Devs only respond with new patches. Try adding more system RAM and clean sweep then reinstall your vid drivers.

I'm already sitting at the max RAM my OS will see. Already used driver sweeper and tried several different driver versions. Still random errorless CTDs. My current system specs can, and should run this game at atleast medium settings. No other game I have ever played has given me anywhere near this many problems. Ever. Not bad, spending 60$ to get [censored] on.

Purple textures = Your settings are too high and specifically its running out of room to put the textures, meaning when it can't skin something with its textures it just barnies them up instead. Purple trees means your settings are too high. Oh and that also creates CTD conditions too. Turn down the settings. A 9800GT is not that awesome anymore, turn down the settings.

ED: "Room" btw being your video card's vram, which it has the game's minimal requirement of 512mb, which if everything is set to low, works out okay with I assume but I wouldn't run Skyrim at 1080p on anything less then a 1GB card.

Perhaps you should have fully read my OP. Before I was forced to reformat, the game ran FLAWLESSLY. No issues whatsoever, mostly medium, with a few choice settings on high. No purple textures, no CTDs, nothing out of the ordinary. Patch to 1.3.1 upon reformatting and getting my rig back up and running, bam, Right in the face with problems. The issue is not with my hardware.

Doesn't matter, 512mb is a snack to Skyrim's engine. Turn down the settings, you likely had them lower then you think you did before.

There aren't that many settings to set in the launcher. The settings are exactly what I had them set to a few weeks ago. Either way, I've tried all low settings, all ultra, and everything in between. Nothing has fixed the CTDs, or minor occasional stuttering that did not exist prior to reinstalling.

Uh, have you tried deleting your INI files?

I'm honestly going to try to help here. Let me clear something up first. There is no 1.3.1 version of the game. The .10 in 1.3.10.0 is a ten, not a one. It is a newer build than the previous version, 1.3.7.0. Version 1.2 broke a lot of stuff, so I'm not going to help anyone roll back to 1.2 or 1.1. I don't know of any way to do it and it doesn't help the person having issues if they just run into the same problems the next time an update is released.


This is not correct, nor is it even possible. Making an .exe large address-aware is not the same as compiling it for 64-bit. 64-bit operating systems can access more than 2GB of system memory by default. The LAA flag for 32-bit executables is necessary to allow them to see more than 2GB, which as you pointed out, this means 3GB on a 32-bit operating system. The TESV.exe is not a 64-bit executable and compiling it as a 64-bit executable for users of 64-bit operating systems would not magically solve the problems people are having. In any event, you can not run a 64-bit executable on a 32-bit operating system, so nobody is making you do such a thing.


This is a self-help technical support forum. Bethesda monitors the forum but they don't normally post here. Gstaff occasionally provides updates and very (very) rarely posts in threads, but you should not rely upon or expect help from Bethesda by posting in this forum.


I've run every version of the game that's been released and I've seen some of the issues you've mentioned, but not to the degree you're now experiencing them. Version 1.1 and 1.2 were relatively stable - I encountered 1 crash (note: all crashes should be considered 'abnormal') but I saw slightly increased frequency with 1.3.7.0. This problem went away with the third-party LAA fix applied to 1.3.10.0 and didn't get worse with 1.3.10.0. Prior to 1.3.10.0 I've seen pink/purple textures after longer sessions of play (2+ hours). Restarting the game fixes the problem. I've seen it maybe 2-3 times, but I have plenty of system RAM and a fast hard drive.

Now to the actual problem. You have pointed out that the game was running fine before you had to reformat and reinstall. You've already tried different video and sound drivers, so that's not the problem. I don't believe 1.3.10.0 is the problem since I've never had these issues to the severity that you're reporting and many of the issues that you've pointed out were reported well before 1.3.7.0 or 1.3.10.0 were released. I think you need to take a look at your chipset drivers to make sure that all system drivers are up to date. This can include on-board audio drivers, disk controller drivers and usb controller drivers. You need to look at your Windows updates to make sure you have the latest (or at least the same as before the reformat) versions of DirectX, .NET Framework and any recommended updates. You should look at your swapfile settings. You can try configuring Windows to not use a pagefile to reduce hard drive thrashing. Look at whatever might have changed when you reinstalled Windows. I'm not going to mention mods or INI tweaks because those should be obvious first steps.

I don't believe the 1.3.10.0 patch is the cause of these issues.

One other thought.

Given that your video card is not a current generation card, I would suggest trying a utility that provides an on-screen display so you can monitor its resources. I use MSI Afterburner and MSI On-Screen display server v4.0.1 to occasionally monitor my GPU core temp, GPU usage, VRAM usage, etc. The OSD can be toggled on and off, so it's not a constant annoyance, but if your settings are exceeding your video card's capabilities, it will be readily obvious. If you observe purple textures, dramatic slowdowns or crashes that you can attribute to your card's VRAM being maxed out or GPU overheating, these can be very useful bits of information to help you adjust your settings to get the most out of the game on your particular video card.

i had these issues too, with 4gb ram. one day the crashes started, without changing anything on my pc. im playing with a geforce 560 ti (the game adviced ultra, but i play only on high).

with windows tools i saw that while playing skyrim max 70% ram is used, when the game ctd or purple textures appear. so i think, it cant be ram. but firefox or internet explorer should be shut down anyway while playing, especially if more then one tab is loaded, because these two browsers just eat ram or cpu. the longer you leave them open, the more they eat (ff is especially a problem for cpu-usage).

there is an unofficial windows patch that enables windows 32 bit to use more then 3,25 gb ram (up to 8 gb, if i know). you could try this patch too. at the moment i only have a http://www.unawave.de/windows-7-tipps/32-bit-ram-sperre.html, where you can download it, but google, i'm sure you will find enough english sites with a workflow. i use this patch without problems.

edit: you could also switch back to an earlier skyrim version, by installing the game again and forbid updates. there are some sites where you can find atleast the day-1-patch or tesv.exe 1.1.2. maybe you can also do your own rollback by resetting the exe with windows tools. dont know the word on english, sorry, im not a native speaker, but windows makes copies of some files and folders and recovery points (i'm pretty sure this is not the term on english, but i hope you understand ). just check your tesv.exe > properties > previous versions. maybe you are lucky.

All programs should be shut down when running Skyrim. This means browsers, iTunes, gadgets, etc.

I found this on BigDaddy's Tweak Thread(highly recommended read)http://support.microsoft.com/fixit/?WT.mc_id=SMCPSC_ENUS_ADR_FIXIT