Lanceor's Quest for Stability

[Lanceor]

Hello all!

 

First of all, a big thanks to TC and everyone involved with STEP. It's brought me a lot closer to a great looking but stable and playable Skyrim!

 

Unfortunately I'm not quite there yet - I'm still chasing down a couple of random, no error CTDs that happen within 5 - 15 minutes of starting the game. I'm at loss to explain. I'm hoping anyone reading could throw some ideas in the air to help me with troubleshooting.

 

The Problem

 

My savegames start to become unstable around 20 - 30 hours into the game so testing a "STEP only" setup will be kind of difficult. (I did get a character to level 81 before I started modding, so that should rule out anything inherently wrong with my system).

 

There seems to be 2 kinds of crash:

• Combat CTD - It seems to occur at the moment the enemy AI "wakes up" at combat start. Disabling Cerwiden's SmartCast seems to help a little, but not eliminate the problem.
• Random CTD - I'm walking along, checking inventory or whatever and suddenly I'm looking at my desktop.

Further info for both kinds of crash:

• Only happens in interiors, usually dungeons.
• No error messages before crashing to desktop.
• Nothing in the Papyrus log to indicate problems.
• Not RAM related - TESV.exe RAM usage is often around the 1.5 GB mark when it happens.
• Framerates are fine at 60 fps.
• Temperatures are nominal.
• Steam is running in Offline mode.
• Avast! is in gaming mode.
• Advanced System Care is used to kill unneeded background processes.

The combat CTDs suggest it may be related to AI or a combat mod. Could it be momentarily overloading the CPU?

 

System Details

 

 

Windows 7 64 Bit

Intel Core i7 2600K overclocked to 4.6 GHz

8 GB DDR3 RAM

2 x nVidia GTX 580, 1.5 GB VRAM, SLI, driver version 314.07

Resolution: 1920 x 1080

Corsair Force 3 SSD (Steam and Skyrim are installed in this drive)

 

 

This should be plenty of horsepower for almost anything Skyrim can throw at it. I've had the CPU overclocked that way since day 1, and got a vanilla character to level 81 before I started adding a lot of mods. The GPUs have plenty of horsepower so I've had no need to overclock it, though VRAM is a bit limited. All temperatures are well within normal limits. Stability seems to worsen whenever TESV.exe starts using over 2.1 GB of RAM (as opposed to the 3.1 - 3.3 GB that others report).

 

Skyrim Launcher Options

As recommended by STEP: Ultra Settings, 4X AA, 16 X AF, no FXAA.

 

nVidia Inpector Settings

(only settings that differ from STEP are listed)

 

 

Ambient Occlusion compatibility - 0x00000004 (Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare) - This works MUCH better than 0x00000029 (Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim)

 

Antialiasing - Transparency Multisampling - 8x Supersampling

 

Texture filtering - Quality - High Quality

 

Ambient Occlusion setting - Quality

Ambient Occlusion usage - Enabled

If Ambient Occlusion setting is set to anything other than "Off", then this setting should be set to "0x00000001 (... Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, ...)". If Ambient Occlusion setting is set to "Off" and you plan 

Maximum pre-rendered frames - 4

 

 

 

STEP mods

I'm using Wrye Bash for installing and annealing. The darkened mods are the ones that I'm planning to remove from my next playthrough.

 

 

2.C. Extenders

SKSE

 

2.D. Fixes

Ancient Nord Armor Fix

Argonian Decapitation Fix

Barrow Button Fix

Bowlegged Jump Fix

Brawl Bugs Patch

Consistent Older People

Dead Body Collision

Fast Travel Timescale Fix

Unofficial Skyrim Patch

Unofficial Dawnguard Patch

Unofficial Hearthfire Patch

Unofficial Dragonborn Patch

Unofficial High Resolution Patch

Acquisitive Soul Gems

Distant Decal Fix

 

2.E. Interface

Altar Descriptions

Better Dialogue Controls

Better MessageBox Controls

Categorized Favorites Menu

CFM-Oni Edition

High Quality 3D Map

Lore-Based Loading Screens

No Boring Wait Menu

No Menu & Loading Smoke

Quality World Map

Race Menu

SkyUI

 

2.F. Conflicting Graphics

HRDLC Optimized - Hybrid (1024 + 2048) + Vanilla NormalMaps

Better Dynamic Snow

No Stretching

Better Rocks & Mountains

Static Mesh Improvement Mod

Skyrim HD - 1024 (LITE)

Serious HD - 1024

HD Miscellaneous Items

Tobe's Hi-Res Textures - 1024

 

2.G. Landscape & Environment

Snow & Rocks HD - 1024

AOF Detailed Mountains - 1024

Skyrim Flora Overhaul

Distant Detail

Enhanced Night Skyrim

HD Enhanced Terrain - 1024

High Quality LODs

Lanterns Of Skyrim

Moon Size Tweaks

Moss Rocks

Real Ice - 1024

Realistic Tundra Moss - 1024

Trees HD - High

Vibrant Auroras

Visible Windows

WATER

Whiterun Trellis Redesigned

Windmills Resized

 

2.H. Characters & Creatures

Bellyache's Creature Pack - Medium

Realistic Hair

AOF Believable Hair

Arvak Reborn - HD

Beards - Normal Resolution

Bellyache's Dragons

Better Beast Races - Lite

Brows - Normal Resolution

Cover Khajiits- 1024

Female Vampires Have Fangs

Footprints

Frost Atronach HD

Ice Wraith

Improved Foot Wraps

Rabbits Plus

Xenius Character Enhancement

XCE-Dawnguard

Better Male Feet

Natural Eyes

 

2.I. Clothing & Equipment

Better Circlets - 1024x512

Accingite Vos

Book of Silence

Daedric Armor & Weapons

Elemental Staffs

Elven Weapons for Silence

Weapon De-LARP Project

Greatsword Sheaths & Scabbards

Improved Closefaced Helmets

Jewels of the Nord

Nightingale Prime

Not Really HD-Mask of Clavicus Vile

Shield of Ysgramor

Ultimate HD Torch

 

2.J. Animations & Effects

Animated Weapon Enchants

Better Turn Animation

Burn Freeze & Shock Effects

Deadly Spell Impacts - Medium

Enhanced Blood - 1024

Enhanced Projectile Soul Trap

Finer Dust

Get Snowy

Improved Weapon Impact Effects

Lightning During Thunder Storms

No Spinning Death Animation

Rainbows

Realistic Smoke & Embers - Medium

Running With Bows

Shooting Stars

Skyrim Performance Plus

Skyrim Sunglare

Ultimate HD Fire Effects

Warmer Magic Lights

 

2.K. Clutter & Miscellaneous

The 418th Step

Better Bones

Designs of the Nords

Destructible Bottles

Detailed Rugs

Enhanced Dragon Bones - 1k

HD Baskets - 512 x 1024

HD Linens

HD Ore & Ingots

HD Sacks

HQ Skyrim Map - 1024

Intricate Spider Webs

New Thinner Torch

Not Really HD-Display Case

Not Really HD-Keys

Pilgrim's Delight

Realistic Paper

Septim HD

Silly Level of Detail-Wine Cellar

Soul Gems Differ

Super Realistic Ore

Sweet Mother

 

2.L. Sound

Better Animal Footsteps

Better Bards

Better Weapon Swings

Clanking Armor

Heart of the Beast

Immersive Thunder

Improved Combat Sounds

Realistic Bow Sounds

Realistic Crossbow Sounds

Smooth Blade Draw & Sheathe

Thundering Shouts

 

2.M. Gameplay

Ars Metallica-Smithing

Clams Drop Pearls

Convenient Horses

Death Cam Duration Options

Disable Thieves Guild Autostart

Drop Lit Torches

Dynamic Fires

Follower Trap Safety

Gildergreen Regrown

Guard Dialogue Overhaul

Move It Dammit

No NPC Greetings

Non-Essential Children

Paarthurnax Dilemma

Realistic Crime Radius

Realistic Ragdolls & Force - Realisitc Force

Run For Your Lives

Skyrim Coin Replacer

Skyrim Uncapper

The Choice is Yours

Traps Make Noise

Wearable Lanterns

When Vampires Attack

 

 

 

Non-STEP mods

Not really that many, but if there's a mod related problem, it could be here. I've intentionally avoided mods that add scripts.

 

 

DIMONIZED UNP female body (no esp)

UNP Blessed Body (no esp)

UNP Female Armors (no esp)

UNP Dawnguard Armors (no esp)

UNP Dragonborn Armors (no esp)

A Sexy Little Apparel Replacer (meshes, textures and one esp - no scripts)

 

Immersive Armors (Levelled Lists)

Immersive Weapons (Levelled Lists)

Isilmeriel LOTR Weapons Collection (esp to add items and constructables)

Grace Darkling's Ranger Armor(esp to add items and constructables)

Nomo's Ranger Armour (esp to add items and constructables)

Nordic Ranger Outfit (esp to add items and constructables)

Triss Armor - Craftable and Upgradeable (esp to add items and constructables)

Cloaks of Skyrim (Levelled Lists)

JaySuS Swords (Levelled Lists)

 

Companion Vilja (Scripts and custom AI)

Cerwiden -SMART Healer (Scripts and custom AI)

 

Better Stealth AI for Followers_Dawnguard (Scripts! AI!)

Sneaky Serana (AI Sneak Changes Only - no scripts)

 

Enhanced Follower Framework (Scripts! AI!)

 

ACE - Archery

ACE - Armor

ACE - Enchanting

ACE - Magic

ACE - Melee

ACE - Smithing

ACE - Speech

ACE - Synergy Bonuses

 

ACE Compatibility patch for Dawnguard

ACE Compatibility patch for Dragonborn

ACE Compatibility patch for Immersive Armors

ACE Compatibility patch for Immersive Weapons

ACE Compatibility patch for Isilmeriel LOTR Weapons Collection

 

Duel - Combat Realism

 

 

 

Load Order

Sorry I can't post the exact load order - I deleted the lot out of frustration yesterday!  Needless to say, all dirty mods were cleaned, BSA's unpacked into loose files, sorted by BOSS and rules were created for unrecognised mods.

 

I haven't uninstalled any mods that have scripts, though Skyrim Patch 1.9 was stealth installed during my playthrough (necessitating an upgrade to USKP and SKSE). I kept esp removals and load order changes to a minimum.

 

Things I'll try next

• I'll unpack the HiRes Texture pack into loose files to be overwritten by mods (previously, I disabled the esps and added HighResTexturePack01.bsa, HighResTexturePack02.bsa and HighResTexturePack03.bsa to Skyrim.ini).
• Remove all the Z-Fighting ini tweaks that were recommended by STEP.
• Attempt to change the power plan on my CPU to keep it running at a constant clock speed.

Does anyone have any feedback on EFF, ACE Combat or Duel - Combat Realism? They seem to be the logical places to look for problems but everything I've read suggests that they're quite stable. I can switch to different mods, but I'd rather not play with vanilla combat or follower commands. ;) Hopefully you guys can suggest something else that I can try or offer other nuggets of wisdom!

[DoYouEvenModBro]

This post has been deleted

[Lanceor]

I've downloaded Optimizer Texture but haven't used it yet. I figured that that if I was going to reduce my texture load, then I may as well simply not use any replacement textures.

 

While the vanilla lo-res textures are clearly not as good, I haven't found them to be really awful. For now, I think I'll stick with the current configuration as I plan to add more non-STEP mods later, and additional stability overhead is always welcome. :)

 

Edit: @ joshkope - I thought you were asking me and not Ezekiel33 when I wrote that reply.

[Ezekiel33]

Ive had some ctd/freezing problems too and these options helped me reduce them ( almost non existing anymore) maybe it can help :

1- Run skyrim/skse as administrator

2- Run steam offline (also disabled steam community in-game and cloud sync before that )

3- Checked my load order with boss and than tes5edit to make sure everything is compatible

4- Install Skyrim Project Optimization

5- For last step I've run Textures Optimizer to maximum profile. reducing textures almost cleared my ctd/freezing problems

 

hope that helps

cheers

Are you talking about the resize option? Did you do any of the other optimizer texture options?

Well I did try to compress my textures and BSA to a max profile and it screwed my game lol. So Iv'e run the textures max profiles only and I don't have any problems so far. Another thing that helped me is changing my enb. I was using Skyrealism and changed to a new one (based on 1.53 from boris) and now I can visit a lot of places where I was crashing before. I think a lot of things can make your game unstable. For me it was textures and enb. I can run for multiple hours straight now without any ctd/freeze.

[Lanceor]

The character is now level 71 and I think it's safe to say that the stability problems are [ SOLVED ].

 

To recap, the two main problems were Random CTDs (no warning, no error, no pattern, not reproducible) and Combat CTDs (CTD at the start of combat).

 

Removing all texture mods stopped 99% of both types of CTD suggesting that the game can't handle the load even though the system is running at 60 fps.

 

The combat CTDs still happens occasionally. I have a suspicion (though unable to prove conclusively via testing) that it was Companion Vilja. It seems that on certain game loads and/or entering certain dungeons, something makes her glitch out causing a CTD at the start of combat start, especially if she is far away at the time. Telling her not to fight seems to stop this type of CTD but it's hard to tell whether it was indeed this or simply the reload that fixed it.

[Aiyen]

You got to have some sort of bad memory or similar related hardware issue... either in RAM or on either of the GFX cards.

It makes no sense that your setup would not be able to run full 1k step. Computers with less are able to do that.

 

I assume you have tried to do a full stress test of your systems memory ? There are various utilities and programs that are free which can do this for you.

[Lanceor]

You got to have some sort of bad memory or similar related hardware issue... either in RAM or on either of the GFX cards.

It makes no sense that your setup would not be able to run full 1k step. Computers with less are able to do that.

 

I assume you have tried to do a full stress test of your systems memory ? There are various utilities and programs that are free which can do this for you.

Thanks for suggesting that. I downloaded and ran MemTest and it detected an error within 5 minutes. I'm going to de-overclock the computer now and run some more tests. :)

 

UPDATE: Good news - the hardware is not at fault. After setting my BIOS to defaults, MemTest ran overnight without error. Now all I have to do is try overclocking the machine again adding MemTest to the suite of stability tests. :)

[Aiyen]

Glad to hear that my hunch at least is partially right.

In general always do MEMtest after doing any type of MB/BIOS OC since any instability due to increasing the voltages are seen there first.

[Lanceor]

All hail Aiyen! Your hunch has done more for my game's stability than all the other tweaks and tips that I've read on the Internet put together. 

 

Over the last few days, I re-overclocked the CPU manually instead of using the insta-overclock software that came with the Mobo and now have a very stable 4.5 GHz clock which passes an overnight MemTest.

 

Seeing that the game was stable, I re-added all the texture mods that I had before. No problems. So I kept adding MORE texture mods until the GPUs were both constantly running at 100% and maxing out the VRAM. Frame rates dropped but Skyrim was as stable as it could be.

 

Now I've got to dial back my textures and overclock my GPUs to get better frame rates. Thanks to your hunch, I'm finally running Skyrim to my system's limits. :)

[Aiyen]

Glad to have helped!

 

We all learn stuff the hard way when playing with OC! ;)

In general dont just OC for the sake of doing it on a computer that you plan on using.

Most of the time the only thing you get is "bragging" rights because your computer has higher numbers! ;)

OC smart! check that you actually get meaningful performance increases (>10%) by doing it. No point in wasting valuable component lifetime for essentially nothing.

[Lanceor]

Once again, Skyrim has thrown me another curve ball.

 

MemTest on its own - No problems

MemTest after 8 hours of Prime95 - No problems

MemTest + Prime95 at the same time - No problems

MemTest + IntelBurnTest - No problems

MemTest + IntelBurnTest + Ungine Heaven - No problems

MemTest + IntelBurnTest + Prime95 + Ungine Heaven - Surely you can't be serious...

 

MemTest after an hour of Skyrim - Memory Errors

 

The memory errors still occur after the system is given 10 minutes to cool down and there are no other applications running. They'll persist until a system reboot after which I'll have no further memory errors until I run Skyrim again.

 

What could it be about Skyrim that could mess up memory so badly that not even three torture-testing applications in unison can't match it?

[torminater]

Once again, Skyrim has thrown me another curve ball.

 

MemTest on its own - No problems

MemTest after 8 hours of Prime95 - No problems

MemTest + Prime95 at the same time - No problems

MemTest + IntelBurnTest - No problems

MemTest + IntelBurnTest + Ungine Heaven - No problems

MemTest + IntelBurnTest + Prime95 + Ungine Heaven - Surely you can't be serious...

 

MemTest after an hour of Skyrim - Memory Errors

 

The memory errors still occur after the system is given 10 minutes to cool down and there are no other applications running. They'll persist until a system reboot after which I'll have no further memory errors until I run Skyrim again.

 

What could it be about Skyrim that could mess up memory so badly that not even three torture-testing applications in unison can't match it?

Bad memory management, maybe Skyrim puts pressure on other parts of your memory than the other utilities you use? Very interesting though, maybe worth a ticket to Beth Support.

[Aiyen]

It sounds odd that a game can do anything memory wise that those programs cannot.

 

But you said you where going to do more OC on the gfx to get more FPS.... try to dial down the OC!

 

You said you already found a stable configuration... just stick to that! A few more FPS are not worth all this extra hassle... you can do ini tweaks to get more FPS without any real visual loss as well.

[Lanceor]

Yah, turning off the GPU overclock sounds prudent - I'll do that. This is proving really hard to diagnose as sometimes it'll go for hours without a CTD, sometimes it will cause memory errors (requiring a reboot) and sometimes the savegame will corrupt itself (requiring a rollback).

[Aiyen]

The first one you most likely will never get rid of.... several hours of heavily modded skyrim is the goal!

memory errors should not happen to the extent they crash a running application, in that case it is most likely hardware related to your computer.

Corrupt savegames... Disable autosaves! They are evil! Make your own saves, and get into the habit of having more then one. Also having a separate save that is only saved indoors is also recommended.

[Lanceor]

Got a bit of a breakthrough today. My earlier hunch about the combat CTDs due to Vilja is correct. If she somehow gets an invalid item in her inventory, combat will make her tear the fabric of Skyrim's space-time and cause a CTD. The fix is to use the console to find and remove these glitched items. Those "corrupted savegames" were probably due to this glitch. One source of CTDs eliminated, 99 to go. :P

 

The memory errors are very weird - no other combination of software has been able to produce these errors. At least I know that rebooting the computer fixes it for a few hours. Perhaps it has something to do with that rumoured Skyrim memory leak.

 

As for autosaves... I stopped using them ages ago. ;)