Random (yet often predictable) crashes

[Ganen]

I am at a total loss, I have 1500+ hours of Skyrim playtime, using countless mods in the past, with slim performance issues or CTD up until now.

about a year ago I had a weaker computer that I ran Skyrim with a bit low fps on ocasions and with lower texture resolutions, but I never had random and frequent CTDs, a year ago from now, I built a solid gaming rig, I5 cpu (I7 benefits hold slim to no advantages for gaming) and gtx 660 2GB g.card and reinstalled Syrim and tons of mods (Boss counted nearly 200 active plugins) all the high resolution and open world eye candies I always ran Skyrim in the 40-60 (limit set by my personal ini settings) and rarely had CTDs.

 

about 2 weeks ago I decided I wanted to clean my nexus and skyrim directory (was quite messy cuz I mod and fiddle alot) so I deleted everything and made a fresh install... and as a result, for reasons that I am completely clueless about no matter how few mods or settings I install or uninstall... I always get strange and frequent crashes... and I mean constantly... randomly and often enough at predictable points of the game like:

-when starting a fight and casting the first spell

-when approaching a village (often when its the first visit of a new char) <one certain crash occurs when travelling from riverwood to whiterun when the event when some companions fight the giant in a farm, ALWAYS crash there, I have to save 2 or 3 times and reload that save while slowly getting close in order to bypass a certain crash, its so strange>

-when flying the dev avesa player home/ship (I usually fly slowly to avoid the texture loading spam crash and in previous install didnt cause crash that much)

-when exiting a indoor cell to a town

-when loading a recent savegame (usually outdoors) that can be loaded just fine after I have loaded an older savegame (usually indoors)

-when exiting a town area and starting to explore the surrounding open area

-when looting a dead npc (this one stopped when I made a fresh install without Skyrim redone mod or immerssive weapons and armors, dunno if coincidence or not)

 

I have no idea what is causing this, and if anyone had similar experience, even if he doesnt have a solution, some feedback could shed some light, I tried so much stuff, like all the performance patches, cleaning dirty edits from mods and expansion packs, texture compressing tool, going for lower res mods, going from heavy ENB (used K's ENB them ost intensive yet coolest I ever tried) to the normal base line ENB, installing only the most basic and least likely to cause script/data conflicts and so far none of this and now after 4 clean installs have made the annoying CTDs go away...

 

I am currently unable to enjoy playing Skyrim at all so often as they are

[AlyxMS]

You might have deleted important files, the thing to do now is probably just note down all the mods you were using and reinstall everything.

 

The thing I noticed is all these crash sequences involves heavy hard drive/memory operations.

 

When approaching a village: Loading meshes of the village

Looting dead people: Loading custom detailed body mesh, stopped because mod removal (loaded the low detail vanilla body mesh)

Exiting a cell: Loading Map...

 

If you have reinstalled the game and CTDs continues(so it's not the problem with the files)

 

Is your RAM too small?

Have you installed things like HD textures recently that might overload your RAM?

Is your hard drive still in good condition?

[Ganen]

You might have deleted important files, the thing to do now is probably just note down all the mods you were using and reinstall everything.

 

The thing I noticed is all these crash sequences involves heavy hard drive/memory operations.

 

When approaching a village: Loading meshes of the village

Looting dead people: Loading custom detailed body mesh, stopped because mod removal (loaded the low detail vanilla body mesh)

Exiting a cell: Loading Map...

 

If you have reinstalled the game and CTDs continues(so it's not the problem with the files)

 

Is your RAM too small?

Have you installed things like HD textures recently that might overload your RAM?

Is your hard drive still in good condition?

 

It is possible that I have deleted imported files by uninstalling mods yes, but shouldnt that problem only occur on already scripted savegames (as in savegames that were using those files and then have script issues for suddenly not having them)? I ask this because I always start a new game when I am trying to single out mods that potentially  cause these issues, so I am not affected by those script/asset changes.

 

I used the performance monitor to see if my problem was related to going over the 3.1GB limit, but nope... not even close... I hardly used 2 even on my older and more mod intensive installments that actually had more HD resolution mods than I am currently testing with. (PS: I have 16GB RAM and 2GB VRAM)

I have not put my harddrive in scrutiny but it is a young drive (less than a year), and no problems are presented in other operations or "pushy" games.

 

what I have been doing is singling out mods I have used or updated more recently that I didnt use back when I used my old installment that had no problems, but so far I havnt been able to isolate any ONE mod

but heres al ist of mods I am using that I didnt use before, or that I am using updated versions than before:

 

<havnt used before>

-Schlongs of Skyrim

-live another life

-civil war overhaul

-achieve that

-dragon combat overhaul

-immerssive+populated settlements

 

<using updated versions, but had used before with no problems>

-water

-skyhair

-interesting npcs

-deadly dragons

-frostfall

-reanimate fx

-dev avesa

 

think thats it, all other mods I use the same versions as before... and most of the newly updated or new mods I already tried uninstalling and starting a new game to see if the problem wavered, and it didnt :/

either the problem is caused by specific combination of mods rather than a single individual mod, or theres a new change system wise in the very core of the game that I am completely oblivious to... and to test that, I guess I have to yet again delete everything and do another clean install without anything at all? including dlc? :'(

[Guest]

The thing I have noticed (With my Skyrim) is that Sanguine's Debauchery crashes my game quite often. This could also be your problem if you have it.

[Ganen]

The thing I have noticed (With my Skyrim) is that Sanguine's Debauchery crashes my game quite often. This could also be your problem if you have it.

 

I do not use it no (and all tests since the first cleanup install were done without any sexlab or general sex mods at all), thx for pointing that out tho, if someone identifies some of those mods I listed as the potential cause in their CTD experiences, I'd appreciate a head's up

[Shaydow]

http://www.loverslab.com/topic/22019-shaydows-guide-to-troubleshooting-ctds/

 

Give this a try. Allows you to revert to Vanilla Skyrim without having to do a complete reinstall.

[Ganen]

so after reading the above reply (thanks btw)

I decided that I was operating under a false preconception that the base problem was rooted to something I had changed since the new install, and decided to create a new game with all plugins disabled (including unofficial patches and the dlcs), and save the game right after choosing a standing stone, where the most frequent crashes usually occur, between there and arriving in whiterun for the first visits.

 

slowing I turned on the dlcs-official patches-lightning mods-flora-cosmetic mods and worked all the way up to mechanic changing mods, as a result I managed to isolate, individually, mods that cause seldom-frequent crashes, in order of most frequent to less frequent:

-Interesting NPCs

-Apachi Skyhair npc overhaul

-Immerssive Settlements

-Skyfalls plus mills

 

I reloaded and played through the trip from the standing stones to entering whiterun at least 2 times whenever I had a crash, and 4 times whenever I did not have a crash by deactivating each of those mods, to confirm it wasnt just random or coincident crashes.

 

and I find these results strange, because both interesting npcs and apachi skyhair npc overhaul, I had used before, the same version, while I did have the ocasional crashes I could hardly trace those back to those 2 mods...

Skyfalls and immerssive settlements are new, skyfalls prly conflicts with other landscape mods like water or lush trees or flora ovehaul, but immerssive settlements I dont know what may be causing it... I am very confused.

all I know is that disabling/uninstalling these mods, solved my CTD issues as far as I was able to test them.

 

as anyone had issues with these particular mods? maybe had them conflicting with other mods? I am asking cuz some mods that add houses or npcs dont seem to cause any problem while those specific ones do, for example interesting npcs add npc to towns and world, and cause issues, while populated towns and settlements does the same in greater quantity with no issues at all, maybe cuz one is heavily scripted/voiced and the other isn't?

 

and does anyone recommend alternative mods to the same effects as these 4 ones that I cannot use?