My game is crashing

[Annabelle P]

Hi so I've been modding skyrim lately and I've been getting some random crashes. I installed loot and organized my mods to fix most issues and that seemed to work. However I really think that my skyrim is crashing because a lack of memory. I have 8GB which should be enough for most games but whenever I get around the followers that I created, the game starts lagging and ends up crashing. Not only that but I can be alone running around skyrim and the game will crash on the spot no matter what I'm doing. I could be running and the game will crash. When I get a follower and fast travel somewhere the game freezes once I arrive. It's really frustrating.  

 

When I have skyrim off my computer has 3.7GB of ram free.

 

So my question is should I go buy another 8GB memory stick so I'll have a total of 16GB or is the problem something else? All of the mods that I have are mods that have worked perfectly fine in the past. Nothing has changed at all.

[Psalam]

DO you have this:

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/17230

[Varithina]

If you can borrow a 8gb memory stick off of a friend to see if it helps, if it does then buy one yourself, of course if they are cheap enough just buy one anyway, 16gb of ram is damn useful, it may well help with other things as well, especially if you are using windows 8/10.  My personal rule of thumb for memory is to take whatever microsoft recommend for their os and then double it, I currently run 32gb and often have 2/3 multi tab firefox windows open, as well as a couple of file browsers and a text editor, and a couple of other things running and then still run games like fallout 4/skyrim le/skyrim se at ultra settings with little to no stutter.

 

Depending on how old your pc is it could also be a possible intermitent hardware problem, those sorts of things can be a total arse to try and figure out.

[Annabelle P]

10 minutes ago, Psalam said:

DO you have this:

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/17230

I would but that is SSE I have LE.  thank you for the suggestion though.

[Annabelle P]

5 minutes ago, Varithina said:

If you can borrow a 8gb memory stick off of a friend to see if it helps, if it does then buy one yourself, of course if they are cheap enough just buy one anyway, 16gb of ram is damn useful, it may well help with other things as well, especially if you are using windows 8/10.  My personal rule of thumb for memory is to take whatever microsoft recommend for their os and then double it, I currently run 32gb and often have 2/3 multi tab firefox windows open, as well as a couple of file browsers and a text editor, and a couple of other things running and then still run games like fallout 4/skyrim le/skyrim se at ultra settings with little to no stutter.

 

Depending on how old your pc is it could also be a possible intermitent hardware problem, those sorts of things can be a total arse to try and figure out.

Thank you, I do have a friend with a memory stick I could use to test this theory. That makes a whole lot of sense. I'll probably go ahead and buy one.

[Psalam]

16 minutes ago, Annabelle P said:

I would but that is SSE I have LE.  thank you for the suggestion though.

My apologies. Here are the list of stability tools for LE;

 

1) Crash fixes. Found here and fairly self-explanatory (as always, do read the directions):

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/72725

 

2) ENBoost. This one is more difficult and I hope to do a walkthrough at some point in the future. It is VERY important if you have less than 4GB of VRAM. If you have 8GB or more you probably don't need it. At 4GB it's your call (I have 4GB and I use it). Anyway, you will need to look in more than one place in order to complete this (although it will take you through it). Start here:

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/73618

 

As if ENBoost is not difficult enough MicroSoft has chosen to throw some additional glitches in for users of Windows 10. If you have problems getting ENBoost to work and you run Windows 10 take a look at this (I had to):

 

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/3089504-fix-for-skyrim-crashing-instantly-with-enb-on-windows-10/?p=56131491

 

3) SKSE. ini. The SKSE program does not come with this. As a result you do not get all the benefits of SKSE. While you can make your own version this one is already complete and optimized.

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/51038?tab=files

 

4) SKSE plugin preloader. Helps organize SKSE so as to improve management.

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/75795

 

5) Bethini. Skyrim's .ini files give it directions on how to handle your game. Problems with .ini files can cause all sorts of problems. While it is entirely possible to deal with these files by yourself Bethini gives you a tool with which to handle them safely. It is also much more intuitive than editing the files by yourself. It can be found here:

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/69787

 

I'm sorry about the format but it was easier to cut and paste this from my blog post about treating CTDs.

[Annabelle P]

5 hours ago, Psalam said:

My apologies. Here are the list of stability tools for LE;

 

1) Crash fixes. Found here and fairly self-explanatory (as always, do read the directions):

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/72725

 

2) ENBoost. This one is more difficult and I hope to do a walkthrough at some point in the future. It is VERY important if you have less than 4GB of VRAM. If you have 8GB or more you probably don't need it. At 4GB it's your call (I have 4GB and I use it). Anyway, you will need to look in more than one place in order to complete this (although it will take you through it). Start here:

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/73618

 

As if ENBoost is not difficult enough MicroSoft has chosen to throw some additional glitches in for users of Windows 10. If you have problems getting ENBoost to work and you run Windows 10 take a look at this (I had to):

 

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/3089504-fix-for-skyrim-crashing-instantly-with-enb-on-windows-10/?p=56131491

 

3) SKSE. ini. The SKSE program does not come with this. As a result you do not get all the benefits of SKSE. While you can make your own version this one is already complete and optimized.

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/51038?tab=files

 

4) SKSE plugin preloader. Helps organize SKSE so as to improve management.

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/75795

 

5) Bethini. Skyrim's .ini files give it directions on how to handle your game. Problems with .ini files can cause all sorts of problems. While it is entirely possible to deal with these files by yourself Bethini gives you a tool with which to handle them safely. It is also much more intuitive than editing the files by yourself. It can be found here:

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/69787

 

I'm sorry about the format but it was easier to cut and paste this from my blog post about treating CTDs.

Thank you it turns out that this fixed the crashing and lag. This post of yours has some things i've never heard of and i've been modding for years now. This really helped. turns out I am still going to need more ram because I feel like things could run a whole lot better with it. 

[Guest]

Not enough information; besides, freezes are generally a sign of deadlocks (which may or may not involve the game trying non-stop to allocate memory and failing), but it's more realistically related to bad mutexes.

 

Memory exhaustion crashes are easy to identify via its SKSE minidump; the crash is bound to be the game dereferencing a null pointer, and the pointer is bound to be coming from a syscall asking the OS for memory.

Why would you bother going through the trouble of borrowing a memory stick (or blindly buying new hardware without knowing what the cause of the problem is), opening up your case and installing new hardware when you can literally just open Windows' task manager and track your system's and TESV.exe memory usage. If you've a multi-monitor setup, you can easily transfer the manager's window to a secondary screen, saving you the trouble of switching windows/alt-tabbing mid game. There is also Skyrim Performance Monitor, but that thing has always been buggy for me while running the game with ENB (it either disables ENB or it gives me 1 FPS).

 

If it turns out that you are running out of OS-mapped available physical memory, you probably have too much crap running while you play, if your TESV.exe process is running out of 32-bits virtual memory, open up your enblocal.ini and enable Memory:ReduceSystemMemoryUsage, and if your TESV.exe process is running out of 32-bits virtual memory even with this ENB option enabled, you've something within your game (like a bad SKSE plugin) that is either bloating it or making TESV.exe leak more memory than usual; adding more physical memory WILL NOT help you at all.

For reference, I'm running my game on 8 GB DDR3-1600 with over 200 of mods (most of them being high-poly meshes and 2K/1K textures) and the combined allocated memory of TESV.exe and enbhost.exe never goes above 5 GB, my TESV.exe process sits at ~2GB and my available system memory sits at  ~2 GB.

 

It's impressive the amount of bad technical advices given on these forums. At this point it feels like any proper and detailed explanation coming from me is just me trying to pick up fights with random strangers.

I guess I can do what the guy above does on every crash thread and copy and paste incorrect information, which is quite ironic, considering his signature about wise men and fools. LOL!

 

Copy and paste:

Quote

It's your VRAM, bro. Buy a new card with 305095309094509905 GB of VRAM.

 

[mrsrt]

12 hours ago, Annabelle P said:

When I have skyrim off my computer has 3.7GB of ram free.

 

So my question is should I go buy another 8GB memory stick so I'll have a total of 16GB or is the problem something else?

It completely depends on your game setup and save file. Vanilla Skyrim 32 bit usually consumes not more than 2 Gb, however, my Skyrim with a lot of mods and 4k textures may eat up to 7Gb for a short time while grid loadings (main process + enbhost).

 

First what I would recommend to do is to make a proper memory management, this guide will help you https://www.loverslab.com/blogs/entry/10715-2020-skyrim-le-stability-guide

Second, check how much memory your game rly consumes. You can do that with Performance Monitor, linked in the post above by Hawk, or simply with task manager. If the consuming amount will be near the space you had free before launch then you definitely need to free your ram. Exactly free, not buy. More than a half of your RAM is consumed even before the game launch, when Windows 10 can work with only 1.5Gb. Close your browser and all unnecessary software before gaming. 

[Annabelle P]

On 8/18/2020 at 5:35 PM, Hawk9969 said:

Not enough information; besides, freezes are generally a sign of deadlocks (which may or may not involve the game trying non-stop to allocate memory and failing), but it's more realistically related to bad mutexes.

 

Memory exhaustion crashes are easy to identify via its SKSE minidump; the crash is bound to be the game dereferencing a null pointer, and the pointer is bound to be coming from a syscall asking the OS for memory.

Why would you bother going through the trouble of borrowing a memory stick (or blindly buying new hardware without knowing what the cause of the problem is), opening up your case and installing new hardware when you can literally just open Windows' task manager and track your system's and TESV.exe memory usage. If you've a multi-monitor setup, you can easily transfer the manager's window to a secondary screen, saving you the trouble of switching windows/alt-tabbing mid game. There is also Skyrim Performance Monitor, but that thing has always been buggy for me while running the game with ENB (it either disables ENB or it gives me 1 FPS).

 

If it turns out that you are running out of OS-mapped available physical memory, you probably have too much crap running while you play, if your TESV.exe process is running out of 32-bits virtual memory, open up your enblocal.ini and enable Memory:ReduceSystemMemoryUsage, and if your TESV.exe process is running out of 32-bits virtual memory even with this ENB option enabled, you've something within your game (like a bad SKSE plugin) that is either bloating it or making TESV.exe leak more memory than usual; adding more physical memory WILL NOT help you at all.

For reference, I'm running my game on 8 GB DDR3-1600 with over 200 of mods (most of them being high-poly meshes and 2K/1K textures) and the combined allocated memory of TESV.exe and enbhost.exe never goes above 5 GB, my TESV.exe process sits at ~2GB and my available system memory sits at  ~2 GB.

 

It's impressive the amount of bad technical advices given on these forums. At this point it feels like any proper and detailed explanation coming from me is just me trying to pick up fights with random strangers.

I guess I can do what the guy above does on every crash thread and copy and paste incorrect information, which is quite ironic, considering his signature about wise men and fools. LOL!

 

Copy and paste:

 

Thank you so much! I just canceled an order on amazon for a new memory stick because of this post. Just saved 30$.  

[Annabelle P]

23 hours ago, mrsrt said:

It completely depends on your game setup and save file. Vanilla Skyrim 32 bit usually consumes not more than 2 Gb, however, my Skyrim with a lot of mods and 4k textures may eat up to 7Gb for a short time while grid loadings (main process + enbhost).

 

First what I would recommend to do is to make a proper memory management, this guide will help you https://www.loverslab.com/blogs/entry/10715-2020-skyrim-le-stability-guide

Second, check how much memory your game rly consumes. You can do that with Performance Monitor, linked in the post above by Hawk, or simply with task manager. If the consuming amount will be near the space you had free before launch then you definitely need to free your ram. Exactly free, not buy. More than a half of your RAM is consumed even before the game launch, when Windows 10 can work with only 1.5Gb. Close your browser and all unnecessary software before gaming. 

Thank you, I will definitely look into that!