Lately many people have been experiencing crashes while playing Skyrim. The game will start up fine, but after a few minutes the screen will go black and the game will crash. So what’s the reason for this? There are a few possible explanations. one is that your computer isn’t powerful enough to run the game smoothly.I downloaded the game skyrim and after about 5 minutes of playing it crashes I think its to do with steam because when i go into properties>Local files>Verify integrity of game cache it verifies all the files but when I launch skyrim I get an error message stating “steam is initializing somethings” somethings. It will finish initializing but then it says cannot launch game because its missing some file or something like that, (one time it said steam support is unavailable) but after restarting steam everything works again.
if skyrim is crashing for you it means your computer is not strong enough to run it, like if its too old or too new. OR if you dont have Direct X 9 compatible graphics card. Steam wont verify game cache because there are no fixes that need to be done, nothing to fix really just upgrade your system thats all. Direct x 9 graphics cards are very cheap nowadays so i suggest getting one before trying again.
Direct X 9
DirectX 9 is an older DirectX version and it’s compatibility is required for older games to work on newer Operating Systems (OS). So in order for Skyrim to work you will need a DirectX 9 compatible graphics card or the game will crash. You can check your DirectX version by opening Run (Windows key + R) and typing in “dxdiag” without quotes. The DirectX tab will tell you what version you have.
If you’re not sure what graphics card you have, open Control Panel and go to Device Manager. Expand Display Adapters and right-click on the graphics card name. Select Properties then the Details tab. Look for DirectX version under Driver Properties.
Lower Down the Shadow Settings
If you are still facing the Skyrim Keeps Crashing to desktop issue, try to lower the shadow settings. It’s a graphic setting, sometimes the system is not able to handle the high texture and graphics details shadow is one of those graphics settings. Users have confirmed that lowering it down fixes the issue.
- STEP 1. While you are running the game, head to the main menu
- STEP 2. From there go to Options then Advanced Options
- STEP 3. Make sure that you are on the Detail tab, below you will be able to see the Shadow settings
- STEP 4. Make sure to put it Low, once done save the changes, and try running the game to get rid of Skyrim Keeps Crashing no mods.
Different causes of this issue.
If you are using mods for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, make sure you have installed them correctly and all required dependencies are downloaded too. Often it is enough to re-run the mod installer after all files are downloaded. If this does not help, try removing your current list of active mods and install everything fresh again from scratch one at a time until things are fixed.
If you are running Windows 7 or Windows Vista, make sure that Windows Visual C++ Redistributables for Visual Studio 2010 is installed. This can be downloaded from Microsoft’s website . If you are using Windows XP, make sure the file d3dx9_31.dll is present on your system (it should come with DirectX).
As an alternative to reinstalling the game, you could try verifying your game cache files. This is done through Steam by right clicking on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in your Library, selecting Properties and then selecting the Local Files tab. There you will see an option to Verify integrity of game cache. Clicking this will download any missing or corrupted files.
