Lanceor

Well, that didn't take long. Straight out of Helgen cave, the game crashed as soon as Alduin flew overhead. The good news is that I made a save just before the crash, and therefore I can replay the crash scenario repeatedly. I didn't have much time to test as I had to go out, but I think I may be on to something. Loading the savegame over and over, I noted the following: Crashes are more likely when the GPUs are hot (over 65 degrees C) Crashes were less frequent when I forced a constant voltage on the GPUs. Crashes were less frequent when overvolted the GPUs from 1.000V to 1.075V. There were no crashes after forcing constant voltage and overvolting it to 1.075V. Testing was limited so these results aren't conclusive. I'll do a few hours of testing with the new voltage settings tomorrow. If this turns out to be correct, I may have discovered another source of crashes - the GPU not receiving enough current under heavy load. :)

I've added Skyrim Project Optimization - while my system isn't low end, I don't think the mod can do any harm. I run Ambient Occlusion on Quality mode, so SPO might actually help in large areas like Castle Dawnguard. As for Optimizer Textures, I've given it a miss since I'm already at 60 FPS most of the time and there's no point grabbing all these hi-res textures just to have them reduced (unless it's crashing the engine of course). I've reduced my non-STEP scripted mods to just four: Build Your Own Home ACE Combat Skills Duel - Deadly Combat Vilja Companion There's also UNP BBP and half a dozen item mods that shouldn't cause any trouble. Anyway, I'm heading to Helgen to start a playthrough now. Hopefully the game won't start crashing around the 20 -30 hour mark like the last three times. If it stays stable, I'll start adding some follower mods. Wish me luck. :)

I'm already doing 1, 2 and 3, but 4 and 5 look like they're worth a try.

Hello William. Yep, I'm the same Lanceor. :) No issues with Acquisitive Soul Gems. I'm not too fussed about petty souls going into grand soul gems, so I'll uninstall it and reduce the number of scripted mods by one. :)

Hey there mobias. Fellow newcomer here. :) If you've edited bash.ini to look for the setup folders in a new location, you should save the files to that new location. So if you specified sOblivionMods=E:\Skyrim Mods then you should place your the downloaded files into E:\Skyrim Mods\Bash Installers. Most packages downloaded from Nexus should work as-is just by dropping them into the Bash Installers folder. Do double check what Wrye Bash has actually installed though as sometimes it will get it wrong if the downloaded archive has a weird file structure.

Hello all! First of all, a big thanks to TC and everyone involved with STEP. It's brought me a lot closer to a great looking but stable and playable Skyrim! Unfortunately I'm not quite there yet - I'm still chasing down a couple of random, no error CTDs that happen within 5 - 15 minutes of starting the game. I'm at loss to explain. I'm hoping anyone reading could throw some ideas in the air to help me with troubleshooting. The Problem My savegames start to become unstable around 20 - 30 hours into the game so testing a "STEP only" setup will be kind of difficult. (I did get a character to level 81 before I started modding, so that should rule out anything inherently wrong with my system). There seems to be 2 kinds of crash: Combat CTD - It seems to occur at the moment the enemy AI "wakes up" at combat start. Disabling Cerwiden's SmartCast seems to help a little, but not eliminate the problem.Random CTD - I'm walking along, checking inventory or whatever and suddenly I'm looking at my desktop.Further info for both kinds of crash: Only happens in interiors, usually dungeons.No error messages before crashing to desktop.Nothing in the Papyrus log to indicate problems.Not RAM related - TESV.exe RAM usage is often around the 1.5 GB mark when it happens.Framerates are fine at 60 fps.Temperatures are nominal.Steam is running in Offline mode.Avast! is in gaming mode.Advanced System Care is used to kill unneeded background processes.The combat CTDs suggest it may be related to AI or a combat mod. Could it be momentarily overloading the CPU? System Details This should be plenty of horsepower for almost anything Skyrim can throw at it. I've had the CPU overclocked that way since day 1, and got a vanilla character to level 81 before I started adding a lot of mods. The GPUs have plenty of horsepower so I've had no need to overclock it, though VRAM is a bit limited. All temperatures are well within normal limits. Stability seems to worsen whenever TESV.exe starts using over 2.1 GB of RAM (as opposed to the 3.1 - 3.3 GB that others report). Skyrim Launcher Options As recommended by STEP: Ultra Settings, 4X AA, 16 X AF, no FXAA. nVidia Inpector Settings (only settings that differ from STEP are listed) STEP mods I'm using Wrye Bash for installing and annealing. The darkened mods are the ones that I'm planning to remove from my next playthrough. Non-STEP mods Not really that many, but if there's a mod related problem, it could be here. I've intentionally avoided mods that add scripts. Load Order Sorry I can't post the exact load order - I deleted the lot out of frustration yesterday!  Needless to say, all dirty mods were cleaned, BSA's unpacked into loose files, sorted by BOSS and rules were created for unrecognised mods. I haven't uninstalled any mods that have scripts, though Skyrim Patch 1.9 was stealth installed during my playthrough (necessitating an upgrade to USKP and SKSE). I kept esp removals and load order changes to a minimum. Things I'll try next I'll unpack the HiRes Texture pack into loose files to be overwritten by mods (previously, I disabled the esps and added HighResTexturePack01.bsa, HighResTexturePack02.bsa and HighResTexturePack03.bsa to Skyrim.ini).Remove all the Z-Fighting ini tweaks that were recommended by STEP.Attempt to change the power plan on my CPU to keep it running at a constant clock speed.Does anyone have any feedback on EFF, ACE Combat or Duel - Combat Realism? They seem to be the logical places to look for problems but everything I've read suggests that they're quite stable. I can switch to different mods, but I'd rather not play with vanilla combat or follower commands. ;) Hopefully you guys can suggest something else that I can try or offer other nuggets of wisdom!