Getting constant BSODs when playing Skryim

frau kaleun · 10-02-13, 06:31 PM

Altho as I've just discovered, this seems to be a problem when playing in fullscreen mode. I just played for about 10 minutes with the game windowed, so I could monitor the temps of the CPU and motherboard while the game was running - and the CPU went up by 10 C at most (topped out in the low to mid 50s) while the MB's temp hardly budged at all. They both stayed well below the manufacturer's default temp for an "alarm threshhold" or whatever according to their software for monitoring and configuring such things.

So to back up a bit - I started a new game and played enough hours to get to level 15 or so with no problems whatsoever - no lag, graphics looked awesome, everything was fine. Then all of a sudden the game starts crashing. Like, less than five minutes into a session, BOOM - and I don't mean the game crashes to desktop, I mean the entire system freezes up with either a BSOD and a restart or else the screen goes black and eventually I have to turn it off manually by holding down the power button. Or some combo of both, sometimes it BSODs and then can't seem to restart without me forcing a shutdown.

I have gone through the events log and done my best to see what errors were coming up, there was a repeated error which turned out to have something to do with video card drivers - found what looked like a fix for that and applied it, didn't help. I upgraded the drivers to the newest version - didn't help. I've uninstalled them and reverted back to older versions - didn't help.

In the midst of all this, I started having trouble with Steam itself - I'd get an error when trying to start it up, that the Steam Client Bootstrapper couldn't open or whatever. Then I started wondering if maybe Steam itself was crapping out mid-game, so I searched around for stuff on that. Tried some different things with Steam such as troubleshooting for compatibility, Windows wanted to run it in the comp mode for XP SP3, so I let it, which seemed to fix that problem.

Then after reinstalling the latest GPU drivers I was able to run it without any special comp mode and it was fine. Now tonight I can only start it in offline mode, altho they seem to be having issues according to the website so that may be their problem and not mine. I'm not getting the error about the program crapping out, at any rate.

So at first I thought it was my CPU crapping out, but at least in windowed mode that doesn't seem to happen... I ran my PC through a couple of areas that are very intense due to the Warzones mod, and had no lag and no crash - everything went fine. Just prior to that when I booted up in fullscreen I couldn't even walk blithely across a mostly empty field with getting a BSOD after a couple minutes at most.

I'm looking for something on my system that will let me monitor the GPU temps but I can't seem to find it... doesn't appear to be included in Catalyst Control Center at all. Is there a free program I can snag somewhere that will let me do that? I have an HD Radeon 6950.

Barring a way to monitor the temps on the GPU I guess my next option is to take all the mods off and start a new totally vanilla game and see if I still get a system crash, altho I'm not convinced it's overloading due to mods as I've been playing with the same set up for quite a while. I added a couple new texture mods for this latest game but removing them doesn't help and I'd already played 15 levels with them in place with no problem, so I dunno. I am having ZERO problems doing anything else, it's just running the game (fullscreen) that seems to be impossible.

Either some bit of hardware is getting seriously overloaded when I do that - or else there's a driver or other software issue that I can't figure out... not that I know where else to look at this point. I tried downloading the Windows Debugging tool to be able to read the dump files from the crashes, but THAT won't install properly so no luck there. I am getting a Locale ID of 1033 but after searching that I still can't tell if it means hardware itself or hardware bugging out due to driver errors or other software problems.

I'm actually at the point of thinking I should just back up everything and reinstall Windows and all other software and drivers, but if it's an actual piece of hardware that's dying then that would be a lot of hassle for nothing.

Arclight · 10-02-13, 06:44 PM

This should give some comprehensive feedback on temperatures and such: http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

Keep an eye on temps and voltages I'd say, see if they don't deviate too much. If the issue isn't there it becomes a bit of a guessing game.

frau kaleun · 10-02-13, 06:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arclight

This should give some comprehensive feedback on temperatures and such: http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

Keep an eye on temps and voltages I'd say, see if they don't deviate too much. If the issue isn't there it becomes a bit of a guessing game.

Thanks, I will take a look at it.

I've got one little app running right now that came with the CPU, I guess, that monitors frequency and voltage.

The voltage seems to be staying stable at around 1.45v, but the frequency keeps bouncing up and down from 800 to 2200 to 3400 MHz and back again. Of course I'm not doing anything right now but looking at a couple of browser windows and typing in this one, but is that normal?

Edit: okay, I'm trying to download it and Windows is telling me the file couldn't be downloaded. Tried both the ftp and html links too.

NEVER MIND, it finally came through. Jeebus H. Cripes, can ANYTHING I try not give me problems? Lol.

Aaaaand NEVER MIND THAT, because whatever got downloaded was a partial file or something because the setup won't run and it's telling me again that I couldn't be downloaded when I go back to try again. GOSH DARN IT I SURE WISH I COULD SWEAR IN HERE.

HW3 · 10-02-13, 07:25 PM

Try here

http://download.cnet.com/HWMonitor/3...ml?tag=mncol;1

frau kaleun · 10-02-13, 07:28 PM

Well I don't know what was going on but for a while there I couldn't download ANYTHING, including small files from the Downloads here. It was like it was trying to download the link to where the file was, instead of the file itself. But I finally got HWMonitor after rebooting the computer AGAIN and going back to the page. Sheesh.

At this point I'm getting more and more interested in reinstalling Windows because it's like a giant clusteryouknowwhat of things, every time I try to do something it's like something ELSE doesn't work right.

frau kaleun · 10-02-13, 07:41 PM

Here's a question - would playing a game in fullscreen put enough additional stress on the hardware to cause a crash, when playing windowed does not? Because if the answer is no, then I would think it's more likely to be software related, specifically some setting or file that is causing the fullscreen mode to crap out.

Altho I didn't change anything prior to this problem starting, so I can't imagine what file or setting that would be. Unless Windows did an automatic update that screwed up something somewhere, but I couldn't find anything that looked suspicious in that area.

frau kaleun · 10-02-13, 08:17 PM

Found something that would read any .dmp files for me, and got HWMonitor, and now I can't reproduce the crash.

By which I mean I just played for about 15 minutes in fullscreen including running through the same two areas of heavy activity and getting caught up in a battle with numerous enemies who killed me dead, and everything was fine.

I checked HWMonitor a couple times during that and the GPU temp never got above 62 degrees Celsius... and I believe that's well within the safe parameters for the card.

So now I don't know what is or was going on. Granted, that was a small playing session, but for the past week I couldn't go 50 yards without the game crashing.

I'm wondering if it did have something to do with Steam crapping out somehow, that issues seems to have been resolved this evening - either on my end or theirs or both - and since I stopped having problems with that, no game crashes either.

Now I think I'll put back the newer mods I removed and see what happens.

10-02-13, 06:31 PM	#1
frau kaleun Rear Admiral Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Skyri--oh who are we kidding, I'm probably at Lowe's. Again. Posts: 12,706 Downloads: 168 Uploads: 0	Getting constant BSODs when playing Skryim Altho as I've just discovered, this seems to be a problem when playing in fullscreen mode. I just played for about 10 minutes with the game windowed, so I could monitor the temps of the CPU and motherboard while the game was running - and the CPU went up by 10 C at most (topped out in the low to mid 50s) while the MB's temp hardly budged at all. They both stayed well below the manufacturer's default temp for an "alarm threshhold" or whatever according to their software for monitoring and configuring such things. So to back up a bit - I started a new game and played enough hours to get to level 15 or so with no problems whatsoever - no lag, graphics looked awesome, everything was fine. Then all of a sudden the game starts crashing. Like, less than five minutes into a session, BOOM - and I don't mean the game crashes to desktop, I mean the entire system freezes up with either a BSOD and a restart or else the screen goes black and eventually I have to turn it off manually by holding down the power button. Or some combo of both, sometimes it BSODs and then can't seem to restart without me forcing a shutdown. I have gone through the events log and done my best to see what errors were coming up, there was a repeated error which turned out to have something to do with video card drivers - found what looked like a fix for that and applied it, didn't help. I upgraded the drivers to the newest version - didn't help. I've uninstalled them and reverted back to older versions - didn't help. In the midst of all this, I started having trouble with Steam itself - I'd get an error when trying to start it up, that the Steam Client Bootstrapper couldn't open or whatever. Then I started wondering if maybe Steam itself was crapping out mid-game, so I searched around for stuff on that. Tried some different things with Steam such as troubleshooting for compatibility, Windows wanted to run it in the comp mode for XP SP3, so I let it, which seemed to fix that problem. Then after reinstalling the latest GPU drivers I was able to run it without any special comp mode and it was fine. Now tonight I can only start it in offline mode, altho they seem to be having issues according to the website so that may be their problem and not mine. I'm not getting the error about the program crapping out, at any rate. So at first I thought it was my CPU crapping out, but at least in windowed mode that doesn't seem to happen... I ran my PC through a couple of areas that are very intense due to the Warzones mod, and had no lag and no crash - everything went fine. Just prior to that when I booted up in fullscreen I couldn't even walk blithely across a mostly empty field with getting a BSOD after a couple minutes at most. I'm looking for something on my system that will let me monitor the GPU temps but I can't seem to find it... doesn't appear to be included in Catalyst Control Center at all. Is there a free program I can snag somewhere that will let me do that? I have an HD Radeon 6950. Barring a way to monitor the temps on the GPU I guess my next option is to take all the mods off and start a new totally vanilla game and see if I still get a system crash, altho I'm not convinced it's overloading due to mods as I've been playing with the same set up for quite a while. I added a couple new texture mods for this latest game but removing them doesn't help and I'd already played 15 levels with them in place with no problem, so I dunno. I am having ZERO problems doing anything else, it's just running the game (fullscreen) that seems to be impossible. Either some bit of hardware is getting seriously overloaded when I do that - or else there's a driver or other software issue that I can't figure out... not that I know where else to look at this point. I tried downloading the Windows Debugging tool to be able to read the dump files from the crashes, but THAT won't install properly so no luck there. I am getting a Locale ID of 1033 but after searching that I still can't tell if it means hardware itself or hardware bugging out due to driver errors or other software problems. I'm actually at the point of thinking I should just back up everything and reinstall Windows and all other software and drivers, but if it's an actual piece of hardware that's dying then that would be a lot of hassle for nothing.

10-02-13, 06:44 PM	#2
Arclight Navy Seal Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Land of windmills, tulips, wooden shoes and cheese. Lots of cheese. Posts: 8,467 Downloads: 53 Uploads: 10	This should give some comprehensive feedback on temperatures and such: http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html Keep an eye on temps and voltages I'd say, see if they don't deviate too much. If the issue isn't there it becomes a bit of a guessing game. __________________ Contritium praecedit superbia.

10-02-13, 07:25 PM	#4
HW3 Navy Seal Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Gresham Oregon Posts: 6,574 Downloads: 458 Uploads: 0	Try here http://download.cnet.com/HWMonitor/3...ml?tag=mncol;1 __________________ "Some ships are designed to sink...others require our assistance." Nathan Zelk

10-02-13, 07:28 PM	#5
frau kaleun Rear Admiral Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Skyri--oh who are we kidding, I'm probably at Lowe's. Again. Posts: 12,706 Downloads: 168 Uploads: 0	Well I don't know what was going on but for a while there I couldn't download ANYTHING, including small files from the Downloads here. It was like it was trying to download the link to where the file was, instead of the file itself. But I finally got HWMonitor after rebooting the computer AGAIN and going back to the page. Sheesh. At this point I'm getting more and more interested in reinstalling Windows because it's like a giant clusteryouknowwhat of things, every time I try to do something it's like something ELSE doesn't work right.

10-02-13, 07:41 PM	#6
frau kaleun Rear Admiral Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Skyri--oh who are we kidding, I'm probably at Lowe's. Again. Posts: 12,706 Downloads: 168 Uploads: 0	Here's a question - would playing a game in fullscreen put enough additional stress on the hardware to cause a crash, when playing windowed does not? Because if the answer is no, then I would think it's more likely to be software related, specifically some setting or file that is causing the fullscreen mode to crap out. Altho I didn't change anything prior to this problem starting, so I can't imagine what file or setting that would be. Unless Windows did an automatic update that screwed up something somewhere, but I couldn't find anything that looked suspicious in that area.

10-02-13, 08:17 PM	#7
frau kaleun Rear Admiral Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Skyri--oh who are we kidding, I'm probably at Lowe's. Again. Posts: 12,706 Downloads: 168 Uploads: 0	Found something that would read any .dmp files for me, and got HWMonitor, and now I can't reproduce the crash. By which I mean I just played for about 15 minutes in fullscreen including running through the same two areas of heavy activity and getting caught up in a battle with numerous enemies who killed me dead, and everything was fine. I checked HWMonitor a couple times during that and the GPU temp never got above 62 degrees Celsius... and I believe that's well within the safe parameters for the card. So now I don't know what is or was going on. Granted, that was a small playing session, but for the past week I couldn't go 50 yards without the game crashing. I'm wondering if it did have something to do with Steam crapping out somehow, that issues seems to have been resolved this evening - either on my end or theirs or both - and since I stopped having problems with that, no game crashes either. Now I think I'll put back the newer mods I removed and see what happens.