Hey folks, are you facing the issue Skyrim keeps crashing? Do not worry! You are not alone. Here in this article, today we will discuss all the possible and practical solutions to fix the Skyrim keeps crashing issue. Before moving ahead we will discuss what this Skyrim is and what are the reasons behind this issue. Let’s dive in.
What is Skyrim?
Skyrim has become a cultural phenomenon at this point. Released way back in November of 2011, the fifth installment of The Elder Scrolls series is still going strong and is insanely popular among its player base, even after almost nine years of its release.
Todd Howard, the director and executive producer of Bethesda Game Studios, said the game had sold more than 30 million copies by 2016. Bethesda re-released and ported the game multiple times on brand new platforms, even on the Nintendo Switch.
Even though it still is a massively popular game, many issues have plagued Skyrim ever since its release. And Skyrim crashing on startup is one of the more apparent ones faced by most players.
Even on the latest remastered version of the game, console players experience frequent crashes. Players on Windows PCs face even more crashing issues, as so many players have different setups. Today we’ll take a look at the ways you can fix Skyrim crashes specifically for Windows.
Why Does Skyrim Crash?
The new Skyrim remastered Special Edition is visually very impressive. But it didn’t fix most of the underlying issues with the game. Skyrim’s autosave implementation isn’t particularly good or well thought out. The game autosaves every couple of minutes to prevent players from losing their saves.
So the chances of a corrupted save increase significantly, causing the game to crash. Windows 10 has weird compatibility issues with the game due to its Touch Keyboard and Handwriting Panel Service. These two things are, more often than not, the cause of Skyrim crashing to the desktop.
However, there are other issues as well, which we will get to. Even sometimes after crashing on startup, no Skyrim crash report pops up, making it difficult to determine the reason for the crash. With that being said, let’s now take a look at the things you need to run Skyrim on your Windows PC.
Prerequisites
Here are some essential things required for any edition of Skyrim to run correctly on Windows:
- Make sure that you have the latest version of Windows 10 installed. At the time of writing, the latest public version of Windows 10 is Version 2004. You can check for the latest Windows 10 updates by simply visiting Settings > Updates & Security > Check for updates.
- Check if you have all the latest drivers installed for your motherboard from your motherboard vendor’s website. In case you have a prebuilt PC or a laptop, you can download the latest drivers from their respective websites.
- Update your graphics driver to its latest version. Depending on your graphics card or integrated graphics manufacturer, you can download your latest graphics driver from here: NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel.
- Your PC should at least meet the minimum system requirements to run the game. You can find out more about it here.
- If you are a returning player, you should have all the latest patches put out by Bethesda installed. You can access them on Bethesda’s official development page here. The last patch put out by them was back in 2018, which was quite a while ago. So you should have that installed.
After making sure of all that, in case you are still looking for a Skyrim crash fix, read on through this guide to get crash fixes for Skyrim.
Methods For Skyrim Crash Fix
So without further ado, we are going to dive straight into the fixes you can perform yourself:
1. Verify Integrity Of Game Files
Steam has a convenient tool using which you can recheck your game data. If it finds any corrupted files, it simply redownloads it and repairs the game installation. Here’s how to use it:
- First of all, open Steam and click Library.
- Then find Skyrim in your Library on the left pane and right-click on it. Click on Properties.
- After that, select the “LOCAL FILES” tab.
- Now click on “VERIFY INTEGRITY OF GAME FILES” and wait for the process to finish. You might have to wait for a while, depending on your drive speed and CPU.
- Once the process finishes, if Steam finds any corrupted files, it will redownload said files and repair the game installation.
The above steps should repair Skyrim and let you open it. But, if Skyrim is still crashing, move on to our next solution.
2. Use the Manual Save Option
As said before, Skyrim’s autosave functionality is pretty awful. We know that having to save the game manually over and over again before quitting is quite tedious, and one power cut can destroy hours of your progress.
Still, we recommend using the manual save option rather than using autosave or quicksave. And that is because losing a couple of hours’ progress is nothing compared to losing your entire saved data.
This solution doesn’t only work for Windows PCs. In case Skyrim is crashing on your gaming consoles (even the Nintendo Switch), you can try enabling manual save to fix the issue.
3. Change Default Audio Playback Device Settings
If you have high-end headphones, speakers, DAC (Digital-to-Analog Converter), AMP (Amplifier), sound card, or any other audio equipment, chances are you have selected the highest-end audio codec to use those to their full extent.
Windows can also sometimes automatically change you to the highest fidelity codec and bitrate available. However, Skyrim is a really old game.
So it doesn’t support all these new high-end audio bitrates and codecs. In case Skyrim is crashing with an audio renderer error, that may be why. Perform the following steps to change it:
- Right-click the little Sound icon () on the taskbar. You can usually find it in the bottom right corner of your screen.
- Click on Sounds.
- Now go to the Playback tab and select your speakers or primary headset.
- Right-click it and click on Properties.
- Then go to the Advanced tab.
- From the drop-down menu, select any of the options that state 44100 Hz.
- Now click on Apply. It should not take more than a couple of seconds to get applied.
- Finally, click OK and close all the relevant windows.
If you were getting an audio renderer error earlier with Skyrim. It should work just fine now. But in case you still get the same error, there may be a different application like Corsair iCUE, Dolby Access, DTS Sound Unbound, and others taking control of your sound settings.
To prevent the same, go back to the same Advanced tab and uncheck the two options stating Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device and Give exclusive mode applications priority.
Do note: We don’t recommend using these settings all the time. You can set it back to the highest fidelity option after you’re done playing Skyrim to enjoy other media with your audio gear to its fullest extent.
4. Stop Touch Keyboard and Handwriting Panel Service (TabletInputService)
As mentioned before, Skyrim has a weird compatibility issue with Windows 10’s touch input services. The problem is common between all DirectX 9-based games. If Skyrim crashes to the desktop precisely after 15 minutes in the game, most probably it’s the touch service causing the problem. Follow the steps below to stop the service:
- Right-click on your taskbar and open Task Manager.
- Go to the Services tab.
- Scroll down and try to find TabletInputService.
- Once you find it, right-click it and click on Stop.
- Close the window.
And voila! You should now be perfectly able to play through Skyrim without many, if any issues. In case you don’t have a touchscreen display connected to your PC, you can keep the service stopped.
However, if you do, after playing Skyrim, you can similarly visit Task Manager’s Services tab again and restart the service by right-clicking it in case you want to.
5. Reinstall Skyrim
If you followed all of our previous methods thoroughly, but Skyrim is still crashing on you, unfortunately, the only option remaining for you is uninstalling and reinstalling the game. Your installed mods can be a reason for that. Do note that following this method will delete all of your installed mods.
However, fret not! We know how vital your Skyrim saves are. Steam has a solution for that as well! Steam, by default, uploads all your saved data to the cloud for backup.
Some gaming console manufacturers charge extra for that, but Steam does it for completely free! It should be enabled by default. However, in case, for some reason, it’s not enabled for you, here’s how you can allow Steam to upload:
- Open Steam and click on the ‘Steam’ option on the top left corner of your screen.
- Click on Settings.
- Go to the Cloud section.
- Make sure that “Enable Steam Cloud synchronization for applications which support it” and “Open the screenshot uploader after closing a game if screenshots were taken” are checked. With the second option checked, you can even upload your in-game screenshots to the Steam Cloud and show them off on your profile or library.
- Finally, click OK.
Wrapping Up — Skyrim keeps Crashing
In this guide, we have shown you five different ways you can perform crash fixes for Skyrim. Now you can finally go back to finishing a vast amount of side quests and marvel at the open-world masterfully created by Bethesda back again.
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