Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim Message Board  

There is no fix for the random CTDs. Simple as that. There's only a fix for the menu CTD caused byt he audio settings, and that should be fixed in the upcoming patch anyway.

Some people reported that, on 64-bit, the 4GB "patch" helped them. Others see no change with the same "patch". That said, you can't patch the .exe anymore, so it's irrelevant.

Upon launch I played roughly 6-7 hours without a hitch. Then turned off. Next day I had CTDs every 2-odd hours. For no reason at all. They just happened. Used the 4GB "patch", and I was back to 10-odd hours, but would still get CTDs after that time, and get 20-odd minute CTDs when starting a new session.

And no it's not my system. It's an issue for many people across hundreds of different PC specs, check the Bethesda forums.

The only thing to do right now is wait for the first patch and hope it'll fix some of this mess. And until then, when you play... lots of F5

[Edited by Takekaze, 11/29/2011 8:38:39 AM]

I have 32-bit, I7 920, Ati HD5770, about 6-7 mods, no 3/4gb switch or what not, haven't touched my audio settings AT ALL, and haven't had a single crash for hundreds of hours of gameplay...

I suppose it could be a hardware compatibility problem, but then even I should have had a few hitches, as I doubt this game was made specifically for my PC.

Just to clarify, I'm not trying to "show-off" or go "haha, you have problems and I don't", but whatever's causing it should be fix-able.

I experience crashes all 1.5 - 2.0 hours when I start the game via Steam (while also running the trainer). When I start the game only using the TESV.exe in the game's folder, crashes no longer occur...I had a 10-hour session of Skyrim with no CTDs whatsoever...

Game played perfect for me, until steam did that little update thing of theirs. Now I have to run the steam game cache check thin and it will be ok for hour or so then will gradualy get worse till i run it again.

I have the regular crashes to desktop since i installed the game, theres lots of theories going around to why this happens. Heres my rig

Intel Core i7 - 980X 3.33Ghz
Asus Rampage III USB 3.0 Motherboard
12GB Corsair Tri-DDR3 1600Mhz Ram
2GB ATI Radeon HD 5970

Some say its AMD cards (although ive read from people with nvidia and they still get crashes) ive also read its because its a 32bit game it only supports 2 gigs and when thats full it shuts down.

There is a file you can download that alters the exe and allows up to 4 gigs of ram to be used but ive not tried that as i wanted to see if the patch today has made a difference and its to early to tell at the moment.

Its the usual buggy bethesda games though. They make fantastic games but they are badly coded for the most part. Broken quests, crashes and other such various bugs galore. I feel really sorry for the console players as they seem to have had it harder then us PC players. Crashes to desktop are annoying but having to reset your PS3 is worse.

I have had a lot less crashes since switching Skyrim to run in windowed mode (set it to your desktop resolution), then use the "Skyrim Borderless Window" patch / file at skyrim nexus.

Was having the trouble in the cave where it would CTD every time you looked at the wolf - the fix was to run through the cave in windowed mode.. go figure. After that, I started running in windowed mode and had a lot less CTD problems. I've tried the 4gb exe, and still have had it CTD with that, so I gave up that idea (plus the trainer wouldn't work with it).

Just my .02 and experience with it.

This isn't really about Crashing, but just smoother game play.

Are you on Win XP? If so, I read on Bethesda forums to help and it really really does (for us XP users).

1) Find the TESV.exe (steam folder) and click to properties.
2) Set it's Compatibility to run in Win95.
3) Launch the game (through steam's launcher or tesv, doesn't matter) Alt+Tab to desktop and bring up your Task Manager (cntrl+alt+del or right click the taskbar).
4) Click the TESV.exe in the task manager's list and right click to Set Affinity >> then tick off all cores available.
5) Play the game... smmmmoooottthhh.

NOTE: You Have to Set Affinity EVERY TIME You Start The Game!


After I started doing that, I have had a much smoother game and have Not Crashed Once since then!

I get a lot of unexpected crashes. Don't know why. Even before I used mods, the game would crash unexpectedly.

However, I did find this www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1013 and it has since then fixed my crashing problems.