CTD issues after tutorial-guided installation (Skyrim)

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CTD issues after tutorial-guided installation (Skyrim)

Game: TESV: Skyrim

Problem: I watched Chabal's YouTube video tutorial on configuring enblocal.ini. With dual monitors, I followed along and made sure I did EVERYTHING according to his tutorial. I have 6GB RAM and the system reported 1536 MB of dedicated on-board VRAM. I used this formula in determining the reserved memory and the video memory in the [MEMORY] section.

For reserved memory: 1536/8= 192 MB

For Video Memory: 1536 +6144 - 2048= 5632 MB

I plugged these in and edited everything else according to the tutorial for a user who does NOT have any ENB package installed.

Everything is in the right directory and appears to be correct.

I started up the game, and got the text on the startup screen about ENB being installed, etc. It then changed to red text and seemed to be nagging me about the "UsePatchSpeedhackWithoutGraphics=false" setting under the [GLOBAL] setting in enblocal.ini. Chabal said to set that as "false" if you were not using an ENB package. I then started up the game and was having MORE freeze-ups and CTD's than I was without ENBoost installed. So, I uninstalled it according to the instructions in the tutorial video.

I was continuing to have CTD's due to VRAM and system RAM limitations. I'm running the game on "medium" with medium textures and low shadows, 4 FXAA. So I decided to give it another try. I reinstalled it according to instructions, this time doing the calculations as if I only had 1 GB of onboard VRAM. That changed the settings to, IIRC, 128 and 5144, respectively.

I then noticed the "readme_en.txt in the downloaded files and read it. Chabal didn't even mention this:

WARNING!
bFloatPointRenderTarget=1 must be set in SkyrimPrefs.ini file to make this mod work.
Start SkyrimLauncher.exe to configure your video options again.

So I did that. Started up the game and let ENBoost create the enbseries folder and the enbseries.ini. I exited the game and confirmed they were in the main Skyrim game folder with the other ENBoost files. Then I started the game using the SKSE loader executable. This time, after the text on the Bethesda loading screen came up, there was yellow text, telling me to open the editor with SHIFT + ENTER. I did so, and it opened up the ENBoost configuration window, and a message at the top (in green) said it needed to apply the changes made and to click "apply". So I did that.

Now, when I try to load a CLEAN save, I get an immediate CTD.

Can anyone help with this problem? What am I doing wrong?

P.S.: Sorry for the wall of text, just wanted to get all the information in here that would be needed to diagnose the issue.



My system information:

Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium, 64-bit (Service Pack 1)
-Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6600 @ 2.40GHz (2 CPUs), -2.4GHz
Memory: 6144MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 6142MB RAM
Page File: 1863MB used, 13489MB available

DirectX version: 11.0
GPU processor: GeForce GTX 580
Driver version: 311.06
DirectX support: 11.1
CUDA Cores: 512
Core clock: 772 MHz
Shader clock: 1544 MHz
Memory data rate: 4008 MHz
Memory interface: 384-bit
Memory bandwidth: 192.38 GB/s
Total available graphics memory: 4095 MB
Dedicated video memory: 1536 MB GDDR5
System video memory: 0 MB
Shared system memory: 2559 MB
Video BIOS version: 70.10.20.00.80
IRQ: 0
Bus: PCI Express x16

-Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6600 @ 2.40GHz (2 CPUs), -2.4GHz
Memory: 6144MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 6142MB RAM
Page File: 1863MB used, 13489MB available

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Re: CTD issues after tutorial-guided installation (Skyrim)

That math is invalid. Use VRamSizeTest dx9 version to get proper amount of video memory and set reserved to 256 or even 512, bigger amount is better for your videocard, but decrease amount of free memory for the process which leads to CTDs when out of memory condition occur. From the text you provided it's clear that value must be not bigger than 4095, so use 4000.
GF5xx have some driver related issues with my memory manager, they are always slower even compared to same vram size newest cards from NVidia, though in my ENBoost topic on Nexus i have seen many GF570 users who partially solved the issue, but it was so long time ago that i don't remember how exactly.
UsePatchSpeedhackWithoutGraphics=true - means that you don't use graphic mod, but only memory manager ENBoost as part of it. bFloatPointRenderTarget=1 is only graphic mod requirements, so do changes accordingly to UsePatchSpeedhackWithoutGraphics value, if false, then bFloatPointRenderTarget=1, otherwise bFloatPointRenderTarget=0.
Try EnableCompression=false and true both, first case means less stuttering when moving around fast, but with 6gb ram it's better to set it "true" to avoid performance drops because of swap file (if many textures installed).
I'm running the game on "medium" with medium textures
Because of game bug performance greatly drops with any textures quality, except highest. To avoid bug i'm validating texture real size to data size provided by game (invalid) and this is slow process, which leads to stuttering and longer loading times. But at same time medium quality of textures means lower ram and vram usage both, so you need to make a choice here.
This time, after the text on the Bethesda loading screen came up, there was yellow text, telling me to open the editor with SHIFT + ENTER. I did so, and it opened up the ENBoost configuration window, and a message at the top (in green) said it needed to apply the changes made and to click "apply". So I did that.
:lol: These are just notifications, ignore them. Red are important only.
When game is started with the mod, open task manager and check if enbhost.exe process is running, must be one only (could be more for very heavily modded game) and amount of memory used by it (when some level loaded) more than 120mb. Antiviruses, especially Avast, blocking proper functionality of cross process data transfer, so that can be the issue. And of course "crapware" of any kind, search my posts to find out what is that and disable/terminate it (Steam overlay too).
SKSE have memory patch which with invalid setting fails to work together with ExpandSystemMemoryX64=true, so try to set ExpandSystemMemoryX64=false. DisableDriverMemoryManager parameter may help with GF5xx specific issues, try both values.
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Re: CTD issues after tutorial-guided installation (Skyrim)

Thanks for the quick reply. I'm building a new PC before the end of the year, so this won't be an issue for long. I'm spending more time tweaking the OS and video settings than I am playing the game :P

OK, so the math in the tutorial is bad, got it. But the math isn't causing the CTD's, I don't think. I'll read through your reply again and see if I can make the changes you suggest. Will post results.

Oh, and I'm running Safety Load at the same time. Your description on the nexus said it was compatible. I've tried it with and without, seems to make no difference. Safety load seems to help with ILS's, though.

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Re: CTD issues after tutorial-guided installation (Skyrim)

OK, I set memory settings to 256 and 4000, respectively. Left UsePatchSpeedhackWithoutGraphics=true, and went back into SkyrimPrefs.ini and changed that bFloat parameter back to 0. I left task manager open and loaded up the game. Got the same red warning this time about SpeedHack not modifying the graphics. Ignored it and my last save loaded fine. I then had an epic magic battle with a dragon, travelled at low speed through the countryside. enbhost.exe started up just fine and was running anywhere from 120 MB of memory in it's private working set up to a max of about 280. Everything was running smooth. After about half an hour, the game froze up and the culprit seems to be the CPU. It spiked to 100% and hung there until I Ctrl+Alt+Delete'd and shut down Skyrim. IMO, it's probably the Steam crapware trying to update some BS in the background. Skyrim was using about 770 MB and enbhost was using around 200 MB when it froze, so it's not them. Most of my freezes and CTD's were RAM and VRAM issues. That seems to be fixed, from what I observed.

So, if I understand the purpose of ENBoost correctly, your advice fixed it. Nothing you can do about the CPU, I understand that. Running a dual core CPU that's 8 years old is kind of a stretch with these new games, anyway.

Thanks for your help, Boris!

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Re: CTD issues after tutorial-guided installation (Skyrim)

Amount of cpu cores doens't matter in Skyrim, game itself have lot of multithreading bugs. Try to configure SKSE memory patch or Sheson memory patch (which is the same) and do not modify skyrimprefs.ini and skyrim.ini properties regarding number of threads used by anything, it's 100% guarantee bugs.
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Re: CTD issues after tutorial-guided installation (Skyrim)

Using ENBoost for about 10 days now. The initial problems seemed to be solved with help from you, and by following Gopher's excellent video on installing and configuring the Sheson memory patch. One major issue was that, for whatever reason, the SKSE folder in Skyrim/Data was missing "skse.ini" file. Gopher addressed this, so I created that file the way he recommended:

[Memory]
DefaultHeapInitialAllocMB=768
ScrapHeapSizeMB=256

I started up the game with Performance Monitor running. I then ran tests similar to the ones gopher showed. I checked FPS and memory allocations under all kinds of conditions, and never saw a single CTD or crash. enbhost.exe started every time, no problem. Starting the game w/ the skse loader initially had no issues. TESV.exe was using around 700 MB, enbhost.exe using around 150-250 MB of memory. As I played, the TESV.exe useage continued to climb, but I was able to play for 2 hours without problems on Medium settings. I intentionally TRIED to crash it by high speed movement in heavy foliage alongside running water. Little bit of stutter when entering a new cell (open world), but still no issues.

Now, however, there's an issue that I just can't understand. Without changing anything in enblocal.ini or in the SKSE files, enbhost.exe is now using up to 1,000 MB of memory while TESV.exe is using about the same. This gradually climbs, and is much worse travelling in exterior cells. When total useage for both .exe files gets to around 2 GB...game freezes or CTD's. When I look at Sheson's Memory Blocks log that is created during every game session, Block 1 (512MB) and Block 2 (256MB) aren't even getting close to their limit when the crashes happen.

With the enblocal.ini memory allocations still at 512 and 4000, should enbhost.exe be using this large amount of memory? The only thing I have done is experimented with the amount of uGrids to load in Documents/My Games/Skyrim/skyrim.ini. Default is 5 grids, I tried setting it at 7 and it seemed to work really well with no CTD's or freezes. When I started having problems, I reverted to the default skyrim.ini backup. However, the problem is still there...enbhost.exe using massive amounts of resources.

I'm sure I've messed something up, since everything was working really well a week ago. I would appreciate any insights you might have. I'm hoping you can look at the problem and immediately know what I can do to fix it and what I can AVOID doing so that I don't break it in the future.

Sorry to be so needy :)

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Re: CTD issues after tutorial-guided installation (Skyrim)

enbhost.exe must use lot of memory, this is what it made for.
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Re: CTD issues after tutorial-guided installation (Skyrim)

Thanks. It turns out that, when I had the game create a new Skyrim.ini, I forgot to add "bPreemptivelyUnloadCells=1" back into the [General] section. Since I put that back in, seems to be running a lot better.
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