My save of Skyrim is crashing on fast travel and I'm not sure why. It first happened when I tried to fast travel to Whiterun, which led me to think that maybe it was the Dawn of Whiterun mod that was bugging out the game or something (I downloaded and installed that without taking precautions and when I finally tested it out I figured out it lagged my game from 60 FPS to about 45-50 while in Whiterun, but I didn't want to risk bugging out my save so I left it installed and just dealt with the performance drop), so I looked up the directions to uninstall it and try again. Author said in the readme that it didn't use scripts and was relatively safe to uninstall, so I uninstalled it and the same thing happened again. I tried fast traveling to Whiterun stables and Markarth and the bug still happened, so I realized it wasn't something exclusive to Whiterun. On a slightly older, proper save (i.e, not a quick or auto save) the game works just fine and I can fast travel wherever even with Dawn of Whiterun installed. So I'm wondering what caused it on the later saves? They were just after I'd finished up exploring a Dwemer ruin and nothing seemed wrong or out of the ordinary. The autosave was 12.4/12.5 MB (the game autosaved multiple times there and I'm not sure why, most recent one as 12.5 and the earliest one was 12.4, but both in about the same place). Most recent quicksave was about 12.4 MB and loading the game from there and then exiting the ruin didn't make any difference. It was just loading the most recent, proper save game (12.5 MB) in Riften that fixed it. I'm just really discouraged from doing anything on the save again if this sort of eventual corruption is inevitable. I hadn't installed or uninstalled any mods recently.

EDIT: Oh, also, after backing up all my Skyrim saves to a separate folder and then deleting all my old ones and starting a new game, the fast travel crash did not exist there either.

The save might be corrupted. You need to be making new manual saves. Dont rely on quick and autosave.

Corruption can happen and whether it is inevitable no one can really say.

If you want to test a mod on your save, make another new manual save, backup your saves folder, then install the mod and try it.

If you dont like it then remove it and load the manual save you made and go from there.

There are save game cleaners on the nexus. I've never used those before and would definitely recommend you backup your saves folder before you try

any of that stuff on your current save game.

Yeah, I usually make a separate save to test mods, but with Dawn of Whiterun from everything I'd seen it wasn't a mod that I disliked in any way. Performance issues completely skipped my mind. I'll definitely be more careful next time. As I said, I already have a backup of all my saves. In regards to quick and autosave, I only rely on them in the middle of a session of gameplay. Once I've gotten to a good stopping point I'll usually make a proper save and continue on or end my session there. Anyhow, would it still be safe to uninstall Dawn of Whiterun seeing as how it doesn't use any scripts? I'd assumed that you could never uninstall a mod to the point where "This save relies on content that is no longer available" appeared, but it seems there are exceptions.

There are exceptions. A non-script mod can be one of them. Mods change a variety of things for anyone to know for sure. Generally item mods are safe to remove. The best way is to read the author page. I would say remove the mod and see what happens. With manual saves you really need to be making them every 10 mins or so. That way you don't lose too much progress if your save DOES get corrupted.

You might also try unchecking all your mods and see what that does too. Dont overwrite saves while doing this and don't load autosaves.

The readme for the mod says "This mod uses no scripts, so it is safe to uninstall in most circumstances." I wasn't so much worried about the save being completely messed up and rendered unplayable by uninstalling the mod, just that uninstalling the mod might cause the game to be more unstable and prone to crashes. The mod adds some NPCs, vendor stalls, more structures/buildings (stuff like a Ysgramor statue and Bannered Mare patio), and general clutter. Why would I uncheck all my mods?

Just to see if there is a potential issue somewhere. I think it's a corrupt save probably.