I really want to know if I'm the only one here.

I'm having crashes left and right after installing Dragonborn. And it was very sudden, to boot. I did the main quest, and I've been going around Solstheim tying up loose ends and exploring and my game suddenly froze after entering Castle Karstaag. I restarted and it kept doing that, so I avoided the place and moved on. Still freezing. It freezes at random, usually very quickly. But more importantly, it always freezes when I try to wait. It also freezes when I attempt to save.

Is it just me? Or is this happening to everyone?

It's really frustrating, as it just came out of the blue for me. My savefile size is only 12 mb on my current character.

And is there anything I can do about it? I don't think it's my mods, I only have a few and none of them really pertain to Dragonborn.

When I started getting crashes when trying to save, I let my character get killed (use the kill console command on myself). After the game auto loaded a previous save, I was able to save from then on with no crashes. Not sure why that worked, but it did. Seemed to be a problem in Fallout 3 also.

I gave that a shot, but ended up getting stuck on an endless loading screen =/

I hope it's not my file.. I love my character and I've worked so hard on her.

Also had endless loading screen problem just yesterday. Manually deleted my autosave files and it fixed it.

Gave that a shot, no dice =/

Im having lots of freezes as well, sometimes during loadingscreen, sometimes while playing. Sometimes i can play for several hours without one, sometimes only 15minutes :\

I have the same problem, lots of random freezes espically when fighting dragons or ashspawn.... I've cleaned all my mods with TES5Edit, have the unoffical patch, latest GPU drivers, which seemed to lessen how often they happen, but it still does. I've also tried playing with all my mods disabled, that didn't help ethier...

I cleaned DB and other dirty files, and had no issues at all. However, this morning I did get my first ever freeze when I was saving but I came to the conclusion that it was user error because I saved too fast (which I have a tendency to do) by clicking esc, save, new save too fast since reloading and trying to reproduce the freeze was a no go.

What do you mean by dirty files and cleaning?

The game is totally unplayable for me. I cannot save, or load new areas at all. It really blows.

Brazen, 'cleaning' is running a check through the BOSS utility programme, then running mods/files through another one called TESVedit - you can find both on Google. 'Cleaning', I believe, basically tidies up conflicting scripting so that there shouldn't be situations where for instance, two things at once are attempted by the program, such as fitting two items in the same place, or a character attempting two different actions due to conflicting game programme instructions. If you follow the instructions on how to do it, it's pretty safe..if you don't, well, it's 'user beware'.

A couple of other things you could try is to take a look at some of the other topics here dealing with the uGrids fix. A lot of people have had success with that. Or, you could do what I did and increase your pc's 'virtual memory' - look for a thread called 'Lots of Crashes', that has descriptions on both the uGrids thing and the virtual memory increase.

Are you using mods? And if so, are they in a reasonable load order? Best way to check is to install the BOSS utility and have it organise your load order for you, and then you can manually re-arrange it through the 'data options' on the orignal Steam Skyrim launch menu (BOSS is good, but sometimes you do need to tweak it, especially if you use a lot of mods that haven't been recognised by BOSS).

Same trouble here. At first I thought it's because I'm on a low-end PC and using an ENB and a number of mods. But nope, same thing happens in the vanilla game. Freezes for a second or two every few minutes. Also crash every single time I try to approach Miraak's Temple. Argh...

They weren't often to be TOO much of a PITA, but it crashed every once in a while, while doing the Dragonborn quests. But not freezes. Having said that, I'll probably get one now. But now I've finished Dragonborn and gone back to Skyrim I'm not getting the same type of crash anymore, or for the same reason, but I'm crashing everytime I try and quicksave when a dragon shows up. When there are none around, quicksave works fine.

Guys I know you don't want to hear this...
But with my ancient savegame (approaching 700 hours) and high-level guy, I have had ZERO crashes.
No freezes; no glitches; no weird stuff at all, of any kind.
I have spent almost 100 hours on Solstheim (is that possible? the DLC just came out) but the point is: it's solid as a rock.
I'm back in Skyrim now with this Tedryn guy in his Chitin armour, and me in Stahlrim... Nice.
Can't remember when I last had a crash - Christmas or something?

The reason I'm saying this is:
I followed The Proceedure.
Gungho1 gave a pretty good outline...

#1 - strong PC, all tuned up. Nothing running in the background. No AV; nothing. Heck I even disable Aero Desktop and play in Classic mode. Big swapfile, on its own harddisk.

#2 - Nvidia Control Panel. All the mysteries of the world can be setup in there... (Radeon equivalent, CCC or whatever, too.)
I could write a whole long post about Control Panel settings - but the gist of it is, everything set to all High Performance, or Application Controlled. No AA enhancements; nothing.
I like a very high framerate (60 FPS minimums) so I can run VSync. 40 FPS average (with 25 FPS minimums) is unacceptable.

#3 - I have I think 8 mods, mostly to make the game more challenging. Higher Level Enemies, Resiliant Dragons, that sort of thing... no dopey "water sparkle" mods or whatever... y'know?

#4 - The game requires The Unofficial Skyrim patch; the Unofficial Dawnguard patch; the Unofficial Hearthfire patch; and the Unofficial Dragonborn patch. In that order. Speaking of which...

#5 - run BOSS. Very smart guys developed these tools (BOSS, WryeBash, and TES5Edit) and you should be aware of them, even if you don't really require Bash if you're not too mod-happy.
Boss in fundamental though, for everyone. BOSS will have observations and might have complaints. You might need TES5Edit to address the complaints (or not, if your game's running okay).

#6 - TES5Edit. I was surprised (shocked actually) that BOSS had no problem with my mods but complained bitterly about Beth's DLCs! It even complained about the official patch (called 'Update').
I cleaned Update, then I cleaned the DLCs one by one, all of them. It was hard to believe this is required - but like I said, Elminster and Arthmoor and all these guys are smart. So I did it.

#7 - Final prep. Run Disk Cleanup on your Boot partition. Defrag your disks. Get all those screen-capture bitmaps out of your Skyrim directory (they're like 6MB each!) Run BOSS one last time.
Reboot your PC. Fire up Steam, put it on Library. Then close it. My Steam and my Skyrim both Run as Administrator (you tick the box on the compatibility tab).
Steam actually complained about that, heheh... No matter! Do it.
Your savegame is PRECIOUS. Treat it like gold. Don't enable and disable things (mods) willy-nilly. NEVER disable USKP once it's present in your savegame... or you'll never see 700 hours.

What else? I dunno, maybe others have some input...
Oh yeah, ever since they pushed the new SkyUI on me, I'm using SKSE (the script extender). Painless. It works - and now, so does my SkyUI, heheh...
Boss checks on SKSE too, and tells you if you have the latest version. Nothing escapes the BOSS's attention.

Turn your graphics settings down! I use 'High' as my starting point, not 'Ultra'. Disable AntiAliasing! (remember? 60 FPS minimums!)
When you don't maintain high framerates your game can be CRASHY. Especially when there's a lot going on - if they get down into the 30's or 20's you're toast.
It's the MINIMUM - the worst-case scenario - we're concerned with.
Actually your frames should never go below 60 FPS if you want to use VSync...
Those settings people tell you to use (and they even recommend on nVidia's webpage) are BS.
30 FPS is acceptable to them. I've had people insist I'm crazy! "60 FPS? Why on earth do you want that? Turn your settings higher!"

I have a fast multi-core CPU with big $$ platform and triple-channel memory.
This too is a big factor in my stability, since Skyrim is so CPU-intensive. I'm lucky to have high-end stuff (but my rig is from 2008 - it's not new at all).
I suppose in a way it's unfortunate, but you must get real serious with your rig if you want to play Skyrim!
(I know - it would be nice if it just worked, or what? LoL)

100 hours on Solstheim; not one crash. What can I say? It IS possible.
The game's not 'broken' (well, not after TES5Edit and the Unofficial patches are finished with it, anyway).

Try some of the stuff I'm recommending, to see if you can get your game STABLE.
That's square one! Once it is solid, you can start adding some stuff (AA or whatever) back in if you wish...
Or not. You might enjoy solid and stable!

Good luck,
Regards

I've installed all of the Unofficial patches now, and cleaned the Addons to the best of my understanding, and I tested one of my characters who has NOT interacted with Dragonborn. Although I wonder if that is the problem now.

He was fine.

But my favorite, favorite file is still cripped the same way it was before. Freezes on any form of saving or loading. Just her.

Is there anything I can do?

Apparently this is an issue for quite a few people.
For myself, pausing to the quest menu in most areas around Solstheim causes a CTD - no error - and just walking around anywhere outside of Raven Rock.
In the same areas, loading in and out of the buildings give the perpetual loading screen, with an eventual CTD if left long enough.


The DLC has gotten so crash heavy for me I've given up on playing it until there is a fix.

I've got the same problem, as soon as I ventured out of Raven Rock I started freezing every 5 seconds or so and after about 30 seconds of intermitant freezing I CTD. Fast traveling is also causing me to get stuck on loading screens, meaning I can't even leave Solstheim to see if this is just to do with the island or if its affected my whole save.

My UGrids isn't modified so this isn't an issue with that. It's incredible frustrating as I'd been looking forward to Dragonborn for months since it's announcement, and now I can't even play my character in Skyrim, let alone the DLC.

Add me to the list it's usally when fast traveling/entering/exiting buildings, that mine crashes and this has never happend till Dragonborn DLC was installed.

PS: I haven';t even started the Dragon born quest, well i did killthe cultists and thats it, thats as much as i have down.
I have the other 2 DLC content and no crashes.

In comparison to Gryphon, I'm running on an old duo core 2.33 mhz system, with a 9600 GTS card, with 4 Gig RAM, using XP...and I'm getting virtually no crashes or lockups, and the only lag I'm getting is in very graphic intensive places, like Severin Manor (I've only had 3 crashes or lockups since pc release day).

However, I do as Gryphon suggests, and strip out any pc background programs that aren't essential, keep my rig tidy with defrags and cookie clearing, have a high virtual memory running, and tune my graphics card (although I am running AA and Vsync, but I'm prepared to take a hit with those performance wise). I'm still running on high graphics settings.

Also, I'm running 106 mods, but with the exception of a dynamic weather system and enhanced long distance scenery, I'm not using any 'pretty graphics' enhancers, it's all utility or gameplay enhancing mods.

A couple of other things I'd suggest...

In your pc security suite, make sure that 'Steam.exe', 'Skyrimlauncher.exe', 'Skyrim.exe' and any NMI related .exe files are granted 'allowed status' on both your main security module and your firewall module...that should prevent your system security from locking them out or constantly assessing them and slowing your game down. For Steam, it should be automatically allocated as 'allowed', but depending on your security it may not be (PCTools Spyware Doctor is notorious for not allocating games automatically).

You could consider turning your security and firewall off ONLY for playing Skyrim, but I wouldn't do this without doing a detailed scan first, and closing off any background updaters or other routines via my Task Manager. I actually turn mine off to access Nexus Mod Manager because PCTools doesn't like it.

In your Task Manager (or equivalent), you could look for a couple of routines labelled 'PnkBstr.exe' and 'Daemonu.exe'. I'm not sure what they are, but many games don't like them, Skyrim is one of these. Shut these down and it may improve your game stability.

It is only happening on ONE of my characters, the one who has interacted with the Dragonbrn DLC. The others, who have not touched it are fine.

Good post, should be stickied.

Additional 1 point is to also run Wrye Bash and build a Bashed Patch after BOSS'ing the mod load order and cleaning the files.

I have had one CTD but this was in a certain quest near Dawnstar - common knowledge. No issues here but I look after my mods and I swear on GameBooster freeing up RAM for running Skyrim.

Still isn't working.

I changed my load order using BOSS, and I cleaned the files with TES5Edit (Remove identical to parent, right?) several times. I hope this is correct, as the program and tutorials for it kind of confuse me.

Same thing is happening.

My Mods, in order if it helps.

Unofficial Skyrim Patch
Unofficial Dawnguard Patch
Unofficial Hearthfire Patch
Unofficial Dragonborn Patch
Werewolves of Skyrim
Vagabond Armor
Warchief Armor
Dragons Diversified
Smelters where they should be
Wyrmstooth
Leveling Merchant's Wallets
Pure waters
Breezehome Redux
Death Hound Follower (No Vampire requirements)
Flinn - The Summerset Shadow
Jo'Bengal - Khajiit Follower with player home
Phantom Earth (Masser)
S'Rathra - Khajiit Follower with player home

And then a bunch of inactive mods I haven't used in months.

To reiterate: Loading new areas is impossible, as I remain on a neverending load screen.
Waiting freezes the game.
Saving freezes the game.

ugh, my game froze again yesterday when playing on a newly created character, gonna try to clean my files and see if that helps.

Btw, just a tip , make sure ur uGridsToLoad in skyrim.ini is set to 5. While it didnt solve the problem for me, i think it might have made it slightly better at least.

Also remember to make sure ur: uExterior Cell Buffer=36. Easy to forget if you havent altered it in a long time (like me).

Brazen, try moving the unnofficial patch mods to be immediately after the dlc they related to...so it should look something like:

Skyrim - USP - Dawngaurd - UDP - Hearthfire - UHP, etc.

The other thing I would suggest at this point is to consider experimenting with your graphics card settings, and seriously considering the virtual memory increase.

The load screen issue might indicate that it's a mod compatibilty issue, but it could be something else entirely as well...

Not possible - you can't have plugins loading before masters.
What you want is:
Skyrim.esm
Update.esm
Dawnguard.esm
HearthFires.esm
Dragonborn.esm
---other masterfiles---
USKP
UDGP
UHFP
UDBP
---other mods---

Hi all,

have had the same issue with constant freezes all over Solstheim. I′ll just re-post what a had mistakenly put up in the Skyrim-related section of the forum.


I′m gonna try to be as accurate as possible in my description:

Skyrim has been running fine so far for more than a year on my PC with Dawnguard and Hearthfire installed. I also run a couple of mods which improve water, blood decals, draw distance etc. and SkyUI + the unofficial patches - no problems so far.

When I first went to Solstheim everything seemed fine - you always get occasional crashes in Skyrim. After a while when I turned north from Tel Mithryn the game started to freeze as if I was crossing some invisible line and it has become impossible for me to reach the Temple of Miraak like this.
I got frustrated when trying older saves didn′t help and cyrcled around the island from Raven Rock via Moesring Pass and the Headwaters of Harstrad. Doing this, I got many, many crashes and freezes, but with regular saving it worked somehow. Just east of the Harstrad Cave when I was getting closer to the temple I reached another one of those "invisible barriers". The game just kept freezing and freezing, now even ruining my save files, so Skyrim would not load them anymore.
After going back to Snowclad Ruins and trying from there I finally managed to reach the temple (still with many crashes). I finished the dungeon, but then the game would always get stuck when loading the exterior at both exits of the temple. The only way to escape back to Raven Rock was via the console.
Now when I try to get close to Skaal village the game always freezes same as before and I can′t continue the main quest anymore...

At this point I have pretty much given up on this latest addition to Skyrim. It looked promising, but this is simply outrageous...

To sum up:

It seems the 100%-crash-barriers revolve around certain areas or even specific quest targets. I don′t know if they pop up as I/the quests progress but once they are there, they stay there, making large areas of Solstheim inaccessible or no fun at all.
The freezes happen exclusively in exterior cells, never in dungeons (there you only get the standard random crash ^^). Between Raven Rock and Tel Mythrin along the southern shoreline the game runs relatively stable. As soon as I turn north, the freezes start.

Things I tried so far:

- revert to older savegames - no effect
- have Steam check for integrity of game files (about 100-times) - it finds one corrupted file and re-downloads it - no effect
- re-download the entire game - no effect
- deactivate all mods and plug-ins - no effect
- hit my keyboard - no effect

After this ordeal I have come to conclusion that Dragonborn is one buggy PITA. However, I would really love to enjoy what′s left of it and what I paid for after all.
I would gladly appreciate any help!

Some system specs:

- Win7 64
- i7 2600K
- 8GB RAM
- GTX 580 1,5 GB (latest drivers)

(If more info is required please let me know.)

CHEERS!