Hello fellow Bethesda players/fans/etc. I'm having a HUGE problem with Skyrim First of all let's get my specs out of the way;


Operating System
MS Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

CPU
Intel Pentium E5400 @ 2.70GHz 40 °C
Wolfdale 45nm Technology
RAM
4.00 GB Dual-Channel DDR2 @ 400MHz (6-6-6-18)

Motherboard
33 °C

Graphics
DELL ST2010 (1600x900@60Hz)
512MB GeForce 9800 GT (MSI) 50 °C

Hard Drives
488GB Hitachi Hitachi HDP725050GLA360 ATA Device (SATA) 30 °C

Optical Drives
HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH22NS50 ATA Device

Audio
Realtek High Definition Audio

Normally during the open world and in many other places, my computer does just fine, there's no crashes or slow downs or anything. My default settings are Medium and the game is pretty and shiny enough that I don't feel my computer is ancient. I'm only level 15 because I've gotten distracted by crafting and looking around and getting mauled by bears and whatnot. But, unfortunately, at certain places in the game world (All indoors so far) My game just completely and utterly crashes. There's no bug/error report or message, it just freezes for a few seconds, and crashes to desktop. Usually with a bubble appearing saying "Display driver has stopped working and has recovered." I don't know how to give you a copy of the save-game or I would so you could see if it crashes for you. It seems certain lighting? or textures? or something just refuse to load and make my game mess up when I get within range of them. Can anyone help?

Thing's I've tried to do to fix it so far:

The audio fix "44.1 khz 16 bit" or whatever.

Everything from this thread: http://crashfixes.com/fixing-skyrim-crashes-freezes-errors-steam-crash-no-sound-lags-choppy-framerates/

I've also set my graphics all to the lowest they can go, and played in a smaller resolution, still no dice.

I also have my nvidia card updated to the latest (beta) version, same for audio drivers.

I disabled anti-virus, steam overlay, etc.

Can anyone help? Please! I really don't want to miss out on Skyrim just cause I can't go into some caves...

Your video card may be old, but compared to your Pentium Dual, it's doing just great. All of the Pentium Duals are crippled at the factory by losing the greatest part of the normal cache RAM that a C2D would have in it. This is done to lower the cost, but it greatly lowers the performance, practically back to the old Pentium P4 class { it's not quite that bad, but a 2.7 GHz Pentium Dual is below the performance level officially named (2.0 GHz full power) CPU that has already been proven to be wishful thinking. The game actually needs a 2.3 GHz Core2Duo class CPU, and you don't have that.

If your motherboard will support it, you need to change out the CPU for an actual C2D, or if the BIOS allows Overclocking, push the core speed up around 3.5 GHz. After one or the other of those, we can see how it runs the game.

I will also caution you about the "latest" of the Geforce graphics drivers. They are often so specifically optimized for the Fermis that they mess up the older cards' performance. Since June, 2009, approximately, over half of the new drivers just cause conflicts between the 7n00 and 8n00 graphics cards and various games (the 9n00 series is somewhat less frequently made unusable, but the frequency of conflicts is still too high).

Okay, thank you for the reply...but why would it work so well in the over-world (where it should take a larger toll on the computer I think?) and just start messing up in caves and such? It doesn't seem to make sense to me :/

I would have to get far deeper into the code that the game is composed in than I'm at all likely to be allowed to get in order to know the real reasons for it. I used to teach programming, among other IT subjects, at the local community college. Whatever is happening, the CPU is more important inside, and you don't have a very good one of those.