I tweaked ini files. Using SKSE with the required tesval.dll. even deleted interface.bsa and some exe files and whatnot.

The game still crashes to desktop soon as i hit "M" for world map

My system is old i know

AMD Athlon 64 DC
2 gb ram
evga 7900gtx 512 vid card
WIndows 7 Ultimate 64

That is a terribly old video graphics card (six years now). If the CPU is equally old, it very well could be a slow single core version, and below the minimum requirement.

Corrected Skyrim Minimum Requirements

* Windows 7/Vista/XP PC (32 or 64 bit)
* Processor: Dual Core 2.3 GHz C2D or equivalent CPU
* 2GB System RAM
* 6GB free HDD Space
* Direct X 9 compliant video card with 512 MB of RAM (and
sufficient performance to actually put that VRAM to use)
* DirectX compatible sound card
* Internet access for Steam activation

P. S. A huge percentage of nVIDIA's drivers from June, 2009 onward will "break" the game for the 6n00, 7n00, and 8n00 Geforces. You may need a much older driver to suit your much older hardware.

I have all that. My processor is a AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core processor 6400+ 3.2 for each.
The vid card is EVGA pci-e NVidia GeForce 7900 gtx 512 vram

Try re-installing DirectX9.0c
Also tho its not normally a good thing with an old GFX card, try the latest driver or if no good go back a few. Even try a real old one, you got nothing to lose!

I'm thinking its more some feature of DX9 that the 7900 doesn't support but there's also how that card's 512 is split across its two GPUs so effectively you've got an SLI setup with each GPu only sporting 256...that's not really going to cut it for Skyrim I'm afraid.

That's way below the minimum spec and yes a Athlon 64 is single core.

Wasn't the 7900 GTX a single GPU card? The 7900 GX2 had two GPUs.

Having one CPU core instead of two shouldn't really crash anything as the threads just get executed sequentially (or deadlock if the code is garbage), but the game may be trying to do something that crashes the 7900's driver. Given how many other bugs the game has, it's entirely possible the game is putting D3D into a nonsensical state or making malformed calls with undefined results, and they just don't happen to crash on hardware the game was tested on.

Indeed, the game should still be able to start and you could run Skyrim on low. Are you using new graphics drivers?

Blarg you're right its the GX2 that's the double GPU card, man Nvidia didn't do anyone any favours by flipping around their naming convention like that I was just thinking if it was the double GPU version that means that its 512MB of vram is getting split between them and that would be pretty hard to fit Skyrim within. Since that's not the case a single GPU with its abilities and 512MB of vram should be able to at least try to play. Far as I know the 7 series was fully capable of DX9, it was DX10 that they weren't capable. Are we all very sure that something like the map isn't trying to use elements of DX10 perhaps?

As old as the card is, new drivers could be a liability, not an asset. From June, 2009 and newer, many Geforce drivers have regularly been "breaking" games for old cards like his 7900 is.

No its Dual Core. It's what it says on the box it came in. Also motherboard and WIndows 7 see it also as dual core

Did you deactivate the blood splatter? I have the same problem you descrive when I deactivate that. It seems the games treat the map opening the same way it do with the blood splattering the screen.

But to all here who posted. Thanx for the input, some are helpful, for the others well your just telling me what i already know (UPGRADE THAT [censored]). lol

Ok seems when i tried loading map at the start it closes to desktop. I'm out of Helgen now and world map works when i hit "M".

When have the "MONEY" I will slowly rebuild another system.

I used to have a A64 single-core, completely forgot about the dual-core version. It was X2, still way below spec though but a great CPU at the time.