Full system & video crash while on ENB

[trackho]

After a long time with my heavily modded STEP build, chugging along only with ENBoost, I decided to jump into the full ENB world after hearing a hyperbolic MxR review comment on Tetrachromatic ENB. Quickly switching over to Vividian (due to STEP considerations), I also updated my STEP build to reflect new individual STEP mod updates, as well as re-learning Dyndolod as it moves from 1.xx to 2.xx .

 

As I added new mods to my modlist, and TES5Edit checked them, I started out a new game. While all went well, with the rate and occasion of CTDs acceptable to me (if it isn't repeatable in one particular location or frequent action), after a lengthy travel on a Touring Carriages, as I was about to load into Riften [for the first time in that playthrough], after the load screen was finished, I unceremoniously stared at this type of screen (I Googled this example):

 

 

 

 

It was no game freeze that I could Ctrl+Alt+Del out of.

 

It required me to use the reset button, and I had a nervous time when the BIOS at first didn't load up the HDD the first time around.

 

I re-checked my ENB settings for anything that I missed, looking at both Vividian and STEP ENB guides (Steam overlay is now off). I then went to see if loading up Riften was an ENB problem or other mod problem or not, so I decided to coc to Riften Stables and retry again. It loaded Riften up fine.

 

Now, after another run, after playing sometime, the crash came again at Rorikstead despite already being there (as in already loaded).

 

Previously, on my ENBoost-ed game some months ago, I also suffered such a devastating crash on my old AMD Radeon 280X, but it was the card dying out to the level it was only loadable up to Safe Mode (no ATI drivers). Since this is a relatively new R9 380 card (I update drivers by doing the DDU routine), and ENB is the newest graphical addition, I strongly suspect my ENB machinations are not up to par.

 

I tried one runthrough with Shift-F12 disabling the ENB, and had a BlueSOD restart instead when I was fighting a group of Populated Forts bandits (those same bandits were killed with no trouble during the Rorikstead crash that had ENB ON). After that one I decided to Defraggler my HDD (never really got down to this), and have yet to re-play Skyrim.

 

The only thing that I can conclude from the two full system-video freezes is that it takes time to get to that point. I await any advice:

 

My specs:

 

 

Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
System Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
System Model: H97-Gaming 3
BIOS: BIOS Date: 05/06/14 15:50:21 Ver: 04.06.05
Processor: Intel® Core i3-4150 CPU @ 3.50GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.5GHz
Memory: 8192MB RAM

Card name: AMD Radeon R9 380 Series

 

 

 

My enblocal.ini:

 

 

[PROXY]
EnableProxyLibrary=false
InitProxyFunctions=true
//ProxyLibrary=d3d9_SFX.dll
//ProxyLibrary=d3d9_SweetFX.dll
//ProxyLibrary=RCRN_d3d9.dll
//ProxyLibrary=d3d9_smaa.dll
ProxyLibrary=

[GLOBAL]
UsePatchSpeedhackWithoutGraphics=false
UseDefferedRendering=true
IgnoreCreationKit=true
ForceFakeVideocard=false

[PERFORMANCE]
SpeedHack=true
EnableOcclusionCulling=true
EnableZPrepass=false

[MULTIHEAD]
ForceVideoAdapterIndex=false
VideoAdapterIndex=0

[MEMORY]
ExpandSystemMemoryX64=false
ReduceSystemMemoryUsage=true
DisableDriverMemoryManager=true        // Set to true for AMD Videocards
DisablePreloadToVRAM=false
EnableUnsafeMemoryHacks=false
ReservedMemorySizeMb=256    // Reduce to 256 or 128 if you have less than 3GB VRAM
VideoMemorySizeMb=7638
// less than 8GB Formula: (VRAM + RAM - 2048) , max value: 10240
// more than 8GB Formula: (VRAM + RAM - 2048 / 2) , max value: 10240
EnableCompression=false //set to false or true if you experience stuttering
AutodetectVideoMemorySize=false // set to false for "VideoMemorySizeMb" to take effect

[WINDOW]
ForceBorderless=false
ForceBorderlessFullscreen=false

[ENGINE]
ForceAnisotropicFiltering=true
MaxAnisotropy=8
ForceLodBias=false
LodBias=-0.33        // Lower Values for more detailed Textures at distance, -0,33 selected for Vividian Setup
EnableVSync=true
AddDisplaySuperSamplingResolutions=false
VSyncSkipNumFrames=0


[LIMITER]
WaitBusyRenderer=false
EnableFPSLimit=false
FPSLimit=60.0

[iNPUT]
//back
KeyReadConfig=8
//shift
KeyCombination=16
//f12
KeyUseEffect=123
//home
KeyFPSLimit=36
//num /       106
KeyShowFPS=106
//insert
KeyScreenshot=45
//enter
KeyEditor=13
//
KeyFreeVRAM=122
KeyBruteForce=66
KeyDepthOfField=118

[ADAPTIVEQUALITY]
Enable=false
Quality=0
DesiredFPS=20.0

[ANTIALIASING]
EnableEdgeAA=true        // set to true for Rudimentary Anti Aliasing
EnableTemporalAA=false
EnableSubPixelAA=false    // set to true for Subpixel Antialiasing
EnableTransparencyAA=false

[FIX]
FixGameBugs=true
FixParallaxBugs=true
FixAliasedTextures=true
IgnoreInventory=true
FixSsaoWaterTransparency=true
FixTintGamma=true
RemoveBlur=false
FixSubSurfaceScattering=true
FixSkyReflection=true
FixCursorVisibility=true
FixParallaxTerrain=false //enable for parralax effects on ground textures, makes only sense with texturepacks
FixLag=false //enable if you experience mouselag
[THREADS]
DataSyncMode=0
PriorityMode=0
EnableUnsafeFixes=false
[LONGEXPOSURE]
EnableLongExposureMode=false
Time=1.0
BlendMax=0.0

 

 

 

 

My modlist is 475 long (not all are enabled or plugin-enabled of course).

Edited October 10, 2016 by trackho

[TechAngel85]

This sounds much more like a hardware issue rather than software. As a technician, my gut is telling me a failing hard drive. You sound tech savvy. I would run a hard drive diagnostic. Ultimate Boot has a few free ones that should do the trick. Just run the one for your brand of drive. Also, running check disk and and letting it correct errors would be a good idea. Final thing would be to run a SFC scan to fix any issues with Windows.

 

If the hard drives check out, move on to memory by running mem86.

 

If all that checks out, then move on to software like drivers.

[Joat_Mon]

+1 for TechAngel85's comments.

 

I'll add the following because of this comment you made and the picture of the original failure.

 

"...I had a nervous time when the BIOS at first didn't load up the HDD the first time around"

 

Check first to see if your disk controller drivers are correct you chipset, I've seen a couple of occurrences of this on Win 7 machines with the most current updates installed and it can cause the kind of issues you describe. Get them from your OEM.

 

DisableDriverMemoryManager=true - consider setting this to false as this setting was mostly for older AMD cards that were having problems with old drivers which have long since been repaired.

 

Use https://enbdev.com/download_vramsizetest.htm to determine VideoMemorySizeMb= setting, use dx9 version and I recommend deducting between 250 to 400MB to give the game some breathing room until you confirm that you have solved your problems

[trackho]

Haven't retried Skyrim yet after the defrag and some re-check of the ini's.

 

On the question of my HDDs health, Defraggler doesn't show any trouble (didn't do HD Tune) with any drives. In fact, in the Radeon 280X troubles, my primary HDD (where Skyrim was located) had a SMART failure, but the real culprit was only the graphics card (the HDD theoretically is still functional, though I have removed it from my rig). Chipset drivers have already been updated to the most recent (Imade a format, clean install and updates after the switch from 280X to R9 380). As for memtest, never really checked it out.

 

Currently, I've DDUed AMD drivers to update to the new one (not the hotfixes option), so let's see how it goes.