Skyrim suddenly causes my PC to hard crash

[Grumpy Old Nord]

I've been playing Skyrim since release, and over the past few years I've managed some minor upgrades. Obviously Skyrim is not a perfect game when it comes to coding and hardware and such, but I'm now experiencing a problem I've never seen before, and despite days of troubleshooting it myself, I can't seem to find a way around. I'll start the game, get the main menu, load a save or select new game, and almost every time my computer hard crashes - I don't mean CTD, I mean black screen and computer is non-responsive. At first I thought maybe my save was just corrupt from modding, but it happens even with a completely vanilla version of the game (I use Mod Organizer, so when I say vanilla, I mean vanilla). I've tried everything I can think of, yet Skyrim just does not want to run on my computer anymore. Below are my system specs.

Processor: Intel Core2 Duo CPU E6850 @ 3.00GHz
RAM: 8.0 GB
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GT 545
Dedicated Video Memory: 1.5 GB
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 (build 14393), 64-bit

I have no problem running Fallout 4, Elder Scrolls Online, or any other game I typically play, but Skyrim just wants to shut my computer off. I would greatly appreciate any help from someone who's familiar with this problem.

[cfs111]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=500687692

[Randox]

In addition to what cfs posted, have you tried using system restore to go back to a point before Skyrim was crashing the game? That should be able to resolve most software based issues (that aren't part of your game or mod setup). Does it happen with any other games, particularly other DirectX 9 based games?

My first guess is a driver issue (possibly a bad installation. It happens sometimes). I'd probably try system restore first for this kind of thing, but you may want to consider upgrading your graphics drivers as well. Those two together cover a lot of really hard to diagnose issues.

[Bomb Bloke]

Given this other recent thread, and similar complaints on the NVIDIA boards[forums.geforce.com], I'm pretty certain you're going to want to roll back your graphics driver.

[cfs111]

Originally posted by Bomb Bloke:

Given this other recent thread, and similar complaints on the NVIDIA boards[forums.geforce.com], I'm pretty certain you're going to want to roll back your graphics driver.

Nice find!

[Docsprock]

New NVidia drivers are causing crashes in a lot of different games. The forums are full of these problems.

[Grumpy Old Nord]

Good catch! Literally the only change I've made to my system recently was updating my graphics driver. I'll be sure to try that. Thank you very much!