I know this has been talked about a lot. I know there probably won't be any solution. But oh well, I guess this is what this forum is for anyway.

The random freezes and place specific crashes are really starting to drive me nuts. For a couple of days, I've been under the illusion that things were getting better. A lot of fast traveling with carriages I guess, just a couple of travels around Windhelm that went well... but then it started again. I was just going to deliver my last follower to the Blades, going from Markath to their temple, when... bam. Crash right after I passed the area where the Markath carriage is, as soon as I made it clear I was going to walk all the way to the Blades' location for a change.

I restarted the game a couple of times and the exact thing happened. I tried fast traveling somewhere else and going back to Markath and again it froze at the same exact spot.

My favorite thing about this game is the exploration, and that's precisely the one thing I can't do anymore. Traveling Skyrim has been rendered impossible. The only way I can keep playing safely is by fast traveling everywhere, and I f*cking hate that. You never know when the game is going to die next, and chances are it will happen a lot sooner than later right after I set foot in the main land. This Markath black hole won't stay there forever, just like previous ones eventually disappeared as I did more things. But then the game will pick some other location to create yet another invisible barrier in the form of a new crash.

I keep hearing this is a memory issue. I have an Xbox Slim, my hard drive should have more than enough free space to handle this. And by the way, 'reseting the world' by waiting 30 days doesn't help either. I just did that in Whiterun before the crash happened for unrelated reasons... and the crash still happened.

Sigh.

seems to be happening around a few major cities for people. out of curiosity, how many hours do you have on this character? if you go to 'load' from the main menu and select your save, it'll show you hours, minutes, seconds the game has been played for that character in 00.00.00 format. Alot of people who say they have 400 hours in a single character seem to be having these issues but no ones given actual time in, just 'i think about'.

For me it's 407.06.46 and I have 9,9 Gb of free space on my HDD. Now it freezes entering Falkreath Sanctuary

Well, I have this problem on my "main" character. I could not tell you when "frequent" freeze outside began, but I can tell you I was at 300 hours when I got my first location specific freeze (A dungeon near Ivarstead that refused to load). By that time, my game was pretty much unplayable, but I really wanted to finish the main quest and the mage guild quest on that character so I did continue. At 330 hours theses locations were locked :

1- Dawn star dark brotherhood sanctuary
2- The Blue palace
3- Riften Jail
4- Riften Palace would load, but It was impossible to get out.
5- The Inn, the General store and the Jarl "palace" in Falkreath
6- My house in Markath.

And probably some other. I haven't played in awhile so I forgot some. Also at 330 hours, "random" freeze when walking "outside" were so frequent (one every 2 or 3 minutes pretty much everywhere, 6 or 7 minutes around winterhold/dawnstar/solitude area) I had to use quicktravel to acomplish anything.

So basically at 300 hours I noticed the first serious "damage" to my save file, and at around 330 it was mostly unplayable. I pushed it to around 360 hours (I was curious to see how badly I could crash the game) and last time I quick traveled to Falkreath, it got attacked by a dragon and NO ranged attack wathsoever where connecting. Arrows, both from guard and myself where intangible, and the dragon breath was too. Idem for spells. For some reason melee weapons were still connecting. At that point, I abandoned completely trying to crash this game even more LOL

Save file size 25 mb, play time 360 hours

See, this is the thing. People reporting this issue have always played way more than me. My save file is 17MB yet and the playtime is about 180 hours. Nothing close to 400, which seems to be the magic number for this. All I can think of is that it's a matter of progress instead of time, because even though I have less than 200 hours played, I've gone through every main questline except for the Civil War and the third act of the Main Quest.

Also, just to be clear: I'm not experiencing loading crashes when entering locations. Those are another kind. I did get a few in the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary, but that seems to be a very particular bug that pretty much everyone gets at some point. What happens to me is that Skyrim tends to crash when traveling the outside world. These crashes will often be specific, meaning that if it the game crashes when I step on the fifth pebble of the road counting from the sign to the left, it will crash every time I try to walk that way as soon as I hit that mark. You get the idea.

However, these crashes are also not permanent, and they seem to change location as I advance in the adventure. I'm sure that in a few days, after doing some other quest, I'll be able to walk out of Markath no problem, but the game will be freezing somewhere else. Previous hot spots like those happened in the slope leading to Whiterun when coming from Riverwood. Around the Western Watchtower while approaching Whiterun as well, and near Riften. These come and go, and they weren't happening the last time before I got the Markath one.

Also, all this started happening after I had to load an older save to avoid a bug that was preventing Riften from loading when fast traveling, or being approached by land. By loading that older save, I was able to reach Riften again, but all these frequent crashes soon followed. It also happened at the same time I downloaded 1.4, but that could be a coincidence.

Finally, I don't have many spells or weapons in the quick menu, I only have about four or five active quests and probably less than a dozen misc quests. And no dragons flying around that I know of. So none of those elements should be causing a problem.

best i can figure that its not progress but something saved in our character files, Ive gone through every major line and dont have much of an issue loading the problem areas. My best guess is whatever is being tracked and saved in the character files is the culprit because my save is 230 hrs long but the save file is only 12-14MB. So by that, it would seem fairly positive its something to do with the data for the area that isnt being read/tracked/saved right.

I could be wrong but judging by others issues most seem to have some sort of larger file save size than what is probably considered normal

My save is 230 odd hours. The file size is 14mb. I still encounter randomn freezes in the wilderness.

Could it be Louis Letrush? I've really been wondering this lately.

Because technically, that's the only major bug I have aside from the crashes, and they could be related. It's something that happens in the main world, after all. An event, Letrush being murdered in a random location somewhere in Skyrim, that keeps being triggered as more clones get added to Whiterun. So far I have 6, not too long ago they used to be 4.

I don't have that bug, I only have 1 Letrush outside Whiterun stable (why is he there by the way?).
I can't enter in 1 specific location, for now, and I occasionally experience game freezes when traveling on my horse. Not so often, I must say, but what convinced me to stop using my horse or going on foot is that if I spend a lot of time wandering and fighting dragons or bandits and then I have to load a previous save to redo some bugged quest, all the experience and loot are gone. So I fast travel to conclude quests as quickly as possible. But I don't like playing like this, I've reached 400 hrs doing the exact opposite, that's the way to play this kind of games (in my opinion).
About my save files I noticed that the last of them are 17 mb, the older ones 14, maybe 1.4 patch did some changes?

But the problem is that maybe you do have the Louis Letrush bug and you don't know it yet. We all start with just one outside the stables.

Also, I think he's not supposed to be there unless you have the bug, because after you finish Promises to Keep he either disappears from the game or gets murdered in a random location. Can anyone who doesn't have the Letrush bug confirm this?

I have over 400 hrs. on my lvl. 43 character but only a 10mb save file. No major crash/freeze bugs either random or place specific. However, I haven't done a lot of questing so my situation is probably not a good comparison for the norm. What I think it might suggest, though, is that the issues many experience aren't directly caused by hrs played.

Edit: I haven't done the quest you mention so I assume that means there's no Louis Letrush in my game? (If he is, I haven't noticed him.)

Well there's four major bugs that can be accounted for that people seem to have consistent occurrences of that could be causing the lockup via long play hours on a single character.

• NimRoot Glow Stacking - Even at 100 hours, if a nimroot is ignored the glow stack is immense and can cause some serious lag, even freezes when entering a area.
  
• Louis Cloning - People who get this seem to have it happen consistently, Its not one or two clones, it just keeps cloning over and over, thus adding to potential crashes when nearing whiterun.
  
• NPC Weapon & Shield Drops & Personal Discards - NPC's being 'flung' backwards drop their weapon / shield, and its no longer accessible via their inventory, when this happens, and cleanup comes around the item itself doesn't get cleaned up, thus leading to problems with potential crashes as well. This also includes items the PC drops onto the ground anywhere indoors or outdoors.
  
• Dragon Skeletons - Dragon Skeletons still aren't being properly cleaned up, I personally now have a area with 3 dragon skeletons sitting there (from radiant missions) that have yet to vanish. If the dragon skeletons keep stacking up within areas, and 'glitching' through the ground rock stacks with the physics engine, could cause potential lag and freezing.

Most of these lockups are city specific, So it does bring into the question of how many items you have losely laying around your house within the city, as well as items you have stored within your chests. Personally I dont think that this would cause city lockups being that the the house insides is its own cell but some people think that this may be related to the city lockups.

I have pretty close to 800 hours into the game after looking at my character saves, but thats spanned across 7 different characters as well. None of them are over 200 hours, probably because I get bored with the character after awhile and go off to make a new one.

Yet all those points wouldn't explain why I got my last crash at Markath. That area is relatively free of Nirnroots, the Letrush clones are pretty far away, I never had dragon attacks there and I don't even remember the last time I had a fight nearby, so it can't be weapons lying around either.

I mentioned the Letrush bug as a very probable cause because it's not just the clones, it's also the murder random event, that keeps happening. This is more difficult to witness, but I've seen it two or three times and I guess it will keep happening. If the game is constantly calculating where this could take place (and it can happen in a lot of places over Skyrim) that could be a cause of memory problems all over the main world. Perhaps right now it's trying to get triggered near Markath and that's screwing up the game.

depends what else for the Markarth area is tracked on your save, while those are the main culprits there are probably alot more that is tracked than either thats needed or what not

Markarth has nirnroot inside the city walls, and if I remember right there is some outside by the river. Then you also have the ash piles you end up with inside of markarth, but those 'should' get cleaned up now in 1.4. You have multiple weapon drops from guards in this area too that end up within the water when the foreswore escape as well as other places inside.

Once a radiant mission is fired off the location is already set, and the number of critters for that radiant mission is also set. Afterwards its just traveling to the location to have them spawned into the area. But you did bring up another valid possibility - large quest ques, the more quests active the more things that are going to be spawned into the word. I usually keep mine fairly clean, normally I dont have more then 3-4 main/Side quests, and haven't had more then 15 misc quests at one given point. I'm sure this in itself can also cause problems but with lag / freezing as well as quest collisions.

Like I said, I don't have many active quests. So that shouldn't be either. It certainly must be something being tracked in the main world, but what and why, who knows.

At this point, maybe the best thing to do is to just send a save file to Bethesda, since I can manually save it right next to the spot where it crashes every time. And if they try, there's no way they'll miss the broken area.

Does anybody know how to do this with an Xbox?

So far the only strange freezing up that happened to me just recently is in Whiterun. I enter Jorrvaskr to get a mission or whatever and everything is fine. The moment I leave to go back outside it starts the loading screen and then freezes up. I've tried leaving from every exit of Jorrvaskr, and still get the same freezing up effect. Has anybody else ran into that problem? Let me know, thanks

bsb

yep its pretty simple you need a flash drive so that you can get the save to your pc.

you'll also need the http://download.cnet.com/Horizon/3000-2130_4-75452078.html?part=dl-&subj=dl&tag=button, download it to your pc and unzip it to a folder.

Plug the flash drive with the save on it into the PC, and open up the horizon editor.

On the right hand side their is the 'device explorer' open it up if its not already open, and browse to the save game folder.

Right click the save game and click 'extract' tell it where to save the extracted file on your pc. You've just now extracted a Xbox 360 save.

Double click the file, and it will pop open a little window, go to the last tab on the little window (content) and you'll see 'savegame.dat' right click on that and click 'export', again tell it where to save the file on your pc. You've now exported the saved game data, that can be used on a pc, or imported into a xbox 360 save and used on a xbox.

NOTE: Dont use the Horizon editor for anything else, modifying your account with it can cause you to get perma-banned from Xbox live.

I'm a Mac user, does the editor run on Macs?



Yes, this is a well-known bug. You have to deactivate autosaves, then exit. You'll end up in a blank screen, from there you have to go to the character menu and select the map. You won't be able to see the map, but if you try moving the cursor you'll hear the sound it makes when it hovers over a discovered location. Press A twice then and you'll fast travel to whatever location it was, and the game will be fixed.

far as i know there isn't a mac version of it :/ sorry.

I did have alot of theses freeze, where, outside, it would seem to freeze always at the same exact spot. Reloading and taking the exact same path was always getting me a crash at the same mark. The "workaround" I used was to save before I hit this mark, then reload immediatly my game. Every single time, it was allowing me to get past the problematic place. Problem was, the "spot" where it would freeze would be moved further down the road, and I'd have to use the same tactic again to move even further.

I ended up saving and reloading every 10 minutes or so when outside. That was allowing me to see very little freeze problem. Now, I am no programmer, but in retrospect, I probably was only just damaging my save file even more. As I said in my previous post, my game is now at a state where in outdoors area if I walk if pretty much any direction, the game would freeze every 2-3 minutes or so.

Well, I suppose I can borrow a PC from somewhere. I was hesitant about the editor idea because of the strict Xbox Live rules, actually. So you're sure this won't get me in trouble, right? Because words like 'extract' and 'export' sound like you're moving the file from one place to another, sort of like when you move it from one memory device to another in the Xbox itself. These things can't be copied as far as I know. So I was wondering if that would leave some track that Microsoft could still detect and misinterpret.

Also, once you get the file, where do you send it? Do they have an email for these things?


What I get from your post is that this will only get worse and worse until the game will become unplayable, which svcks. Isn't really anyone around that can give a good technical explanation of what's going on based on what we say? Because the descriptions we're giving here are pretty detailed.

I know people assume Bethesda don't read these forums, but they really should. Right now, they're the only technical support we can count on.

yeah you'll be ok for what your doing, your just pulling the save game data out so that you can send it off to bethesda. using the tool for this purpose wont get you in trouble, but like i did say, dont use it for other things, like editing your account, as this can least to perma bans on xbox live, but for the purpose of getting the game data out so you can send it off your fine.

Well, turns out that this wasn't the typical random crash that I thought it to be.

I tried accessing Markarth from the East and the game crashed around the same area. In fact, I tried fast traveling to Salvius Farm, which falls within the inaccessible area, and the game crashed on the loading screen.

So this exactly the same type of bug I got a month ago when http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1336330-riften-unreachable/page__p__20304795__hl__riften%20unreachable__fromsearch__1#entry20304795 in my game. The exact same sh*t. An entire portion of the Skyrim map became inaccessible just because. Again. Even after 1.4 and its 'general performance improvements'. Really, screw this. I can hardly believe I paid 150 dollars for the special edition of this game. A record payment for an unfinished product. Good lord.

This time I am not going to start looking for older saves to see when this thing started happening. What for. It will probably happen somewhere else again if I do that anyway. I assume it's a fact my game is broken beyond repair and trying to keep moving forward with my character is nothing but a path of torture and frustration. I just hope I can finish the main quest with him, because I really don't want to redo its first two acts with a new character. Hell, I don't even want to start a new character, but looks like there's no other way to complete Skyrim. The Civil War, my only other questline left, will need to get done with a second character as well, and I can say goodbye to my full set of Ebony armor, my enchanted unique weapons, my level, my skills, my houses, my wife and Shadowmere (such a shame I got this horse when it was already impossible to travel Skryim, frankly).

But to be honest, this experience is so awful that I don't think I'll have any more will to keep playing after completing the main quest, and this assuming I can complete it. I'll probably just play Mass Effect 3 instead. It will be a worse game than Skyrim. But at least it will work.

the performance improvements most likely cant help a save file that is already on its way or is unstable. Majority of the fixes that have but put into the patches generally only affect new saves (a few do help existing saves that already have an issue)

if you havent already done so I would recommend a new game and see if that helps any and see if it improves your experience of the game.