Best way to diagnose cause of game crash?

[peppergomez]

Been playing for a few days after completing a STEP install, and it seems that the game was running stable for about 2 days but has begun crashing with a bit more frequency. I think it's crashed 4 or 5 times since I began playing, mainly yesterday and today.

 

It seems to happen most often when I am moving from an interior to outside, soon after the loading screen finishes and the game world loads.

 

Any suggestions as to how I can begin troubleshooting this would be good. Thanks.

[torminater]

Get rid of z-fighting tweaks and the iLargeIntRefCount-tweak.

[rootsrat]

Get rid of z-fighting tweaks and the iLargeIntRefCount-tweak.

 

Would the latter be responsible for random - and severe - loss of performance after interior -> exterior transition?

[torminater]

Get rid of z-fighting tweaks and the iLargeIntRefCount-tweak.

Would the latter be responsible for random - and severe - loss of performance after interior -> exterior transition?

Dunno... Does performance stay that low or does it recover? The latter is probably memory limit related, the other sounds like a memory leak. Check your harddrive or SSD for errors.

[rootsrat]

 

Get rid of z-fighting tweaks and the iLargeIntRefCount-tweak.

Would the latter be responsible for random - and severe - loss of performance after interior -> exterior transition?

Dunno... Does performance stay that low or does it recover? The latter is probably memory limit related, the other sounds like a memory leak. Check your harddrive or SSD for errors.

 

It stays, I need to restart the game (quitting to main menu does not help). It happens very rarely, but it happens - and always after transition from interior to exterior - never the other way around.

[torminater]

Do you have to restart the system or only the game?

[rootsrat]

Only the game, just quit to Windows and run it again.

[torminater]

Have you encountered this problem without SKSE/ATTK or other extenders?

[rootsrat]

I don't use ATTK, and I never played a game without SKSE to be honest, it's kind of a habit now to install SKSE right after I install Skyrim.

 

I also use Simple Borderless Window, I have Mod Organizer as an attribute to it and I run SKSE via MO, after SBW is loaded.

 

I did not try full screen game, as opposed to SBW, so this is unknown.

[torminater]

Are you using optimized bsa? Are you playing with papyrus logging enabled?

What is your setup? STEP 2.2.4/Skyrim Revisited w/wo additions?

[rootsrat]

Are you using optimized bsa? Are you playing with papyrus logging enabled?

What is your setup? STEP 2.2.4/Skyrim Revisited w/wo additions?

 

1. Yes

2. Not sure, if it is not enabled by default then probably not

3. STEP 2.2.3 + many additional mods (SkyRe, Frostfall, RND, many additional content and gameplay mods).

 

My system is 6-core AMD Phenom II 3.2GHz, 4GB RAM, ASUS GeForce GTX 660 DirectCUII Top 2GB VRAM, Skyrim on HDD, OS (Win7) on SSD.

[torminater]

How is your VRAM/RAM if you get those performance issues?

Do you always get the performance issue after a certain time?

Are you overclocking?

Which bsa are optimized? Only vanilla's or mod's, too? Have you repacked the optimized bsa or installed them as loose files?

 

I would say it is either related to some piece of hardware, which at some point just "gives up" (if so, I'ld guess your RAM gets overworked) and let's your performance crush down or you might reach your RAM limit for Skyrim. Since you only have 4GB (which still should be plenty enough) you might reach you RAM limitation earlier than the magic 3 GB-border. Do you encounter crashes, too or only this performance decrease?

[rootsrat]

VRAM's ok, system RAM is at 80-90% at all times. The issue occurs sometimes (not very often, but often enough to be annoying), randomly, but not each time I play the game. However - I have some sound issues that require me to restart the game as well (they are very frequent and VERY annoying), so it may be that the perfomance loss issue occurs EACH time, but sometimes sound issue occurs prior.

 

I do not OC, I used to, but with current system there is no need. I only optimised vanilla BSAs, no mods. No repacking, loose files, same goes for any mods' BSAs (but they are not optimised).

 

Yeah, I think it's RAM related as well, as this is effectively the "weakest link" of my system.

[Kelmych]

If you want to run with 2Kx2K textures it is likely best to have 64 bit Windows and more than 4Gb RAM so that RAM use is less of a problem; I expect you already know this of course.

[rootsrat]

I don't use many 2k textures and I run 64 bit OS, but yeah, I do realise that more RAM would do me good :)

 

Thanks for your input guys, it's much appreciated. Guess we can mark this one as SOLVED, no?

[peppergomez]

Get rid of z-fighting tweaks and the iLargeIntRefCount-tweak.

OK, did both. Will see.

 

But aren't both of these designed to prevent exactly the problems I'm having? Do they sometime cause CTDs?