Severe Problem with Skyrim

[Dollparts]

I need help, badly. This is driving me mental and I am at my wits end. I almost want to just remove Skyrim from my machine and never touch anything TES related ever again.

My Skyrim experience was fine and then one day I started getting randon CTDs, no idea why. Far as I could tell my mod load order was fine, I hadn't added or removed anything in weeks so I doubted that was an issue. After talking to a few people and hearing some were experiencing similar problems we pointed our fingers at the latest update that had come out recently. As time went by my problems got worse and worse and it was just a CTD-fest for no apparently rhyme or reason and the timing was just random. I stopped playing for a few weeks and came back to find Skyrim was telling me my saves were corrupt. HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE SKYRIM WHEN I HAVEN'T PLAYED IN WEEKS?? *sigh*

Anyways after a reinstall everything was fine but I stopped playing again to play some other games and I also got busy with work so gaming took a backseat. Now I am back trying to play and everything was fine 3 days ago. Then 2 days ago I started getting the random crashing again only this time the game would often crash as soon as the menu screen came up, or sometimes a few seconds into a saved game. Now it almost always crashes at the menu or seconds into loading a a game and I literally cannot play! Earlier today I uninstalled Skyrim and reinstalled it and tried a fresh, mod-less install and it was fine. Now I suddenly added my mods back, one by one, and it was fine however now that all of them are in the game is once again crashing at the menu or when I load a game. I can't even start a new game because Skyrim just crashes.

I need help and I don't know/remember what to do. I appreciate any ideas or assistance guys!

~Dolly~

[MalachiDelacot]

I had that problem about 6 weeks ago and after deleting Skyrim and doing a re-install, went cutthroat with the mods. Only have ones I absolutely have to have. Also killed the ENBs, and am happy to say I've only had 2 CTDs since then and both were while going over the river and though the woods and not at certain places. What few mods I've tried since then, if they caused problems, I deleted them and not bothered with load order. I figure if it can't get along with the rest, I don't need it. I may miss the mods I've killed, but I'd rather play without something than not play at all. Anyway, try getting rid of the mods you don't really need.

[lilith]

That is frustrating indeed.

My first suspicion would be a mod that is no longer compatible with an updated Skyrim. If I remember correctly that did happen to a few mods, they would not work after Skyrim got updated.

The painful, but usually successful way to find the culprit mod. Disable mods until the game starts and runs. Disabling them in chunks usually gets it narrowed down faster.

[Carah]

I was having terrible issues with Skyrim about a month ago. I re-installed it, and I only installed my must have mods, and like Malachi never used the ENB, anymore.

Also, the last catalyst for my graphics driver made things wonky. When I installed an older version for my graphics driver Skyrim seemed to behave. AMD Radeon seem to be a little slack when it comes to Skyrim.

I hope this might help, Dollparts.

Good Luck.

Edited May 14, 2012 by Carah

[OldGrizz]

I remember the RPG "Knights of the Old Republic" (usually referred to as KOTR worked well with certain versions of the Catalyst video drivers and throwing errors and artifacts and weirdness with others. Yeah, try the older version... it's easy to switch back and forth. Also, disable all mods to evaluate the possibility of a single Source of Evil mod that no longer works well under the current Skyrim. Good luck!

Old Grizz

[AndalayBay]

A little late in the game here, but I have some suggestions. Keep Steam in offline mode if you can. If it sees a date difference in any of the Skyrim files or mods that you have subscribed to, it will download updates without your knowledge. I keep Steam offline all the time and only turn it online when I want to grab an update or check for updates.

Second, be careful if you use Nexus Mod Manager. It has had some issues lately and if you had a failed Steam update, your Skyrim.esm might be missing. If your Skyrim.esm is missing, NMM might accuse you of being a pirate and will delete your plugins.txt file, which will mess up all your mods. I believe they're removed the accusatory message, but we still see reports of people finding all their mods missing, so there still seems to be some trouble in that area.

Many people, including myself, are using Wrye Bash to maintain our load orders and BOSS to sort them. The new BOSS knows how to sort your load order properly and will update the plugins.txt file for you. I also use BAIN to install my mods.

I rarely have CTD's. I also stopped using the ENB series when it started to cause some odd issues here and there. I do have quite a few mods loaded.