Hi Guys, Really, really bugged by this. Got Skyrim installed and started playing very happily and whatnot but suffered an odd (I believe graphics related) glitch. It's happened without fail approximately an hour to 3 hours without fail into play time and has just left me constantly saving. Next time it happens I'll get a pic and upload it (can't screen shot) but basically it either leaves me with a black screen, a brown screen with black (vertical) lines or a teal screen with black (vertical) lines. Ambient sound keeps coming from Skyrim and if I'm on a skype call to friends I can keep talking to them quite happily until I decide to restart my computer as I'm completely unable to do anything (no ctrl-alt-del, no alt-tab, no alt-m etc). It's pretty annoying and so routine I don't really want to put up with it. My system specs are below. My first thought was my GPU overheating but FurMark on 100% extreme burn-in got it to 75C, which I doubt Skyrim is pushing harder than that. CPU temps are normal (tops 50C) and I haven't seen this problem anywhere else. The only potentially related issue is that I have (maybe once a week) suffered a freeze on my screen only to then have the screen stagger into black (bit by bit), for aero theme to crash and then the message pop up saying windows has suffered from a graphics card crash but has recovered. I'm wondering if these are related. It could be my GPU is borked. It doesn't have a warranty left so I hope this isn't the case... I'm running the latest AMD drivers and fully up to date with windows, running Avast! as my antivirus along with WinPatrol and Superantispyware, nor have I downloaded anything odd ruling out virus infection (I believe). Any suggestions? If you need any logs just say. Regards and thanks for any help, Chris
When it happens again try windows key and L. Should take you to the lockscreen. That usually makes windows realise the status of any crashed 3d applications that are stopping you from actually interacting with Windows again. It does for me at least. If you can't get to the lockscreen, then the problem may be hardware. Right now, I'm suspecting bugs in the game and the drivers. You could potentially try a fresh install of the Catalyst drivers, using driversweeper and such. Could alleviate the driver crash issue.
Cheers for the tip with windows+L, will try it if the problem persists... Right now I went overboard and have done a full windows re-install. I'll report back if the issue persists but I pretty much guess if it does then it's a hardware issue.
Full re-installation of everything including windows, skyrim and drivers; still getting the crash. Gonna play with some graphics settings and trial it but if anyone has any other idea please share
Semi-solution, have turned off AA & Anisotropic filtering. Not sure which is causing the issue but I didn't get a crash in 4+ hours of play. Hopefully this will help someone out there ;P
Did the lockscreen tip mean you could at least get by without a reboot when it happens? I've been reading about problems with Skyrim & AMD's drivers. You may not be alone with this issue and it may take a while for the drivers to improve. However, 11.11 is out now if you wanted to dig in and look for a better solution.
I'll have a look. It did get me out so that saved me some time, clearly it's the filtering or AA causing the problems though, maybe newer drivers will fix this. Judging by the ludicrous number of views on this thread I think it's safe to say I'm not alone with this problem...
