(Solved) Screen freezes, but game continues to run

[sayah17]

Hi, I have recently decided to go back to Skyrim after a few years and have encountered a problem never faced before. The thing is, no matter where I am, how long have I been playing or whether I'm playing with or without mods, I keep getting random freezes. However, when the screen freezes, I can still hear the noises and music from the game as if it kept running. What is more, the game doesn't even crash totally, because when I hit Alt+Tab to minimalize the game and get back to it afterwards, it works fine as if nothing happened and I can see that while the screen was frozen, the game actually kept running (for instance if it freezes during a fight, by the time I make it work again I'm usually dead). It's really annoying, since these freezes occur randomly and although sometimes they happen once in, say, five minutes, on other occasions they can occur even every 10 seconds, which really makes the game unplayable.
Has anyone encountered a similar problem? I tried reinstalling the game several times, but nothing worked. I played the game a few months/years ago on the same PC and didn't have that problem.
I am playing the Legendary Edition, and my video card drivers are up to date.
I appreciate all your help, cheers!

[Urgh]

You should mention if you have mods and os and.............stuff.

[cfs111]

Yea, this ^^^^^^

[sayah17]

I recently reinstalled the game and actually all mods I use are SKSE, SkyUI and three other ones, but they're new and the problem occurred even before I installed them, so I guess they are not the reason. So basically all I have is SKSE and SkyUI, which are the most basic mods available and should work fine. Any help, please?

[cfs111]

Start with this guide for verifying your master files. Then use the next guide for enabling the memory tweak in SKSE originally discovered by Sheson (who by the way has dibs on my firstborn, this is a joke for long time Skyrim players).

[Quick link] Validating master files by Ilja
http://steamcommunity.com/app/72850/discussions/0/535150948617437868/

Ilja's SKSE, memory and skse.ini Guide:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/72850/discussions/0/540740500921363665/

[sayah17]

Did everything like you said, nothing worked. The problem is still occuring. And annoys me even more, since I spent over two hours going through these guides and hoping that it will finally work...

[cfs111]

Maybe there is a background program interfering, anti-virus, something checking for updates?

[sayah17]

I turned off the anti-virus and closed all apps that run in the background I could (only Dolby Home Theater, Synaptics touch control, Windows' One Drive, NVidia panel, and Intel HD graphics panel are still running, because none can be turned off) and the problem is still occuring.
I even deleted Skyrim and erased everything connected with the game from the hard drive (a folder in My Documents, leftovers from Skyrim's previous location, etc), and downloaded the game from Steam once again for it to install clean, and run the game with NO mods installed - the problem is still there. So mods can't be the reason.
I'm running on a laptop - Acer V3-722G with Intel i5-4200M, 8GB of RAM, and GeForce GTX760M. Any help? It drives me crazy, because the game actually used to work fine a year or two ago, but now it's unplayable. I even thought that the Legendary Edition may be at fault, because a few years back I played the normal version, with no expansions installed, so I even turned off Dragonborn, Hearfires and Dawnguard from Data Files in the launcher, but it still didn't work. Help?

[cfs111]

Are Steam and the game installed inside program files (x86)? If so that may be contributing to the issue, you may want to move Steam to another location. I have turned One Drive off permanently, I back up stuff myself guess I'm old school, so I can't help there, is there no way to pause it at least?

Steam Help Moving Steam Location
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7418-YUBN-8129

[sayah17]

Right now I have the game and steam installed in the same location but some time ago I didn't, and the problem was still there, so I guess that's not the reason. I tried everything, Managed to pause One Drive's synchronisation, and even made changed some settings in the Nvidia Control Panel for Skyrim to focus on efficiency rather than on quality, and still nothing helped.
Can other, old save files (even though I don't use them) be at fault here? Because I found out that even though I deleted all of them from ...Documents/My Games/Skyrim/Saves (actually I deleted the entire Skyrim folder from there) before my previous reinstall of the game, when I turn the game on now and press Load button in the Main menu, they are miraculously still there, and they even reappeared in the Saves folder I previously deleted. Then, how can I actually erase them once and for all? Maybe doing this and reinstalling the game one more time will help.
If you have any other ideas, please let me know. I appreciate all your help, thanks

[cfs111]

You must have Steam Cloud or another program that backs them up automatically, that is the only thing I can think of. I meant moving Steam and Skyrim out of c:\program files (x86) altogether. My Steam and Skyrim are in c:\games\Steam. All my other Steam games are in e:\games.

[MageThis]

Might try Nvidia's clean uninstall utility (their site) and revert to an older GPU driver/control panel set.
Make Skyrim vanilla again might also help seeing there seems to be files trailing around including saves. http://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:Make_Skyrim_Vanilla_Again

[yellowcat0013]

Sayar: restart the game, but when it opens left click on tech support, not open game. ...follow prompts. *OR right click on your Stream icon and follow "troubleshoot compatility" and follow prompts. Your computer should reslove all the issues.

[yellowcat0013]

sorry for miss spelling... Sayah.

[Uncle64]

I have got some similar freezes, in my game and they have started to come when W10 do some thing in the background. After alt-tab ord ctr,alt-del. The game starts again.
Do your HD starts to work before the freeze?

[★Kelvy★]

Memory catch up, install memory boost from nexus.
www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/38649/