Could Windows 10 be an Issue?

[RoboticWater]

So, I've been redoing my mod profile every few months because for whatever reason Skyrim will always end up going unstable. They symptoms are random crashing that increase in frequency as I progress through the game. It starts out crashing once per 1-3hrs, but progresses to once every 5-15min (or up to an hour or so, if I'm very lucky). This leaves me in the unfortunate position where I can't really test my load order. Frequent crashing only starts happening after about 10 hours of play time and I can't just start removing mods from my game in the middle of it and expect that to fix my crashing (quite honestly, I suspect that removing mods in the middle of a playthrough will only make my game less stable).

 

My last few mod lists have consisted of SRLE + SRLE:Extended + Bits of: SRLE:Explorer's, Dovakiin Reborn + some mods I've personally chosen. Admittedly, that's a pretty beefy load order, so there's more than a chance this thing is caused my mod conflicts, but given how random the crashing is (and how far into the game I have to get to cause the constant crashing), I don't know how to diagnose the bad apple(s). However, I've deliberately avoided using too many script mods (I've even taken out a few like Holidays and BFS Effects), so I can't imagine that it's an abundance of scripts jamming things up.

 

I use Tetra ENB, but I've followed the necessary steps in the SRLE guide to ensure that the enblocal is consistent with Neo's. With my beefy computer I don't think it's a VRAM issue, but maybe Windows 10 might be a problem here. I've also tried Crash Fixes v10, and that didn't work for me.

 

I'm currently doing one more reset of my mod list, so I won't be able to provide a load order. Really, all I need to know is if there's any extra limitations imposed by Windows 10 that could be causing this, or is there some other not-too-obvious issue breaking my game? I know about "memory issues," but could merging tons of armor mods, resolving the wrong conflict, filling a chest with too many items, etc. cause random crashing? If there's no advice you guys can provide, then I'll either come back with more info if (probably when) the new profile breaks or I'll just wait until the Skyrim Remaster and see if 64bit does anything for me.

 

tl;dr:

Skyrim crashing randomly. Could someone either:

a) Confirm that Win10 is an issue

b) Provide me a way of diagnosing random crashes, so I can figure this out if it happens again

c) Provide a list of potential causes for random crashes. 

[Nebulous112]

a) Possible, but likely not. You would likely need a lot of 4k textures to have an issue with the 4064 MB cap. Although, with a mod list that large, who knows.

 

b) This is the best troubleshooting guide I have seen. The method of last resort (bisecting) always works.

 

c) Have you created a custom conflict resolution patch in xEdit for all of the extra mods outside of Neo's and Darth / Lexy's guides? I bet it is mod conflict.

[RoboticWater]

a) Possible, but likely not. You would likely need a lot of 4k textures to have an issue with the 4064 MB cap. Although, with a mod list that large, who knows.

 

b) This is the best troubleshooting guide I have seen. The method of last resort (bisecting) always works.

 

c) Have you created a custom conflict resolution patch in xEdit for all of the extra mods outside of Neo's and Darth / Lexy's guides? I bet it is mod conflict.

I guess it was it was too much to hope for a simple resolution. I deliberately try to keep my textures on the mid end (usually 2k w/ 1k normals) for that reason. However, if that's the issue, maybe the 64bit remaster will give me enough leeway.

 

I'll check out the troubleshooting guide, but I don't know if binary searching will be enough. The binary search method works well when you have a consistent CTD (especially if it's at startup), but my problem is random. If I'm able to play for an hour or so, I don't know if that's because I removed half of my mods or because the stars decided to align in my favor. I also can't test my game from a clean save because the crashing only gets bad after hours of playtime, so I'd have to work off of an existing save. I don't think my game would even load after removing so many mods (especially scrip-intensive ones).

 

I have been making my own patch for all the conflicts that aren't covered by each author's premade patch, though I can never be too sure that I'm patching everything correctly. Merging leveled lists, forwarding USLEEP changes, etc. is straightforward, but if I come across conflicts in AI behavior or navmeshes or complex conflicts that require merging multiple files and end up with no clear winner.

 

I've been conflict resolving for a while now, so I think my intuition is fairly good. However, I have no way of knowing for sure.

[Greg]

Skyrim Performance Monitor is a good tool to find out if you are hitting the VRAM limit. I doubt this is the issue because you're using "reasonable sized" meshes and textures and I think you'd be experiencing more stutter if you hit the VRAM limit.

 

Memory Blocks Log is the best tool to rule out issues with heap allocation issues. I use Memory Blocks Log regularly to verify I'm not hitting the DefaultHeapInitialAllocMB limit.

 

Beyond this, you're exactly right... troubleshooting random crashes can be a lot like tossing darts on a board while blindfolded. When I hit this stage, I usually stop everything and start going over the guides again to make sure I didn't miss anything... not necessarily starting from scratch, just comparing the guide against what I have and what I remember doing to see if I can find the issue the "easy" way.

 

I also use a lot of profiles in Mod Organizer to help narrow down issues. For example, I create an SRLE profile, install all of SRLE into this profile, and verify it works for a while. I then copy the SRLE profile to an SRLE Extended profile, add on SR:LE Extended, and verify this works. Finally, I copy the SRLE Extended profile to a new profile and add my custom mods on top. This way I can switch profiles to narrow down any issues I run into over time.

[RoboticWater]

Skyrim Performance Monitor is a good tool to find out if you are hitting the VRAM limit. I doubt this is the issue because you're using "reasonable sized" meshes and textures and I think you'd be experiencing more stutter if you hit the VRAM limit.

 

Memory Blocks Log is the best tool to rule out issues with heap allocation issues. I use Memory Blocks Log regularly to verify I'm not hitting the DefaultHeapInitialAllocMB limit.

 

Beyond this, you're exactly right... troubleshooting random crashes can be a lot like tossing darts on a board while blindfolded. When I hit this stage, I usually stop everything and start going over the guides again to make sure I didn't miss anything... not necessarily starting from scratch, just comparing the guide against what I have and what I remember doing to see if I can find the issue the "easy" way.

 

I also use a lot of profiles in Mod Organizer to help narrow down issues. For example, I create an SRLE profile, install all of SRLE into this profile, and verify it works for a while. I then copy the SRLE profile to an SRLE Extended profile, add on SR:LE Extended, and verify this works. Finally, I copy the SRLE Extended profile to a new profile and add my custom mods on top. This way I can switch profiles to narrow down any issues I run into over time.

Doesn't Crash Fixes deal with DefaultHeapInitialAllocMB? I still have DefaultHeapInitialAllocMB set to 768, but I thought UseOSAllocators=1 dealt with that problem.

 

I thought of verifying each profile individually, but the crashing only starts getting bad after a lot of play time. Since no single crash guarantees amod conflict, I wold have to play until I got frequent crashing, so verifying even just two separate profiles is a pretty big time commitment. Not only that, but Skyrim isn't really worth playing for me if it doesn't have a number of mods to spruce it up, so I'd essentially be playing a game I didn't want to play for hours on end to maybe figure out what's going on.

 

My pride has me determined to get my modlist to run, so I'll give it one more go before Skyrim Remaster, but after this, I'll probably just move on. Thanks for the advice though.

[paul666root]

If you use crash fixes and the Preloader with osallocators on you can delete in skse the heap alloc it's not needed.

You should recheck the mods you added on top of the guides for conflicts. Usually CTDs appear from that. Anyway crashes will occur wven if you got all of them fixed. It's Skyrim's engine being old.

[DMCbr]

I use Win10 and after months of tweaks my game is running fine now, no CTDs after hours. But i had that kind of problems time ago.

As far as i have learned, mods need to talk to each other, not to fight. There is so many secret tweaks i have discovered... Any CTD report from Crash Fixes or another log?