I got skyrim when it came out, I expected it to work like oblivion and morrowind did for me. It did not work and I posted my dxdiag info, now, many months later it is may and i still have not got a fix for my crash to desktop on interior cells and the first level where you go through the cave. I have tried tons of fixes, and i did the thing in the sound manager changing quality, nothing has made it stop crashing to desktop and saying the driver(which mind you is the most recent revision) has stopped working.

It's been half a year now and my gamestop receipt has expired, I want my money back from bethesda. You did not deliver, it is your responsibility to return to me the sixty dollars I paid for a game that does not work. I have been very patient but it's been plenty long and I want answers.

Sincerely,
Aaron.

You can get your money back anyways, if you can prove that your game is not fit-for-purpose, which is a EU law, i will be easy to get your money back, if you live in a EU country that is.

Descibe your problem further please

If its registered on steam which it will be as your on pc, then they wont take it back even with a valid reciept.

But explain your problem more and we might be able to help.

Have you tried reinstalling DirectX?

That message generally means it's not a game issue.

Post your hardware specifics and the driver version you have on your (Ati ? ) videocard,please.

Oblivion and Morrowind are "old" games,Skyrim have better graphics/system requirements of course and can even don't run properly on an old pc.

Off topic, but I just wanted to note that the community here is much kinder and helpful than others I've dealt with. Everyone in this thread has simply offered advice and assistance.

/clap

Normally if it's reporting the driver as having stopped that's not related to the game as such but *may* be related to the following:

• You have an old driver
  
• You have a corrupt driver
  
• You are overclocking your card
  
• You have the wrong driver
  
• You have a card that is too weak
  
• You do not have enough power going to the card

So:

• Are any of the above true?
  
• Are you using any mods?
  
• What do you have the ingame graphics settings set to?
  
• Have you amended the ini settings in any way?
  
• Are the crashes accompanied by any blue-screening, PC restarts at all, do you notice any missing or badly-rendered textures prior to a crash?
  
• Is there any stuttering?
  
• Are you using an NVIDIA card or an AMD card?
  
• Do you have anything else running on your PC?
  
• What are the specs of your PC?

I know you've mentioned some of this in your post, but it's often best to start from brass tacks. If you can post the specifics maybe someone can help you, on here - there is a lot of expertise and advice available on this forum, I have found.

I've seen this exact problem caused by a faulty PSU. It took a month to convince my friend to bring his PC round to mine so I could test using my PSU, but we ordered him a new new one after he'd been playing for an hour using his rig with my PSU, and has been happily playing ever since. I'm not saying this will definitely fix the OP's problem, but it certainly fixed the same symptoms as the OP is having...

xTx

The only one that's true is the card is a SLIGHTLY overclocked GTX 285. My PSU is brand new, and I can't see any other problems that apply, direct x and drivers are up to date. I'm not an idiot I may not be a genius but I think I've tried just about everything. What I don't understand though sir, is that outdoor cells work fine being that I tried a savegame, it's the map and the interior cells that push issue. It would seem unlikely to me that a slight overclock would make only interior cells and map crash the game. THanks all though, I'm just disappointed as I'm sure you all would be too.

specs:

AMD Phenom II X4 945 deneb 3.0ghz4gb DDR3 corsair memorycorsair 850 watt psunvidia GeForce GTX285 by BFG Tech1.5 tb sata spindrive

Have you tried playing it with the card not overclocked?
What resolution are you using?

Are you running any mods at all?

No mods at all. Running 1600x900. I haven't tried without overclocking yet, my card is stock overclocked by BFG Tech. I think theres something called ATI tool for setting your clocks maybe ill try that after work.

is there any error report from game or windows ?

If it's an ATI then, try using the driver before the latest - I've heard that can sometimes help...
...(I think)

I've tried that seeing as I have been attempting since the game came out last year lol. I've tried driver that was out then, the one after, and now the latest one. Still no luck.

The error is from windows yes

From what I can tell, no one else has had this much trouble. Just about every bug fix / suggestion has failed and I think gamesas owes me my 60 bucsk back.

Well there is your problem overclocking creates more headaches than what it's worth. Put everything back to default speed.

I had that exact same 3d card, and I had the same issues, BFG went bankrupt shortly after that card was released, and is likely do to the high failure rate of that card. The only solution I had used that helped was using a a program like inspector, and down clocking the card.

I'm not definitively saying that this is your problem... but this one raised a red flag for me. Did you have any of these problems before installing the new PSU? Lot's of electronics are bad right out of the box. When someone tells me "It can't be XYZ, it's brand new", then my first thought is to swap that new item out with a known good one.

If it's brand new and he has had the issues for 6 months, I doubt it's the PSU personally unless 2 of them in a row were faulty. Then again, I think what Riakon is saying is most likely the solution to his problem!

An overclock,even if "slightly" - and if not done "properly" - can cause instability to the system if applied directly on the bios.

Try at the default settings or use a dedicated software to overclock like others have already suggested here.

However,your video card is good,you don't need to overclock it in my opinion to play Skyrim.

Download it again from steam, or verify the files. I had problem with portal 2 yesterday and I verified the files and steam downloaded a file and that solved it. You can first try with that or download the full game again.

Good luck

All very sound suggestions from other posters.

If you get a driver error, it'll be due to unstable hardware or a dodgy driver, not the game. You can't blame Bethesda and demand your money back when it's nothing to do with them.

The PSU came with the computer, the guy at microcenter assured me it was compatible with the card.
aleardy tried that lil number
nvidia even has a section about skyrim on their site, my card is compatible on both bethesda and nvidias list. Mentioning once again the brand new driver plus three in the past. I think I can blame bethesda when millions of other users are getting CTD's. That's just dodgy coding, if it weren't for steam and the ability to update, they would have done it right from the beginning like oblivion. Steam is ruining games for us. Not to mention I can't play it when I Don't have internet. I know they need to protect their software and all but thats also a pain. I'll try clocking to "normal" not what BFG Tech set it to and get back to you guys.

Your card is compatible, yes. However the card could be failing, or be dodgy. You could have corrupted drivers, or simply drivers which don't like your configuration, to which trying others will help. I had weird artifacts, low performance and the same driver failure message when I was using a driver that just didn't happen to like my PC. Swapping drivers fixed it. Like others have suggested, you could also have a dodgy PSU or other components which contribute to the issue.

Every game is going to crash at some point. Bethesda games have always been notorious for CTDing, sure. However, crashing to desktop is not the same as a driver failure message. Games don't cause that, drivers and hardware do.

Oblivion was pretty bad for CTDing when it came out, and has been patched to hell. Fallout 3 still crashes and it's not a Steam title. I'm not quite sure what you're blaming Steam for, or how it's ruining games for us. And you can play when you don't have the internet. You go into offline mode.

^ +1
Also, even though the PSU might be sufficient for running that card two years ago, it may not be now. PSUs get a little weaker over time. What's more, newer titles are likely to take more juice to render. And, you say the "salesman" said it would work? Yeah, Salesmen never lie. However, that said it really doesn't sound likely that the PSU is your prob.

It sounds more likely corrupted gfx files in Skyrim. First check your HDD for errors (Scandisk, or Chkdsk). Then delete your entire Skyrim directory under the Steam directory, and let Steam re-download it. (You can back it up first if you desire.) This is a well-known fix on the Steam forums, I've had to do this once myself W/Skyrim (but I had different symptoms).

Hmm..i have the suspicion that your primary interest is more to "blame" Bethesda than try to understand and fix your problem.

Its difficult "make a diagnosis" at distance for such things; and no one can assure you that the guy at the store is in good faith or know what he doing.

Contact the support center and give them all the needed informations with the exact error code you receive when that crashes happens - if you want "real help". Or check here and on the net for similar "errors" and try to find a solution yourself.