UESP Forums

I've just recently encountered a possibly game-breaking bug that may or may not be worse than it is, or appears to be at the moment. This is not an uncommon issue and I did find several topics around the net in regard to it, but no solutions, at least as far as I can tell.

So, what's the matter? After I return from completing a quest, I talk to the quest giver and an inventory screen appears in which I can receive the reward for the related quest (the thieves guild sometimes gives me much less gold than what they promised despite the success), but when I go to exit via the red button on the screen or with the escape key, the game freezes.

This does not seem to be the case with all quests, and constantly reloading my game does not help with the ones in which this issue is encountered while they're still in progress. This has also occurred with the Fighter's Guild (possibly in another town.)

I had just recently defragmentated my hard drive, and only after had the freezing occurred. My game hasn't had a freeze in a long while, and nothing like this with the quests and all.

First, it happened in a dungeon at random (the last dungeon I visited), and then with the whole issue of not being able to exit the inventory screen upon receiving the reward (even if I don't take it.) The Daggerfall I am using is from a link in the Files section here on the UESPWiki, from the figure 'AncestorGhost' or someone of a similar alias.

I will try a few things different here and there, like running daggerfall in an older windows mode, defragmenting my hardrive once again, and perhaps backing up my saves and re-installing it... I think there has been an update since, but I do not think that this issue has been patched in it or whatever.

On top of this, I understand that my personal experience with this bug written here is scant on detail - I will review the problem when I am done editing the videos and I can perhaps show someone them when they are uploaded on Youtube so that they can have a look for themselves.

In the end, while it is annoying to spend time doing a quest for nothing, and recording it for public eye, I can only hope that it only affects Guild quests and the like and not Main Quests, though I have heard this has occurred for them as well...

One thing I know I will look out for when editing is whether or not this bug affects only a specific range of quests (e.g. CompUSA Edition Quests.)
I will also empty my wagon a little more.

I was unable to, or failed to inspect Dosbox itself when the problem occurred; when I alt-tabbed out of the frozen screen, turning Daggerfall into a box on my desktop. Perhaps, if there may be such of the following, the information displayed thence can be of use?

This bug is known, but it's very hard to find its cause for fix it. I think, this bug come from one optional content in DaggerfallSetup, but which one ?

We are triyng fix it on "DaggerfallSetup Support Forum" (It's not possible to post external link here, but you can find this forum on the DaggerfallSetup web page).

Any help and report is Welcome

I had this problem as well but it only occurred after I updated my computer to windows 7. I thought maybe it was caused by an newer version of daggerfallsetup so i copied the version from my XP computer and then retried and got the same issue. Wonder why I only have this problem with windows 7

Well i thought about the fact that issue only occurred on a computer running windows 7, not XP and on a whim I decided to run the game in compatibility mode for Windows XP service pack 3. After I did this, the game ran but it had reset all the settings and saves. This seemed like it was going in the right direction since this bug seems to have the property that it corrupts all save files with that quest, or in the dungeon the bug occured at (I first encountered this problem while in The Den of Mordyster, and the game would crash before i could exit the dungeon or it would when i fast traveled back to daggerfall). So i started a new game and decided to test some quests that were known to have this problem. I joined the mages guild and attempted the guard quest and found that the bug did not occur in compatibility mode, but it did with just windows 7. Then i tried the quest where you go to kill Baltham Greyman and found that compatibility mode seems to have fixed this one as well. I have yet to try any other bugged quests, or to go do Den of Mordyster again but it seems that this may be a fix for the problem

just did the same dungeon that crashed my first game and it went fine. Im not absolutely positive but it looks like the bug only happens with Windows 7. Not sure what caused it but this did seem to fix it. Someone really should fix the problem though

My game just froze up as well. Same criteria. Happened when the Fighters Guild rewarded me gold and a note to a dungeon. Currently vampire, Windows 7, 20 January 2013 2.6 version by Ancestral Ghost.

Here is my stdout file for a normal game, and a game that froze up:

Working game
-----
DOSBox version 0.74
Copyright 2002-2010 DOSBox Team, published under GNU GPL.
---
CONFIG:Loading primary settings from config file dosbox.conf
Memory sizes above 31 MB are NOT recommended.
Stick with the default values unless you are absolutely certain.
MIDI:Opened device:win32

Frozen game
-----
DOSBox version 0.74
Copyright 2002-2010 DOSBox Team, published under GNU GPL.
---
CONFIG:Loading primary settings from config file dosbox.conf
Memory sizes above 31 MB are NOT recommended.
Stick with the default values unless you are absolutely certain.
MIDI:Opened device:win32
Illegal read from 90a0d30, CS:IP 838: 1cfc84
Illegal read from 90a0d31, CS:IP 838: 1cfc84
Illegal read from 90a0d32, CS:IP 838: 1cfc84
Illegal read from 90a0d33, CS:IP 838: 1cfc84
Illegal read from 90a0d30, CS:IP 838: 1cfc84
[deleted due to space constraints but more of the same]
Illegal write to 200032f, CS:IP 838: 1cd34a
Illegal write to 2000330, CS:IP 838: 1cd34a
Illegal write to 2000331, CS:IP 838: 1cd34a
Illegal write to 2000332, CS:IP 838: 1cd34a
Illegal write to 2000333, CS:IP 838: 1cd34a
Failed to create hardware surface.
Restarting video subsystem with windib enabled.

Hello everyone. It's been a while.
I have made a post on the french forums AncestralGhost is associated with in regard to this issue. Myself and another had this issue shortly after joining the Thieves Guild.

I thought it was the end of my playthrough until someone suggested that I save all my character's information and restart the game. I used three different save game editors and was able to save most of the information, and everything significant (by copying them, then putting them back after re-install.)

Now I have stumbled upon another freeze problem. Someone else had this issue earlier this year (before version 2.6 was released.) I am using 2.6 now, but I was using 2.5a or b or whatever during the freeze glitch I started the topic in regards to. You can search up 'Dust of Restful Death game freeze' in google search, and find a link on the second page in which this person reported the problem.
Basically after trying to exit the message screen after speaking to Medora when returning the dust... game freeze and/or crashes. It crashed the first time.

Anyway... I will try Tru3sanity's idea and see if it works with this freeze. Maybe it would work with the other as well? Who knows, I re-installed my game since and don't have that issue any longer.

Hellu Romeo, have had the same problem here myself for a long time, still unplayable.

Got a thread here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=26747
Some great info in there, and a lot of stress test details that has seemed to work for some.

I have found I get the issue in both WinVista 32-bit & Win7 64-bit. Though it could be a hard-drive problem. Really not sure tbh.

Hope this helps shine some light at least a little.