So I found this bug, where if you try to sleep at the "Imperial Winterhold Camp" (near Dawnstar) at a certain time, at least, the game will CTD. I was getting this crash in my old save game, so I went through extensive mod pruning until I got down to the bare bones - just a 'cleaned' Update.esm, Dawnguard and Dragonborn DLCs. I started a new save game with just the DLCs enabled. I can reproduce this crash whether I launch the game from Mod Organizer, SKSE, or the good ol' Skyrim Launcher. I have also tried both with the Unofficial Patches and without, with the same result.
If anyone can try to reproduce this bug, I will give the instructions here - though you may have different results depending on what mods you are using. Still, if anyone can re-produce this bug, it could demostrate that there is an actual bug here, and not just something weird going on on my end.
So, what I have found causes the CTD, at least 75% - 90 % of the time since I started my investigation (by following these exact instructions, I have been able to get the CTD *every* time though):
1. Travel to the camp from Dawnstar, whatever time - at the camp, after you get the "Found Imperial Camp" message, unless it's already on your map...
2. WAIT until at least 8PM, no later than 830PM (near the 6 tents for convenience)
3. At between 8:15PM and 8:30PM activate an available Bedroll (I always used one of the ones in the back, usually the outermost tent, but it worked with others, too)
4. SLEEP for 8 hours, from about 8:15 /8:30PM to 'end' your sleep at 4:15/4:30AM.
Invariably, at this point, after the Sleep countdown ends, I am watching Skyrim's process dissappear in a flash to return to my desktop.
If you don't get the crash the first time, you can wait until evening and try it again - there were a few times it didn't happen the 1st time, but it CTD the 2nd or 3rd time I tried. That's how I ended up with those specific times (between 8:15 -8:30 seems to work every time)
If these instructions obsessively specific, it's because I tried to follow *exactly* what caused the crash originally, and the closer I got to this specific set of instructions, the more likely I got the CTD until I was able to get a CTD *every time, no matter what mod configuration, no mods, how I launched Skyrim, etc. The crash may well happen outside of these set parameters, but this the method I used for consistency.
If anyone has any "luck" reproducing this bug, please post you findings here. I am curious if anyone else gets this, as someone else reported crashes *near* that camp, but not quite the same situation. Also, I will note that there was a Khajiit caravan arriving at Dawnstar at this time in my game, but I'm not sure if that is significant or not.
I am about done with this whole issue, I think, just about ready to continue my old save game for better or worse and never go near that camp I guess, but for informational purposes, and hopefully bug fixing purposes, just wanted to report my findings in case anyone else had this issue... Also, if anyone has any insight on what would cause a CTD here, please speak up. The only thing that comes time mind is if an NPC Imperial soldier is trying to use the same bedroll at some point, but that really shouldn't result in a CTD! (at least not in a robust game engine)