Someone please help. I spent the entire day trying to fix this (my one free day off in weeks ) and I'm out of ideas.

The game worked well for a couple of months but then it developed a weird jaggy mouse/gamepad look issue. This morning, I decided that I was going to actually enjoy Skyrim again so I googled possible fixes and did the following:

• Installed latest NVIDIA drivers
• Turned off VSYNC by adding iPresentInterval=0 to skyrim.ini
• Downloaded the FPS limiter mod (FPS capped to 30)
• Turned on VSYNC under NVIDIA control panel instead

Things became too good to be true. Screen movement was now silky smooth, like I was playing on a console (I used a gamepad today).

I'm pretty sure that limiting FPS was the main reason for the fix but I'm not sure which step triggered the following issue:

1. Loading got noticeably longer but I've read that this is probably due to limiting FPS.

2. The actual reason for posting here: After playing for a couple of buttery smooth minutes, the screen flickered and froze. The game itself kept going, judging by the audio, and it sounded like I could still control my character and interact with things. It keeps doing that now. After short periods of playing (not always the same), the screen will flicker/stutter for a second or two before freezing or going black, while the game stays alive, and I have to exit out.

I tried

• Reinstalling NVIDIA drivers
• Turning off VSYNC in NVIDIA CP
• Removing FPS limiter mod
• Verifying game files integrity via Steam
• Deleting Skytim.ini so the game generates a new one

Dialing settings way down still gives this occasional stutter, like the screen wants to freeze or go black, but it doesn't. Not sure what makes the difference. I've tried turning things on and off, one by one, but haven't been able to pinpoint the one culprit. I suspect that this MIGHT be due to some sudden combo of shadows/lighting/particles causing a very quick dip below my lock of 30 fps and this gets my setup to get confused (speaking as a man who knows nothing about these things).

I'm on Windows 7 (64 bit), i7-3615QM, NVIDIA GT 650M. 8GB RAM. I have no mods installed, other than the FPS limiter. I've not messed with anything much. I'm generally getting at least 40 FPS on ULTRA, in and around Whiterun without the limiter.

Can anyone please help? Any Windows file I can go in to see what's happening? Where do I punch this thing to make it run properly?

If you can sustain 40FPS then use Nvidia Inspector to cap your framerate. Just disable vsync everywhere else (skyrim ini, Nvidia control panel, etc..). Try using the "Frame Rate Limiter" setting in NI to lock your FPS to 40.

Try what IoCaster suggested, and see if it fix your problem.

If not, it could be something else...

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Also as IoCaster mentioned, do not enable both features. Either Vsync or Frame-rate Limiter.

Vsync tries to sync your game to your native Monitor refresh rate, probably 60.

Frame-rate lmiter tries to gap your frame-rates at 40. (not higher than that)

Of courese if your game runs lower than 40, it doesn't make sense to gap it to 40 with a Frame-rate limiter, you may encounter stuttering.

In that situation you use Vsync.

Also if your game never reaches your native Monitor refresh rate, you could disable Vsync, and see how the game behaves. (gaining some frame-rates...more)

Thanks for the replies.

I reinstalled Skyrim, installed NVIDIA inspector. Turned off VSYNC everywhere and limited FPS in NI.

Problem got worse, it seems. The game loads some saves but not others. They load to black jerky screens while FRAPS shows 5-ish FPS. No idea what's going on Could this be that refresh rate issue?

EDIT:

SOME PROGRESS...

I did another reinstall of Skyrim. Made sure to delete everything with a sky and a rim off my computer. This time, it looks like the screen stopped freezing (!) but the flickering was crazy, basically unplayable. Oddly, the game didn't return to the state it was in before I started "fixing" it.

Then, I turned off VSYNC again, which didn't seem to affect anything major. As soon as I limited FPS with NVIDIA INSPECTOR though, it froze right upon loading a save.

Something inside my computer is not liking something else. I'm wondering whether Mark41 was onto something with his refresh rate suggestions.

Delete the two ini files (skyrim.ini and skyrimprefs.ini). Let the game remake them.

Does this happen in a new game?

Disable the frame rate limiter for now.

What happens? What frame rates are you getting?

1) Do you have any mods installed ???

if yes disable those, and short your load order again, then check your load order.

2) What drivers have you installed ???

3) Check your Windows Task Manager -> at the Startup panel:

What programs are running there ???

4) Uninstall Nvidia Inspector though your Control Panel -> Programs and Features

5) If you have unwanted programs in your Startup panel (Task Manager), right click disable those

...and after you have uninstalled N.I. - download *CCleaner and clean your registry.

6) Delete your skyrim.ini and SkyrimPrefs.ini files, located: C:\Users\*YourUserID*\Documents\My Games\Skyrim

7) Open your Nvidia control panel and make your settings default, afterwards scroll down to Vsync and enable it.

8) Start Skyrim, and choose: 1920x1080 resolution (all sliders high settings) Disable AA and AF in your Skyrim options as well.

9) Star Skyrim, and choose a "New game"

10) Observe your Frame-Rates !!!

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*http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner

Just to be clear. Did you edit and save the Skyrim game specific profile in NI or did you apply the FRL setting to the global or base profile? Another thing to try is to disable FRAPS for the time being while you troubleshoot the problem. Also, just to be sure these are save files from a new game that you're loading, right?

I tried both, going global and not. Tried disabling fraps too. Starting the new game doesn't seem to change anything.

Once again, thank you all for trying this with me. I was completely out of ideas. I think that maybe it's either the NVIDIA drivers (since that's the only thing I haven't really changed since the issue started, short of reinstalling the same drivers) or it's that refresh rate thing. I'll probably start installing older versions of nvidia drivers now.

I read the release notes for the 358.50 drivers and didn't see any obvious problems with regard to your chipset. There are flickering issues noted for the 400 and 500 series, but they seem mostly related to SLI. Your decision to rollback drivers sounds like a valid troubleshooting technique and I hope that clears up the issue for you. Also, I want to point out that creating an individual game settings profile in NI is the preferred method. The global profile affects everything including the windows desktop so it should in most cases be left at default settings unless you have a specific need to alter them. Good luck.