PC Intermittent Lag issue

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Cylence

New Member
So after browsing around the forums for a bit, and seeing only one other thread that sounded much like my issue (which was entirely the OP talking to himself, it seems), I have decided to bring my plea for assistance before you.

Picked up Skyrim back in December, played it religiously for a while, then took a bit of a break (probably didn't play for a couple of months). I picked it back up in March, and noticed something odd. While my game ran perfectly well on the auto-detected High settings (with the addition of the d3d9.dll) before, now I am consistently getting about 2-3 minutes of really bad lag pretty much every 15-20 minutes of gameplay. If I escape to the save menu, it runs just fine, but only while I'm on that menu. It just won't go away until it's couple minutes have passed, apparently.

I've fiddled with the graphics settings, tried windowed mode, tried turning off some of the suggested Windows stuff, but nothing seems to be working.

I'm using an Asus laptop with the follow specs:

Intel(R) Core Duo 2 CPU P7350@ 2.00 GHz
4GB RAM
Windows Vista 64-bit
Nvidia Geforce GTX 260M Cuda 1GB

I will admit I am slightly terrified to mess with the game files, but so far, most of the fixes I've seen that suggest that don't really seem to be dealing with the same sort of issue.

So yeah.

Please help? -_-
 

Cylence

New Member
Bumping to keep my hopes up. >.> I really love this game, but this on and off lag is making playing more annoying than fun.
 

Cylence

New Member
I don't know if it helps to include this, but the lag persists between saving, exiting the game, and then starting it up again and loading the save. Still never more than a couple minutes at a time, but a couple of minutes every 15 minutes gets a bit old. I'm having to alt-tab out to find something else to do for a few minutes whenever it starts up, because it's simply unplayable when it's lagging like this. :/
 

Skullrattla

Button Pusher
Did you update Skyrim? Are you using the genuine Steam version, and if yes, did you go online ? If yes, then it will have updated Skyrim.

Try deleting or moving your skyrim.ini and skyrimprefs.ini from your user's game folder to your desktop and then run the game.
 

Zoa Two Tails

Cloak and Dagger Artist
You could try playing it on lower graphics maybe your computer can't handle the awesomeness of skyrim
 

Cylence

New Member
Yes, it is the genuine Steam version, and it has updated a couple times since I first installed the game. I tried moving the files like you suggested, and I got about an hour of lag free play, then it started back with it's old tricks again.

And I've already tried putting the graphics settings as low as they can go, to no effect. No matter what the graphics settings are on, it still does the same thing.
 

Zoa Two Tails

Cloak and Dagger Artist
Try playing with your internet cable unplugged it might just be steam hacking you causing you to lag.
 

Stone

Retired Moderator
Have you installed anything else since December? You have quite low RAM, judging that Windows Vista uses around 1-1.5GB RAM you're only just over the minimum system RAM. With all other programs running, like Steam for a prime example that's a large taker for RAM, it's leaving you with hardly anything left. However, this might not be the problem just a note.

Also try using this:
Skyrim Better Performance - UI - Skyrim Mods - Curse
 

Cylence

New Member
Have tried playing offline a couple of times as well, the lag still happens. It seems like lately I can get a good hour or so in before it starts, but once it starts it goes back to happening every 15-20 minutes. :/
 

Skullrattla

Button Pusher
Windows Vista 64-bit
Just noticed that. . . It's probably a problem with Vista!

Skyrim issues do not behave like that in my experience. You'd get constant lag, not like what you describe.
 

Zoa Two Tails

Cloak and Dagger Artist
Vista is a rather glitchy and unreliable system try running on window 7
 

Cylence

New Member
I'm not really sure why the game would run fine back in December with Vista, and then not run fine now with Vista. I know both the game and Vista have had updates since then, but I haven't been able to find anything about anyone else having this problem, and I can't believe if it was a Vista problem it'd be so rare of an issue.

I'd love to upgrade to Windows 7, but the price tag makes that not an option at the moment. I've been railing against Vista since I bought the laptop, but I haven't had any problems with it running any other games.
 

Slips287

New Member
I know this post is old, but I am having the same problem described the OP above. To reiterate, short-term impossible to stop lag every 15-20 minutes of lag-free gameplay.
Intel Core i7-4500 1.8 GHz
8 GB RAM
Windows 8 64-bit
NVIDIA GeForce GT 735M

I guess I'm mostly here to see if the OP has solved their issue in the past 4 years, and if so, what steps they took.
 

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