Save and load times upwards of 2 minutes (PC)

Hey folks. I just managed to pick up Skyrim after swearing off games for about two years (school, work, etc.) I built a pretty good PC just so that I could get back into the swing of things on the right foot, but Skyrim is still causing me a heap of trouble.

So the problem is this: when I start a game, save and load times are fine. Quick, 2 seconds. They'll creep up to like 5 seconds or so over the course of playing, but when I manage to get a short ways through the game (like to levels 15-20), they inevitably jump to 2 minutes or more. This is consistent for saving manually, for autosaving, and for fast traveling, entering/exiting buildings, and sleeping/waiting as long as the autosave functions for those things are on.

I can tell you what the problem is (My saves are currently standing at around 65 MB (!), even though at level 20 I've barely done anything). My question is, how can I prevent this from happening? I've seen a lot of people talking about this but no actual solutions so far.

I just had that same problem. I had the Dwemer Armory mod active and had tons of stuff in it. Gear, potions, ingredients (thousands of them), weapons, etc. I deleted the mod and everything went back to normal. In the process of deleting the mod i deleted all my stuff in the Dwemer Armory. I was only lvl 25 and i had a 34MB save file. So i would suggest that you get rid of all your junk you have lying around in your house or where ever you store it. That's about as much info as I have found on the problem but people say that the new patch V1.6 is supposed to take care of the bloated save files. I don't know how, but that's what i've read.

I don't have any junk. What I don't store, I sell. And no mods like that active. The only junk lying around is the stuff I don't pick up in dungeons. Could that be causing the problem?

If it is I'm going to be angry- I shouldn't have to pick up every random weapon dropped by an enemy just to play this game properly. I don't have the carrying capacity for every little draugr's ancient nord whatever. Are there any mods that prevent weapon/shield drops like that?

When was the last time you defragged your hard drive?

FYI I leave clutter lying around all the time and don't have any loading time problems.

Well...never I guess. But this computer is only about a month old. Would that really be an issue?

Not likely, you'd have to be saving and deleting dozens of GBs every day.

I have over 2.4 GB in saved games too so the size of your saved games file is not the issue.

I mean each individual file is about 65 MB. Not that I have 65 MB worth of saved games. Regular max size even for a completed game is only like 11 or 12 MB each, or so I hear.

What mods do you have active?

Anything on this list to be avoided? I just added possessive corpses to see if it would help my new game.

Did you buy Skyrim or pirate it?

Sent from my SGH-T839 using Tapatalk 2

Bought. Wouldn't be complaining otherwise
Purchased through Steam.

Mod conflicts can cause your saved games to fill with bad data that exponentially increases saved game file size and also can corrupt the saved game. I don't see any obvious mod conflicts from what you have listed though. If you cross check the date that your saved game files started to become so huge against the download dates of your mods that might help isolate any mod conflict if you in fact even have one.

I've the same problem. Used to have some mods but now they're all uninstalled and I've even reinstalled skyrim. Nothing works. Loading takes at least 1-2 minutes every time. It happened after I got the latest update and Dawguard. Guess there's no fix for this?

If you have bloated saved game files from mod conflicts then the problem is the size of your saved game files. None of what you did would reduce the load time for your bloated saved game files. You need to play from a reduced sized saved game file. Loading one of your current ones and letting ingame time run for a long time may decrease subsequent saved games. Try running ingame time for a few weeks and see if there is a noticeable reduction in the size of your new saved game file. If there is then keep doing it until you can get a saved game file around 10MB or less.

All my save game files are about 6MB. Guess I can rule that one out.

How old are your hard drives and when was the last time you defragged them?

The one that Skyrim is on is about a year old. defragged a few months back but I highly doubt that not defragging will make such a huge difference overnight. The main change was that I did a patch upgrade to 1.6.89.

What are your computer specs (CPU/GPU/RAM)?

Are you playing on a clean installation or did you install mods first?

Have you tried emailing Bethesda Support?

Specs supported the game perfectly.
No mods prior to this. I chucked mods in together with the patch. I can't isolate the problem.

I guess I'll email Bethesda...... and go through this list of diagnostics again.

Or just stop playing. I guess this is why I didn't finish Oblivion either.