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Reproducible freeze from Riverwood to Bleak Falls

Braddertt

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Braddertt Watcher

Braddertt

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Hi guys. I was hoping you'd be able to assist me with a problem I've been having regarding a reproducible CTD occuring anywhere from Riverwood to the Bleak Falls Barrow Entrance.

 

At first I would CTD (Note: CTD. Not freeze) because (I'm pretty sure) of the 3.1GB RAM limit. Reinstalled Skyrim, downgraded all textures to 1024. Solved. Easy.

 

Now though, I freeze. It's fairly bizarre. I know the freeze is about to happen when NPC's don't spawn or LOD textures don't get replaced. The next time I quicksave/autosave/manually save/change cells the game will 100% freeze when I notice these symptoms.

 

I had a very amusing one where Ralof did his scene with Hod and Gerdur while Gerdur wasn't there. He just continued his prompts like she was there.

 

90% of the time though it's on the way to Bleak Falls and there are the three bandits in the tower. Either one of them doesn't spawn/one of them spawns/two of them spawn and I freeze shortly there after trying to save.

 

I've tried removing non-core mods. I have also tried removing the installs that are not STEP related piecemeal and testing each time, but I could never pinpoint down a mod and if I did it would be different every time.

 

Another part of this freeze is that if I reload a save right before the game freezed, I can go and beat Bleak Falls, head back to Riverwood, and have a merry old jolly time. BUT once I head to Windhelm and see the Companions fighting the giant. Boom. Another one of these crashes. If I persist on after that, it will crash in 45 minutes to an hour, normally in combat.

 

In the end though, the thing that got me scratching my head the most is when I installed Alternate Start - Live Another Life I don't get that CTD at Bleak Falls when I get there. If it means anything, when I start using that mod I go from wherever I start straight to Helgen, down to Riverwood and to Bleak Falls. I had a timer going to test this and my playthrough lasted 3 and a half hours before this kind of freeze occured.

 

So suffice it to say I'm baffled. I've struggled with this for a number of weeks now and I'm at my wits end.

 

 

My System Specs

OS: Windows 7 Professional

GPU: EVGA Nvidia GTX 570 /w 2.5GB VRAM

CPU: Intel quad core i7-3770k @ 3.5GHz

Motherboard: Asrock Extreme6 Z77

RAM: 12GB Dual Channel DDR3 RAM @ 674MHz

Skyrim install: SSD

STEP Install: 1024 /w some non-core mods removed (Want to add them back later if this is not a texture related bug)

 

 

Package List (The non-STEP mods are at the very bottom of the list)

 

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Plugin order (BOSS used, TES5Edit cleaned all plugins that BOSS notified me about. Bashed patch used to merge Leveled lists only)

 

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EDIT: Sorry forgot to mention I didn't add a Papyrus log because I tried that and it's different every time. I can add one if requested.

 

Thanks for reading all the way down here!

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haelfix Thane

haelfix

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That spot and the giant spot, are loading zones where the game has to hold two different cells in memory.  If you follow your memory and VRAM usage, you'll find that it spikes dramatically in those spots.  Even if you are well under the 3.1 threshold, there can be instances where say a 2.3-2.4 gb load can spike up to that high.  That's why the 3.1 threshold is so annoying.  It means you can't go over the 2gb memory threshold much at all (i'd try to stay at 2.3 gb avg max).

 

I strongly believe there are bugs there as well, as it seems that scripts that are operating when the memory use goes high, miss calls and start looping (further compounding the problem and stuttering).

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Braddertt Watcher

Braddertt

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Interesting. So scripts can be an issue with the game as well? Is that why when I tried removing my non-STEP mods the issue would resolve? I could remove any combination of those mods and my game would not crash there.

 

I was thinking it was an engine issue, and I was so confused when people were running full STEP 1024 installs with no problems whatsoever.

 

I'll try to get rid of some extraneous mods to make it stable. It seems I might have to make some sacrifices if I want Skyrim Monster Mod, Skyrim Redone, Deadly Dragons and Climates of Tamriel to work together.

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haelfix Thane

haelfix

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Its really memory that is often (but not necessarily) the culprit.  The scripts are usually just the straw that breaks the camels back.  

 

One thing you can try is to remove all the big texture packs (eg texture combiner, SRO, SHO) and run through the same spot.  If it's seemless then you know its a memory problem.

 

At that point, there are DDSOPT options and so forth that you can try.

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rootsrat Talos

rootsrat

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With all the texture mods downgraded to 1K memory should not be a problem though, should it? I use mixture of 1K and 2K packs (full STEP set up + many more mods, over 360 mods in total - ran on 4GB RAM and 2GB VRAM rig) and I don't come across any CTDs or freezes (I experience random performance drops during intetrior->exterior transitions, but that's another story).

 

Which mod manager do you use? When you downgraded all the graphic mods, did you do clean install, or just reinstalled the mods?

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Braddertt Watcher

Braddertt

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I did a clean install. I use wrye bash.

Could it be script lag? Or an incompatibility of some sort? I am pretty ambitious with the overhaul mods I'm using, I think.

 

UPDATE: Uninstalled Skyrim HD and SRO and did the test run again and it crashed. It must be something stupid I've done. Jeez. Thanks for the help guys. I guess what is so hard to track down with this crash is that it's so inconsistent. Man.

 

UPDATE 2: I just installed the package list above (Causes crash) and didn't get a crash. I don't get it.

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Aiyen Talos

Aiyen

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This is also why running the main quest straight up to the first dragon is such a powerful bench-marking route.

 

There are so many things loading and scripts running etc. that it really puts your setup to the test.

 

If you are able to run (IE no fast travel at all) the entire route up to the first dragon kill with no CTD, but perhaps a freeze or two then you got a really stable setup. (The freezes are due to scripts failing and nothing can really be done about it.. it can happen at all times when you play with many mods. Though some mods are more notorious then others.)

If you get 1 CTD then yes you got a slight memory issue, but this could be solved if you just save and quit to menu on a regular basis when you travel. This cleans up all unrequired textures etc.

If you get 2-3 CTD then you most likely have memory and also script issues...

 

If you CTD more, then you got a massive memory problem.

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MontyMM General

MontyMM

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I would just add that 3.1GB is not the key figure for the possible memory related crashes. I think that was just the rough figure identified in the original post on the subject. It's a fuzzy limit around 3GB. I did a fair bit of testing, and I could reproduce crashes as low as 2.8GB

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Braddertt Watcher

Braddertt

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Just did two final tests, reinstalled all of my non-step mods and didn't get a crash on both occasions. I believe, with my unfortunate luck, managed to somehow install those mods wrongly on two separate occasions, causing a script or three to go haywire whenever playing, resulting in a spectacular memory leak. (Or something along those lines)

 

Installing them wrongly on two separate occasions caused me to go through a massive goose chase through the STEP guide, uninstalling and downgrading mods left and right, to no avail. Because SURELY I installed them right the second time, right? That was my reasoning.

 

Anyway, thanks again for all the help guys. You do great work here.

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