intermittent freeze when saving is driving me nuts.

[MistrBill]

Just got back into FO4 after a year off, and this is a new problem for me. SOME of the time, when I save, the game freezes. It doesn't just CTD, it locks my whole system up, requiring a reboot. When re entering the game, the last attempted save is either absent or corrupted.

It seems most common with a quick save or auto save, or when there's a lot going on- a lot of building has been done, in combat, that sort of thing. But it has just bombed out with a regular save, when I'm not doing anything in game.

I run many mods, and the problem doesn't happen at any reliable point that I can predict. That alone means it'd take me til Christmas to figure out if a certain mod is doing it, and to make matters worse, I can't reliably duplicated the problem. When I do various things to troubleshoot, such as turning off mods, I have quick saved dozens of times without a freeze up. Of course, it's impossible to guess whether the mod(s) I turned off is the problem, or just that the condition that causes the crash isn't present at that point.

I've tried dialing down the graphics settings and turning off the hi res texture DLC. I've tried turning off ALL mods, but that disrupts so much else that I don't think it's a reliable test of the game's stability. I could restart a new game, no mods, from scratch, but that would suck for a couple of obvious reasons. I've got hundreds of hours in game from 2015-16 without this problem, and my system handles the game well, no slow downs or framerate problems.

I've looked around on line, but I haven't seen recent, relevant post on the topic of saving the game causing a lockup. Anyone have any ideas?

[MaximumEffort]

Don't save/

[fastboyslim]

try turning steam overlay off

[MistrBill]

Steam overlay. Do you mean playing in offline mod (tried it, no luck), or something else?

[fastboyslim]

go to Fallout 4 in your steam library right click on fallout 4 icon, select properties and on the first tab that opens up you will have the option to turn it off!

[MistrBill]

Thanks, I'll try it. Wasn't a problem in the past, but SOMETHING is different. @#$!

[MistrBill]

Nope, not the steam overlay. Anyone else have any ideas?

[MistrBill]

Anyone?

[Park_Ranger]

Originally posted by blueparrot1966:

Anyone?

No idea really, but do you have anything else running, overwolf, anything lie that.

Are your games being saved in the default (documents) directory.

[JH]

This "locks my whole system up" makes me think it is something other than the game at fault. The game may be just revealing a problem due to how hard it's pushing your computer.

[MistrBill]

Originally posted by Park_Ranger:

Originally posted by blueparrot1966:

Anyone?

No idea really, but do you have anything else running, overwolf, anything lie that.

Are your games being saved in the default (documents) directory.

there's nothing special running in the background. I am using the default save directory. Does that matter?

[Park_Ranger]

Originally posted by blueparrot1966:

Originally posted by Park_Ranger:

No idea really, but do you have anything else running, overwolf, anything lie that.

Are your games being saved in the default (documents) directory.

there's nothing special running in the background. I am using the default save directory. Does that matter?

Well it may have done, just clutching at straws really.

Plenty of room on your HD's ?

No OCing ?

[MistrBill]

Originally posted by JH:

This "locks my whole system up" makes me think it is something other than the game at fault. The game may be just revealing a problem due to how hard it's pushing your computer.

I've wondered that also, but that could be tough to run down. A heating issue maybe, could be I need to clean the inside of the case. I don't think it's a graphics/pushing too hard issue, for two reasons. One, there's no stuttering or evidence of performance drops, or low framerates. It's running fine, and the system's frozen from one second to the next. Two, I've dialed the graphics down to 'medium' and disabled the high res texture DLC, and the problem persists.

Thanks for the feedback.

[MistrBill]

Originally posted by Park_Ranger:

Originally posted by blueparrot1966:

there's nothing special running in the background. I am using the default save directory. Does that matter?

Well it may have done, just clutching at straws really.

Plenty of room on your HD's ?

No OCing ?

Plenty of room, and I've never needed to overclock. I think I'm going to have to make a clean install and a new game, and play it for an hour or three to see if it runs correctly. Bummer

[troy_cummings]

What are your specs? Are you running at least the minimum specs?

If I read this correctly, when you turn off all mods, you DON'T freeze up. Is that correct? If so, it is almost certainly a mod that you're running.

You said you played 2015-'16. Are your mods updated to the current Fallout version? To elaborate, are you running mods meant for FO v1.3 on FO v.1.9? That could definitely cause crashing. I don't know why it would lock your whole system up, perhaps it's crashing DirectX or something. I dunno, I'm not a computer expert.

[SeriousCCIE]

if you have a samsung ssd, try disabling the write cache on the drive that you are saving to.

Sometimes that gets messed up. A firmware update can fix it, or sometimes re-applying the same firmware version.