Crash on entering Helgen or loading any Saves

[Arabian_Knight]

I'm just at my wits' end here. Honestly. I've been modding Skyrim for five years, modding Oblivion since it came out, Fallout 3, New Vegas, you name it. Even Morrowind. I've been doing this a while.

 

But Skyrim, after I've figured every little insufferable issue before this, has decided that it was just done with it.

 

Anyway, frustration aside, this is my last shot at getting help. I've been helping people on the Nexus forum for a while, and I'm fairly familiar with it, and I don't think anyone there has the expertise or desire to offer suggestions I haven't tried.

 

Anyway, the issue is as it sounds. I cannot enter the Helgen Keep during that longwinded introduction sequence. Instant crash. I tried downloading some clean saves, both in the Keep and in Riverwood, instant crash on load. I disabled all of my mods, disabled my ENB, verified my game cache, cleaned my DLC, still instant crash on loading either the clean saves or starting a new game and entering the Keep.

 

I figured out that it only crashes when Dawnguard is enabled. I've never had this issue before, and I've had Dawnguard since it came out. I had cleaned it beforehand and not had this issue, but I deleted Dawnguard.esm and the BSA, verified my cache to get a new copy of each, and it still crashes.  I deleted my ini files in My Docs and the Skyrim folder, still crashes. I tried with just USLEEP and the DLC, still crashes.

 

Right now, the only files I have loaded are Skyrim, Update, Dawnguard, Hearthfires, and Dragonborn (in that order, though I tried it also in the order that USLEEP has its dependencies, which I cannot seem to remember off the top of my head). I have removed every file from my Data folder except for the Skyrim BSA files, the DLC BSA files, and the ESM files. There is literally nothing in there but the official DLC and vanilla game.

 

Has anyone encountered this issue before or have any solution? After all the issues I've had over the years, this is the one that is going to break this game for me. Thanks in advance for any advice, and I apologize profusely for any inconvenience or if this is in the wrong area.

[Greg]

My first suspect is to disable any antivirus/malware detection applications and any "gaming" apps that might use overlays in the game. These have been known to cause issues of the weird and wacky sort like this.

 

Have you tried deleting everything in the Data folder and verifying cache to get "clean" copies of the vanilla masters and archives? I would also use BethINI to ensure the INI files are cleaned and optimized.

[dunc001]

Sounds very like an issue I had four or five months ago. Try removing everything ENB/ENBoost related, then download the latest ENB files again just to make sure they're good, and now instead of just installing the three ENBoost files to your Skyrim directory install the complete (wrapper version) stock ENB. If this works you should then be ok to switch to whichever is your preferred ENB.

[Arabian_Knight]

Thanks guys for your responses. I appreciate any time taken to help me out.

 

I did get rid of everything in my Data folder and verified, but I did not delete the vanilla BSAs for the base game. I will try that and report back. I deleted my .ini files in both the base directory and My Docs and verified/ran the launcher to get new ones, but it didn't help either.

 

As far as overlays or anything like that goes, I don't have any. GeForce and Steam overlays are both disabled and I do not use any other monitoring programs. 

 

I got rid of my ENB, but I will double check and make sure all of the files are gone. I could very well have missed one or two. 

[dunc001]

How are you launching the game?  Steam launcher or SKSE?  Through MO/NMM?

[TechAngel85]

At this point, I would recommend deleting everything under the Skyrim directory; leaving only the Data, MO, and any utility folders you have installed (assuming your MO and have tools installed to your Skyrim directory). The goal here is to have a completely fresh Skyrim directory to work with as a base for troubleshooting. This also eliminates anything left over that isn't a part of the base game.

[Arabian_Knight]

Okay guys. So after all this time testing out various strategies, I reinstalled the game completely and re-added my mods, loading it each time between additions to make sure it loaded. It's working so far through Riverwood. Now I can see if my old crashing problem comes back up-that'll get its own thread soon I'm sure.

 

Until then, thanks for all of your interest and posts to help me out, y'all. I really do sincerely appreciate it.