothing.

I feel your pain bro,though i used this mod and it slightly became better, but it still crashes, i think that maybe it has something to do with "skyrim.ini" and "SkyrimPrefs.ini" because when i delete the modified ones and the game makes it's own "skyrim.ini" and "SkyrimPrefs.ini" the game crashes instantly. here is the mod :

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4192

Lonnlarcan, that svcks that you have to go through all that and still have the problems, especially (judging by your avatar) how awesome your character looks.

Anyway thank you for the replies guys, I appreciate it, glad i'm not the only one it's happening to (though I also wish nobody had this issue), I'm starting to think it may be to do with like you said BobFox, earlier I tried creating a new game to see if the crashes still persisted, and after heading out to the areas where I get the most crashes; everything seemed fine (albeit tiny stutter where I usually get CTDs).

I know there is a big thread about save file size - in fact I probably should of tried the starting the new game method earlier.

Oh and Parmida, thanks for the link but it probably won't make a difference on my operating system because I have Windows 64bit, thanks for the thought though

Was this save file size ever an issue in Oblivion? I don't remember having this many problems, but It's been many years since I played that so I don't remember very clearly. I hope Bethesda fix this, it shouldn't always be up to the public to find fixes, but I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up that way. I don't like being one of the negative people around, but how could they not have seen this before the game was released?