Experiencing Repeatable Crash - No Mods, Brand New SKY Insta : V

» Wed May 30, 2012 9:12 pm

I'm experiencing a repeatable crash. I have tested this with no plugins, no custom textures or meshes, no scripts/mods of any kind, hi-rez texture pack uninstalled, no third party utilities or dlls. The crash persists through everything. I have tested it with two of the latest patches. Fearing a corruption in my game installation, I have re-installed the game and tested it on a pristine, unchanged copy of Skyrim. The crash persists. I have also tested this with newly generated, pristine ini files.

The crash occurs just outside Riverwood. Here are the directions to the exact spot where it happens:

You exit the bridge from Riverwood and go right along the road. The first thing you see at the corner is a pine tree, and then another tree just beyond it. Take a few more steps and you find a tree stump to the right. Just beyond that, two more trees. Save the game here.

Just ahead on the right of the road you see rocks. Beyond that, a tree stump. Go OFF the road and walk RIGHT around the tree stump. You can see a large log just ahead. Walk straight for the log. If it's going to crash, it'll happen just as you reach the log or shortly after. Jump over the log and continue toward a small bunch of flowers. If you make it to the flowers, you won't crash. Quit the game and try again from the save point. Test at least ten times.

For me, it happens about 4 out of 10 times. This is the worst kind of crash bug because it's not 100% repeatable, and it makes me wonder if there are other "hot spots" around the game.

My specs:

i5-2500k @ 3.3mhz
GTX 550Ti 1GB (Latest drivers)
4GB RAM
Windows 7 64
Brand new OS installation (3 weeks old), religiously defragged, registry cleaned, virus/malware scanned, etc.

Could someone else test this area of the game please?

» Wed May 30, 2012 4:17 pm

Hmm. No crash for me if I'm following your directions correctly. What kind of crash are we talking here? Straight to desktop? Try lowering your gfx settings to medium or low?

» Wed May 30, 2012 2:26 pm

have you tried lower all your graphic settings (or just set to low), do it still crashed?

» Wed May 30, 2012 1:58 pm

Okay, I’ve tried this five times. Nothing happens in the spot you identified. I jump over the log and continue on my merry way. But once I get past the S curve in the road and when I can see Whiterun on my left and the meadery and farm below, right in that area I had four crashes to desktop and one freezeup. After the first CTD, there was a error window stating that there was a failure to render. I wonder if this is a bug in the latest patch. Never had any trouble in this area before the patch.

» Wed May 30, 2012 8:58 pm

I tried the suggestions and lowered my settings all the way but the crash persisted (2 out of 4 times). I didn't suspect that would work anyway because I keep my settings fairly low to begin with.

Let me also mention that in my testing, this only happens when I first enter the game and make that brief run from the save spot to the log. If I "survive" the trip to the log without crashing and continue to run around, then double back and make the run again, there's no problem (so far).

The easier answer is "don't save in that spot or take that path in the future". But how many other areas of the game are like this? What if many crashes that people think are random are really caused by some glitched spot on the map? It doesn't cause a crash all the time, and when the person re-enters the game it's unlikely that they'll take (or think to take for testing purposes) that exact same path.

This crash has occurred almost half the time for me on three different versions of Skyrim (non-patched plus the two latest patches), with both mods and no mods, modified inis and no modified inis, on both medium settings and the lowest settings, on a system that shouldn't have any trouble with this game. I can not believe for the life of me that no one else has this problem. Please, would more people test this? Make a new character to do it. Paste SStartingCell=Riverwood under the general section of skyrim.ini so you don't have to go through the whole starting sequence. Run to the save spot described above. Save the game. Put a pound sign (#) in front of the "SStartingCell=Riverwood" or just delete it from your ini. Go back to the save and make that brief run described above. Try it 5 or 10 times. If it's only me then my system is somehow (unbelievably) not compatible with Skyrim and I'll just uninstall it and play something else. What other choice do I have? I've tested everything I can think of. But if it's NOT only me then any way you look at it, it's a problem that needs to be figured out. By testing this, you guys are either (a) helping me to uncover a nasty bug that effects us all, or ( b confirming that I need to uninstall Skyrim.

EDIT: Has anyone ever experienced any animation-related crashes that have to do with the wildlife? Say, for instance, a mammoth is floating in the sky and you get closer to it and then crash, or a deer gets stuck somewhere as it's trying to run away from you, then suddenly "pops" out of the picture and somewhere else---then you sometimes crash. One thing I notice is that when I made this new character and start my run toward that log, there's often a deer there. He runs in terror from me and tries to cross the river. Maybe that's it. I'm going to quickly mod all the deer out of the game and see if it happens again.