Skyrim Crash Problems

I played through much of the intro just fine... no lag, no slow frame rate, no bugs, no audio issues... until the character customization. And then my whole system crashed... completely shut down as if I had hit the power button. I tried twice more, the first time getting a little further before the crash, and the second time getting all the way through.

"Whew!" I thought. "There's a bug in the character creation part, but now that I'm past that, I can get into this game."

And I did get to for a while... all the way to the part where you actually get to start interacting with the world and picking up equipment. I equipped a sword, took a swing, and watched as my screen went black yet again.

I'm not sure what's going on. I thought the issue might have just been in the character creation stage, but my crashes haven't been limited to that.

This is quite a frustrating development. It also took me several days to play Fallout 3 when it first released because of system crashes. Come on, Bethesda... throw me a bone here...

I'm playing (or at least trying to) on an Asus G74SX, for reference.

UPDATE: It looks like the issue was accumulated dust inside the machine. I bought compressed air and intended to open up the whole laptop and clean everything out... but I got nervous taking everything apart, so I went with the vacuum cleaner trick that Vojta used. I am happy to say that I haven't had a crash since.

Fell Off the Face of the Earth? Not Yet...

Where have I been? Obviously, not posting to Outsyder Gaming a lot...

Life has been insane since August, working full time and taking two graduate school courses as well. I've barely managed any posting at all over the last few months, and even those were mostly short and news-based.

So have I been up to any gaming? Well... not much... but here are a few things I've been dabbling in...

The idea of a Birthright style campaign that plays adventures whenever the guys can (sporadically, in other words), and that plays campaign turns in a play-by-post format. The big picture would unfold over time, while we could do mini-adventures whenever we do get a chance to get together. Nothing solid on this one yet, though... I haven't even read through the Birthright rules in 10 years (maybe more than that!).

A really aggressive Bant Pod list with Mirran Crusaders at the three spot and Sword of Feast and Famine to capitalize on that double strike ability.

Making a wish list for the Palladium Christmas Surprise Package. If you're into Palladium games, this is the best time to get their products at a huge discount. Yeah, it's hit or miss sometimes, but it is an amazing offer that I wish I had started taking advantage of sooner. Click here to see what I got in last year's surprise package...

In any case, I have exactly two more papers due for graduate school in the next few weeks (one of which I should be working on right now), and then I'll be back to gaming. However, there might be a longer delay before the blog picks back up. Skyrim releases this week, and I'm sure it will be a huge time sink for me...