What are the general causes behind the dreaded 'infinite' loading screen?

[DontBotherMe]

From my experience this bug is caused by badly editing your ini. if you don't have a high end system don't use command like iLargeIntRefCount=999999 I know some mods require this. but it is better to not use it at all.

 

If your pc is low on memory then this edit in your skyrim.ini will make sure the next cell will never finish loading.

 

Also if the mod makes heavy use references it is best to make the mod an esm rather then esp. This way you don't even need this edit: iLargeIntRefCount=999999

[xchillin]

How many high rez textures do you have. I was getting a lot of the infinite load bugs recently and random CTDs. I have a high end rig and had gone for Full STEP install, plus additional mods I liked. SItting around 157 or so. I dialed down my textures from the 4k wherever I could to 2k and 1k in some instances. Usually on clutter meshes. And didn't use the Z fighting ini settings STEP recommends. Now I rarely get an infinite loading bug and almost never CTD.

 

If only I could learn to stop adding mods to a stable game...

All my mods have been optimized with DDSopT with a max setting to 2056x2056. So even most of my mods are the higher-end in texture size, any bigger textures they have still get compressed to max 2056.

 

I am running a high-end rig, an Asus Laptop G75VW (16GB Ram) with a GTX 670M (3GB Ram) but since I am also playing in 3D (external monitor Asus VG248QE through DisplayPort) that is why I optimized and maxed my textures at 2056. Whenever I check my GPU-Z logs I never see that it uses more than 2,400MB of VRAM either.

 

However, now that I am out of Whiterun I haven't been getting any loading problems and hardly any CTD's either (acceptable amount). It does seem like this loading bug is connected with Whiterun for some reason, just as the OP had thought as well.

 

And I know what you mean about adding mods; it's an addiction; I have the full STEP + additional mods as well, it's so hard not to keep adding them. However  I am happy wit what I have now....fingers crossed....

[nekroskoma]

editing your ini, especially changing ugridstoload, you can up ugrids but its better not to

[VectorPlexus]

I'm gonna throw my 2 cents on this:

 

I'm currently developing a mod (for quite some time now). As of lately, a certain issue started to happen, which was pretty much like this:

 

- I have no ini tweaks whatsoever

- On game launch, I loaded a clean save just out of Helgen, I have for some while now (for testing purposes, not even DLCs loaded in this, just with skyrim.esm and update.esm), it loads fine

- Then I test the mod for a bit, see what changes/bugs exist, and may save it.

 

Now here comes the WTF part:

 

- when I relaunch the game, if I load the clean save I have no problems.

- when I relaunch the game, if I load the "dirty" save, most likely hangs during load.

- However, if after relaunch I load first the clean save and afterwards the dirty save... loads fine!

 

The more I played around, the higher the chances of causing a bad save... So basically all I did to start testing it, was to start CoC'ing around. Usually I would start by CoC'ing to Riverwood, sometimes the save there would hang, other times wouldnt... then CoC'ed to Whiterun... most of the times whatever save I did there, it would result as a bad save.

 

Someone over the SexLab thread (some ppl using SexLab are having the same issues) said, that he tested with game version 1.8.151, and no longer had hangs or CTDs... So I grabbed an old backup I happened to had from that version, tested it... work like a charm! I CoC'ed Riverwood, Whiterun, Riften, Falkreath, Markath, etc, always strolled around to force the game to load as much as possible. So this was either a issue with 1.9.32.08 or SKSE, since my mod relies on SKSE.

 

After some digging up, I stumbled upon this:

 

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Patch

 

Please note that having a designated patch installed will not guarantee that the issue it was supposed to fix will be fixed upon entering game. In some cases after a patch has been installed players have noted that their previous save files have become unplayable, glitchy and other issues. As such it may be necessary to start a new game file to have all issues resolved.

 

So... I decided to try a fresh save on my updated version (again only skyrim and update ESMs). Did the exact same CoC'ing everywhere, and had no issue whatsoever! So imo, what is causing these hangs, are legacy saved games that were saved during 1.8.151 (or even before that!)

 

PS-As a side note, I would advise you to start a fresh game without any mods or DLCs loaded, finish the quest until you're out of Helgen and save that game religiously! After that, quit, load any mods you want to and just start again from that point. And since we're not having any more DLCs and probably no more game engine updates, this will be the last time that you will ever need to do that, and that we'll have any similar issues.

[xchillin]

....TRIM....

 

 

So... I decided to try a fresh save on my updated version (again only skyrim and update ESMs). Did the exact same CoC'ing everywhere, and had no issue whatsoever! So imo, what is causing these hangs, are legacy saved games that were saved during 1.8.151 (or even before that!)

 

PS-As a side note, I would advise you to start a fresh game without any mods or DLCs loaded, finish the quest until you're out of Helgen and save that game religiously! After that, quit, load any mods you want to and just start again from that point. And since we're not having any more DLCs and probably no more game engine updates, this will be the last time that you will ever need to do that, and that we'll have any similar issues.

 

Well I never even played the game until I updated to the most recent 1.9.32.0.8 patch. So I never had a old legacy save game from any older patch, if that tells you anything.

 

And I continue to only have this loading issue on saves in the exterior of Whiterun; I don't have the problem if I save indoors, or anywhere else in Skyrim (so far anyway). And as long as I load a save game at the beginning of the game first, i can then successfully load the "problematic" save afterward.

[VectorPlexus]

Different issues for sure, but for me "solved" my issue, and I'm sure there are many players besides me, also having this problem, and it was not constrained to the outside area of whiterun. There are quite some ppl testing SexLab that are reporting the same phenomena. And dont forget, that I'm running no other mods besides my own (for developing reasons ofc). So odds are, you may have some mod that is changing the cell(s) outside whiterun that may cause the same game behaviour. I would still try a fresh save like I suggested without any mods, and make a Save just outside Helgen. After that, CoC Whiterun, go to the particular area where you detected the problem, save and try relaunching the game. Then its a matter of seeing if the same issue happens with other mods or not

[ToJKa]

I've noticed i only get loading screen freezes when entering or leaving DLC added areas from or to base game's areas. If i have played for some time i know i might as well quit the game and restart as it will freeze.

[medic975]

I was until I discovered Grace Darkling's stuff. Now I'm editing away Apachii. I have had problems in White Run now that I think about it. I had to leave the Temple via qasmoke recently due to infinite loading.

[Dark Thoughts]

Hey guys, I have no solution for this problem and I'm pretty sure it is engine related because it happens in other Bethesda games using previous versions of the engine too.

 

However, I have at least 2 workarounds.

 

1. If you get infinite loading screens, try to open the map and zoom down to the location you want to go to.

This should start loading something (cells? lod textures?) and you should be able to get there after that.

 

2. If you got an insta crash on your savegame, try starting a new game or loading another character (I have a "failsafe" char in the alternate start room) first and then load your regular savegame. This works pretty much all the time for me.

 

Changing papyrus or cellbuffer settings didn't helped me here sadly.

 

Another thing is, if you have Vurts Flora Overhaul installed, go and download his reduced LoD textures.

Not sure why this causes the game to "stop" loading further though.

 

In addition to this I also tried reducing texture sizes with the texture optimiser.

No luck, but I still can recommend to use this tool (even with textures reduced to 1024 I reach my 2GB VRam).

[DeepBlueFrog]

Good thread. 

 

I never had this problem until very recently. Unfortunately, I made several changes to both .ini settings and added / removed and edited mods during that period, so it is not easy to pinpoint the problem.

 

I did notice the 'failsafe load' workaround (which, as a developer, is driving me crazy ). The problem is that sometimes my failsafe save will not work either.

 

If that can help anyone, I am experiencing infinite loads on:

 

- old saves with new mods

- and on new saves (new character) with no change to my mods list (but only after a few hours of play).

 

In my case, it seems to be something around the main lake with Riften.

 

A brand new character will play smoothly as long as I ignore that area. 

If I get near Ivarstead and Riften, I start getting infinite loading screens on startup, random crashes on start up (sometimes the same save will or will not crash), and more rarely, either crash or infinite load on leaving an indoors cell for an outdoors one.

 

I also noticed a rare occurrence of horizontal gravity in that area (dropped objects falling horizontally and getting stuck on the side of a waterfalls).

 

 

My gut feeling tells me it is mod related - more precisely, a mix of mods or a load order issue. I will check and rollback my ini changes if I can in case that is an issue for my game. 

 

Keep adding ideas on the subject. This is a very frustrating (yet manageable) issue.

[Uriel]

Damned Whiterun... is all i can say after all the time i spent trying to get rid of the issue.

[winny257]

Ark of Truth - I've done my best to minimize mod conflicts, but it's possible. My computer's up to spec. I don't think my save file itself is corrupt, though the possibility of bad scripts left over is quite high. I do have about 150 mods running right now, though. Still, I was running the game just fine at around 140 mods, and getting stuck in a loading screen creeped up suddenly and inexplicably. There were no significant changes I made to the game that I feel would have brought it about. I try to avoid most mods that are heavily scripted, aside from a select few, and many of my mods are retextures, minor tweaks and improvements, armor/weapon mods, etcetera. Come to think of it, if I recall correctly, I believe I started getting stuck in loading around when the latest patch for Skyrim was released. Has anyone else experienced the same?

 

Alpalia - I always exit out of unnecessary programs before starting up Skyrim, but that's another possibility I've considered. I'm currently not running any antivirus, but I do have a firewall in place. I never figured that could have an effect on Skyrim's load times, though. Interesting. 

hi tehmuffinmon!

 

the amount of mods that you use, should not cause any problems. in my game there are 269 mods, it has a size of 56 GB. but now I have reached a point when I want to install a new mod now, I must first remove another mod.

I went there also sacrament as you, even in Whiterun, because if I wanted to reload was nothing, the loading screen just has not stopped. helped me only the famous 3 keys (Ctrl, Alt, and Ins.). I very quickly found out what caused the problem in my game! I have used 2 texture changes for Whiterun and the two did not get along. that simply did not play on which mod it is to access. to remove a mod's my problem was gone! there is still one thing I can tell you with security, there are a plethora texture changing mods that alter the landscape, as you should be very careful, many are not compatible with each other.

Deutsch !

die menge der mods , die du verwendest , dürfte noch keine probleme verursachen . in meinem spiel befinden sich 269 mods , es hat eine größe von 56 GB . jetzt habe ich aber einen punkt erreicht ,wenn ich jetzt einen neuen mod installieren will , muß ich vorher einen anderen mod entfernen .

mir ging es auch mahl wie dir , auch in Whiterun , wenn ich da neu laden wollte ging nichts , der ladebildschirm hat einfach nicht aufgehört . mir halfen nur noch die berühmten 3 tasten ( Strg , Alt und Einfg. ) . ich habe sehr schnell herausgefunden was in meinem spiel das problem verursacht hat ! ich habe 2 texturänderungen für Whiterun verwendet und die beiden haben sich nicht vertragen . daß spiel wußte einfach nicht auf welchen mod es zugreifen soll . nach entfernen eines mod's war mein  problem verschwunden ! es giebt noch eine sache die ich dir mit sicherheit sagen kann , es giebt eine unmenge texturverändernder mods , die die landschaft verändern , da sollte man sehr aufpassen , sehr viele sind nicht kompatibel untereinander .

 

The Old Man Winny !

[Adam Jensen]

Can a mod's scripts be the cause even if that mod doesn't actually alter a cell?

 

I mean, I been having trouble with Hunting in Skyrim, for some strange reason, the quest script seemed to be screwed up and I had to use console commands to finish it. After that, the next quest (where I have to hunt a white stag) seemed to work fine, until I killed the stag. Then I headed back to whiterun and got a infinite loading. However if I go to whiterun without killing the stag, I don't the infinite loading.

[dallian]

Hallo pple

 

I'm currently having that problem, the first time ever, I installed like usual but everithing changed after using this mod 

 

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/38020//?

 

I resintalled the full game, I also used TES5 Edit. But since I tested that mod I can't leave breezehome. I thought it only happened with whiterun, so I loaded a prevoius save where I was in the Ragged Flagon and I got the same problem with Riften.

 

Hope this help =_=

[Taskmaster]

All I know is that I didn't have this infinite loading issue on previous versions of this game.

 

For me it all started in May or June of this year when I got Dragonborn/Dawnguard/Hearthfires(not legendary edition, but each seperately on a sale that was actually cheaper since I already had the vanilla game since release).

 

The original fix for me was to open the map and move it around, before I went to an exterior cell, and that worked. Afterward, the solution was to load up a game in a very small exterior cell then any other save I had would load. 

 

Something broke, like how Map mods don't even work with the game anymore, there could be possible links with that.

[Arygo]

Hi there, is there any way to tell skyrim to attempt to load again ? or purge the memory every time it enters a new cell ? Maybe something manual like, "loadtimeout 15 ; reload ; preserve trigger" ? i don't have the best pc out there but i never had load times larger than 10 - 15, the infinite load screen does not actually load, the hdd stays idle, i used the console "help" command and viewed all the commands listed but i'm not sure something system-related would be specified in the "help" , maybe there's a command we can write in the shortcut's "target" section ? Anyone posted an "official" complaint ? The engine developer has to know some work-around !

 

After trying everything i could find on the internet i finally got it working ! so after a week of thrashing about i would not kid about such matters , so please take me seriously i think the problem was in the dlc's (dawngard to be more specific but i reinstalled vanilla just to be sure 1.9320) i now have almost all the mods i tried before , except for those that require the dlc's , i also removed 2k textures and atmospheric whiterun. The game does not randomly crash to desktop any more, no more infinite loading screens...  the game did freeze a couple of times when quick-loading (probably because i quick loaded like 6-9 times) , couldn't even ctrl+alt+del , had to restart , but if i remember correctly ... this was always an isue, i did manage 4-6 hour play streaks so i guess those were isolated incidents. I also used BOSS to see what it had to say about my mods and TES5edit to "remove identical to master records" , but to be honest i don't know if those were deal breakers , if you're interested here's a guide

... well ... after almost going vanilla i wish you luck , if you want to know what mods i use or anything else for that matter just message me, cheers !

[DigitalVixen]

Read my guide for a fix.

[drkraven33]

I was having this issue but figured out my problem. I would the infinite loading screen only when i use my screens resolution of 1920x1080. making it windowed, and 1440x810 fixed my issues. so my suggestion check your resolutions if one is giving you problems use a lower resolution.

[Dutchbat]

I can never load my saves directly, the game just got too big for that with all the mods. When you start the game just open up the console and "coc riverwood" and from there load your save file. Once loaded i never CTD or anything so guess it's all fine.

[gvman3670]

The Sheson's memory patch or SSME should eliminate the ILS problem. If it doesn't then you've done something to your install.

[Razer Prime]

I experience ILS too, it such a pain in the ass.

when i startup skyrim and i want to load my last save, but i cant the game gave me ILS, can someone help me with this problem

[JRCosta]

I experience ILS too, it such a pain in the ass.

when i startup skyrim and i want to load my last save, but i cant the game gave me ILS, can someone help me with this problem

 

If you use SKSE to load your game, use this.

[Alpia]

 

I experience ILS too, it such a pain in the ass.

when i startup skyrim and i want to load my last save, but i cant the game gave me ILS, can someone help me with this problem

 

If you use SKSE to load your game, use this.

 

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50214/?