Lanceor

I've only tried the patch briefly, but I managed to fast travel from Whiterun to Markarth to Raven Rock to Windhelm to Riften... without CTD or ILS. Before the patch, this chain of fast travel was guaranteed to cause problems, and in fact, I wasn't able to get out of Solstheim without using Safety Load.

I tried it and found that it removed more immersion than it added. - When looking to the side, the character's actual head clipped into view. (This was at the default FOV setting.) - In the cut scene parts of "Unbound" the camera position was wrong most of the time. I was able to analyse Lokir's skin pores while riding the cart, and the camera was pointed at the ground for much of the execution scene (including the bit where Alduin attacks). However, I really do like the concept and if the mod author does release another version, I'll definitely be trying it again.

I think that it is beyond reasonable doubt that Safety Load does get rid of the ILS problem. What needs to be evaluated are its CTDs - the number of CTD reports are too many to be coincidental. My current playthrough is quite stable in terms of CTDs but ILS's are rather frequent. The plugin flipped that around - no ILS but frequent CTD (including a reproducible one in Wolfskull ruins with which I was able to conduct testing). As such, I would not give Safety Load an unconditional recommendation. I'd say to users that they try if they are having ILS problems, and to keep using it if it helps more than harms. It is also a plugin that I would keep it on hand in case I get stuck - loading a stubborn savegame or getting out of Solstheim for example.

Just want to add my 2 cents worth. One of the versions is Dual Wield Parry Left Hand - it used to be a bit buggy but I actually fixed it for Borgut1337 and it should be very reliable now. Things to consider for Dual Wield Parry Left Hand: - It uses no scripts at all. - It uses the same default button setup as sword and shield or two handed weapons. i.e. Left click to attack, right click to block. Not having to learn a new button setup makes switching equipment/characters a lot easier. - Its only disadvantage is that left attacks are disabled while dual wielding. This is usually not an issue if a dagger is being wielded in the left hand as is popular. - Right-hand attacks and dual attacks, both normal and power versions, are as vanilla. The first two points are what swayed me towards the Left Hand version instead of the more popular SKSE and Scriptdragon versions.

I use either GPU-Z or MSI Afterburner on a second monitor to keep an eye on things like GPU load, VRAM usage and temperatures. Likewise, I use Task Manager to keep an eye on the CPU load and CPU-Z to monitor temperatures. If you don't have a second monitor, MSI Afterburner has a useful on-screen display function though you may have to tab out or exit the game to check the CPU usage. (Someone may know of a mod or software that can monitor CPU usage in-game). Usually, you'll find out what part of your system is maxing out this way.

Got a bit of a breakthrough today. My earlier hunch about the combat CTDs due to Vilja is correct. If she somehow gets an invalid item in her inventory, combat will make her tear the fabric of Skyrim's space-time and cause a CTD. The fix is to use the console to find and remove these glitched items. Those "corrupted savegames" were probably due to this glitch. One source of CTDs eliminated, 99 to go. :P The memory errors are very weird - no other combination of software has been able to produce these errors. At least I know that rebooting the computer fixes it for a few hours. Perhaps it has something to do with that rumoured Skyrim memory leak. As for autosaves... I stopped using them ages ago. ;)

If you've already done that, the only other way I know of is to reload a previous save, and to avoid saving outdoors. My suspicion is that if the script is running when you save, exiting and reloading will cause that script to go buggy from that point onwards, corrupting future savegames as well. I take the cart ride to Helgen every time I start a new game as I'm wary of exterior saves having this problem!

Yah, turning off the GPU overclock sounds prudent - I'll do that. This is proving really hard to diagnose as sometimes it'll go for hours without a CTD, sometimes it will cause memory errors (requiring a reboot) and sometimes the savegame will corrupt itself (requiring a rollback).

I'd be happy to help out with Oblivion. TBH, I was more involved on the mod-making side of things than the mod-installing side, though I did use a full suite of graphics enhancement mods that worked well for my machine.

It's possible probable that the old script was baked into your savegame and Skyrim is still using the old one. While ClearInvalidRegistrations will eventually clear out the old script, you could try going to an unmodded interior cell and waiting for 31 days. No Boring Wait Menu will help preserve your sanity if you do this.

Once again, Skyrim has thrown me another curve ball. MemTest on its own - No problems MemTest after 8 hours of Prime95 - No problems MemTest + Prime95 at the same time - No problems MemTest + IntelBurnTest - No problems MemTest + IntelBurnTest + Ungine Heaven - No problems MemTest + IntelBurnTest + Prime95 + Ungine Heaven - Surely you can't be serious... MemTest after an hour of Skyrim - Memory Errors The memory errors still occur after the system is given 10 minutes to cool down and there are no other applications running. They'll persist until a system reboot after which I'll have no further memory errors until I run Skyrim again. What could it be about Skyrim that could mess up memory so badly that not even three torture-testing applications in unison can't match it?

Yes. :facepalm: Editing my post now.

Seriously - run MemTest. Like you, I tried every conceivable combination of mods and tweaks and still couldn't achieve stability. Also like you, I used the same overclock for over a year and my rig could survive 8 hours of Prime95 and pass IntelBurnTest and Ungine Heaven Benchmarks with flying colors. I was 200% sure that my system was completely rock-solid stable... but 5 minutes of MemTest completely shattered that notion. The worst that could happen is that you waste half an hour confirming what you already know. ;)

Has anyone tried turning off Hyperthreading? The theory is that hyperthreading allows a quad-core processor to run up to eight concurrent threads at 50% speed. While great for general computing, Skyrim (and games in general) requires maximum on-demand performance from fewer cores. Having to share a core with another thread will actually worsen its performance. Also, to quote the CPU affinity - two different approaches thread: By turning off hyperthreading, Windows is still managing how the CPU is utilised. However, it ensures that high-usage processes get cores all to themselves. I do have some anecdotal results from my non-scientific "tests". However, I'll spoiler them so that anyone planning to test it can do so with an open mind. :)

Like most, I love simple tweaks that improve stability and/or performance, but I have my reservations on whether the tweaks in Project Stability work or not. HPET Tweaks Summary: Tests inconclusive, but I'm avoiding using it. I've run a battery of fifteen-minute tests that show forcing HPET to be quite stable after a system restart. However, with HPET forced it seems that memory errors start to occur after a few hours of gameplay. The only way I can test this scientifically is to change the HPET settings, play for several hours and then run the memory test... a bit more time consuming than I can afford. Just for the record, these are the HPET settings that were available to me and I've tried all four. Setting 1: HPET: Enabled, HPET Mode: 32 bit, useplatformclock not set (system/BIOS default) Setting 2: HPET: Enabled, HPET Mode: 32 bit, useplatformclock true Setting 3: HPET: Enabled, HPET Mode: 64 bit, useplatformclock not set Setting 4: HPET: Enabled, HPET Mode: 64 bit, useplatformclock true Unparking Cores Summary: No scientific evidence for/against, but I'm using it. All my cores were already unparked due previous registry dabbling. I presume it either helps or does nothing so I'm leaving them unparked. CleanMem Summary: No obvious effect so I'm avoiding this tool. I get a lot of load screen freezes on fast travel or cell transition. CleanMem didn't reduce them in any way. I've tried various "memory optimisers" on occasion since the 1990's and have yet to use one that has had a measurable effect. Given the controversy surrounding memory optimisers in general, I'm avoiding this tool. But wait, there's more! There's one more tweak that I think would have fit in well with Project Stability and I'm surprised that it wasn't included - turning off hyperthreading in the BIOS. I'm going to start a new thread on this so as not to hijack this thread. :) Edit: I'm a doofus and wrote HPET as HDEP.

For me it was a memory error. Even though I could run Prime95 overnight without my CPU exploding, a quick run of MemTest showed that I was getting memory errors due to overclocking. Testing your memory is worth a shot.

All hail Aiyen! Your hunch has done more for my game's stability than all the other tweaks and tips that I've read on the Internet put together. Over the last few days, I re-overclocked the CPU manually instead of using the insta-overclock software that came with the Mobo and now have a very stable 4.5 GHz clock which passes an overnight MemTest. Seeing that the game was stable, I re-added all the texture mods that I had before. No problems. So I kept adding MORE texture mods until the GPUs were both constantly running at 100% and maxing out the VRAM. Frame rates dropped but Skyrim was as stable as it could be. Now I've got to dial back my textures and overclock my GPUs to get better frame rates. Thanks to your hunch, I'm finally running Skyrim to my system's limits. :)

Thanks for suggesting that. I downloaded and ran MemTest and it detected an error within 5 minutes. I'm going to de-overclock the computer now and run some more tests. :) UPDATE: Good news - the hardware is not at fault. After setting my BIOS to defaults, MemTest ran overnight without error. Now all I have to do is try overclocking the machine again adding MemTest to the suite of stability tests. :)

The character is now level 71 and I think it's safe to say that the stability problems are [ SOLVED ]. To recap, the two main problems were Random CTDs (no warning, no error, no pattern, not reproducible) and Combat CTDs (CTD at the start of combat). Removing all texture mods stopped 99% of both types of CTD suggesting that the game can't handle the load even though the system is running at 60 fps. The combat CTDs still happens occasionally. I have a suspicion (though unable to prove conclusively via testing) that it was Companion Vilja. It seems that on certain game loads and/or entering certain dungeons, something makes her glitch out causing a CTD at the start of combat start, especially if she is far away at the time. Telling her not to fight seems to stop this type of CTD but it's hard to tell whether it was indeed this or simply the reload that fixed it.

I've downloaded Optimizer Texture but haven't used it yet. I figured that that if I was going to reduce my texture load, then I may as well simply not use any replacement textures. While the vanilla lo-res textures are clearly not as good, I haven't found them to be really awful. For now, I think I'll stick with the current configuration as I plan to add more non-STEP mods later, and additional stability overhead is always welcome. :) Edit: @ joshkope - I thought you were asking me and not Ezekiel33 when I wrote that reply.

Update: The crashes didn't stop until I did a few things, after which stability improved heaps. First, the fxDustDropRandom and dunBluePalaceArena scripts were crashing the game even in Helgen. I downloaded some fixes from a thread that I found at Nexus and that solved the problem. (USKP was supposed to have fixed them already, but Skyrim patch 1.9 might have broken them again somehow.) Around 5 hours into the game, I was getting the odd unexplained crash here and there. By 10 hours, it was unplayable again. I removed ALL textures mods including the official HRDLC... basically anything that didn't have an esp so that I wouldn't mess up my load order. After this, the game became playable once again. I'm still getting freezes on fast travel from "intense" areas such as Raven Rock, Markath and Whiterun - workaround: save before fast travel! Occasionally I'll get one of the critter scripts crashing the game in exteriors. I'll also get the "start of combat" crashes, but reloading the game seems to fix it. The game is now at 30 hours and it still freezes on fast travel and crashes sometimes, but not frequently enough for me to call it unplayable. It seems to be a simple case of the game executable unable to handle what my computer throws at it.

Thanks for confirming that. It suggests that the crashes are not related to my current texture load. Anyway, I think I have found the culprit of the "Alduin flying overhead" CTDs and quite likely the "combat CTDs" - it turns out to be the UNPB BBP body. This is known to conflict with Realistic Ragdolls and  Force unless a compatible Custom Skeleton Replacer is installed. Sadly, that custom skeleton replacer (masic version 5) doesn't quite fix things and sneak-related male animations may crash the game. Since I play in 1st person and don't have any male companions, this bug gets triggered rarely. To make it worse, Wrye Bash doesn't seem to be able to uninstall it clearly, leaving animation bugs until I deleted the entire meshes\actors\character folder and reinstalled everything that was missing. On to the playthrough attempt #6! (And fingers crossed that the crashes I was getting before don't return.)

Wouldn't overclocking reduce stability? I thought of increasing the voltage as it's been reported in the Crysis forums that the GTX 580 is undervolted for DX11 games. Even though Skyrim is DX9, I figured it was worth a try. Just wondering - do people using Extreme Step get these no-error CTDs? Is the game crashing out due to a software rather than hardware limitations? Anyway, I'm going to reduce my textures to baseline STEP and see what effect that has.

The results are in. Unfortunately they are inconclusive suggesting that adjusting GPU voltage is not a panacea for CTD problems. Method I have a savegame which was saved immediately after exiting Helgen Cave. This save would routinely crash as Alduin flew overhead. After warming up the GPU's, I loaded the save twenty times and counted the number of times it would crash when Alduin flew overhead. I would then adjust the GPU voltage settings in MSi Afterburner and repeat the test twenty times. There were three sets of twenty tests, one for each of the following AfterBurner settings: Test Set 1 Default voltage (1.000V) Force Constant Voltage OFF Test Set 2 Voltage 1.075V Force Constant Voltage ON Test Set 3 Voltage 1.115V Force Constant Voltage ON Results Test Set 1 (Default voltage 1.000V, Force Constant Voltage OFF) Number of Crashes: 8 out of 20 Test Set 2 (Voltage 1.075V, Force Constant Voltage ON) Number of Crashes: 4 out of 20 Test Set 3 (Voltage 1.115V, Force Constant Voltage ON) Number of Crashes: 7 out of 20 Conclusion While increasing the GPU core voltage a little to 1.075V appears to improve stability, it did not eliminate all crashes. Increasing it to 1.115V made it as unstable as with the stock voltage settings. Therefore I conclude that my crashes are not caused by GPU hardware problems, though a slight voltage increase does provide a buffer that will help to reduce them.

I'm not sure, but initial tests suggest it and it's plausible in theory. So far, I heard mention of of framerate loss, graphical glitches or total computer crashes when it comes to hardware failure, but not CTDs without error. I'm going to conduct some extensive tests today and report back.