InterProcessShadows on Skyrim

[zniachtl]

Hardly anyone knows what they even are.

 

Or that they even exist.

 

But they are real, and they do well exist!

 

Most of the time one need not care about them as they don't affect anything, BUT:

Skyrim... Skyrim never changes.

 

How did I notice the impact of (self-invented abbreviation) IPS on Skyrim?

 

Everyone knows 'em, the good ol' CTD. Something, whatever it is, causes Skyrim to die.

Everyone had them. They belong to Skyrim.

 

Then somewhere along the road that is Skyrim it will occur that the game runs smoothly, then crashes, and without changing anything (the logs are small, no real problems, mods work as intended) suddenly evry restart crashes:

You start Skyrim, but even "New Game" results in staring at the good ol' Desktop after the loading screen.

 

Why does it do this? What is its problem? - what anyone then thinks.

 

Finally I figured out why it does this!

 

IPS, InterProcessShadows, is a term I came up with to describe a habit of MS Windows to NOT wipe a process' memory after exiting said process, and these "shadows", these remainders in memory then affecting other processes.

I discovered this "bug" of Win recently, when I was running CE on a game, had it long exited, and another game later (a "protected" game, because onlinegame) was unable to launch because apparently I'm trying to cheat on it. Which is utter bull, as "I don't have any cheat tools running" ---- but the thing is: I HAD one running many hours ago (CE), which apparently still resulted in a block. And strangely after a reboot of Windows I was considered a "legit" player again. Fascinating, isn't it? After like 6 hours Windows still carried RAM shadows of CE.

 

AND it does this of course with Skyrim -- where the shadows of (example-indexes) the crashed TESV.exe+1b3 infect the entering of "Load Game" and even "New Game" of TESV.exe+1c9

Shadows of one process, affecting a different process.

 

A Reboot of Windows instantly wipes them out, and the game runs again, until Skyrim again does a Skyrim-thing.

 

But I discovered, that re-starting Skyrim and just idling in the main menu, for about 30 seconds AFTER the screentop yellow ENB message fades, occassionally moving cursor around, until it feels like a more fluent motion, and THEN loading the "Level 1 boostersavegame" and the actual savegame, this may well do the trick and ensure that all necessary start-allocations are the correct ones, of the current TESV.exe process.

 

 

[Akzyra]

Very interesting post, but horrible to read because of the font...