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Do you have a 32 or 64-bit system? I had this bug too on my newest computer, which has 64 bit Win 7. Then after a furious googling I found a solution: Download vcredist_x64.exe from Microsoft and put into Skyrim/VCRedist folder. I don't remember if I had to delete one file, too. In any case, the folder should contain just two things, vcredist_x64 and vcredist_x86. After doing this, there haven't been a single crash due to C++ errors.

I can find absolutely nothing on that. There are no suggestions for that as a solution anywhere I've looked. And I've been looking for years.
I have a Windows 7 64-bit PC, yes, but it also never used to have this problem. For several months, I could play Dawnguard just fine. No c++ errors for ignoring Jiub. And then I did a full reinstall of Skyrim to clear out some problematic mods. Same files. Same damn setup. What do I get for that? C++ errors. Constantly.

I've followed that path before and nothing has worked. The only reliable fix, for me, seems to be doing Jiub's quest. So that's the one I'm sticking with. Using the console to kill the quest is simple enough anyway. It really doesn't matter anymore.

Yeah, that fix wasn't easy to find, I only stumbled upon it by accident in some forum, and now can't find the exact post again (stupid me, should have bookmarked that one). I only know that it helped me, and that I didn't have this problem with my previous PC which used a 32 bit Windows. The main thing, IIRC, is that Skyrim uses the 2010 version of C++ runtime library, and apparently can't handle newer versions. When I installed the 64 bit version of the 2010 library into the above-mentioned folder, the crash problem ceased. I played through the whole Dawnguard questline just a few weeks ago and the C++ error didn't return. It might be somehow system-specific if the C++ fix works or not, however. How or why, that I'm not equipped to say, seeing my computer knowledge is very basic.

As Marilyn (II), Bosmeri archer, and Serana, Nord adventurer, currently travelling with Arlus, Breton gravedigger, left Riften for Fort Dawnguard they were waylaid by a group of vampires ("Hey you, traveller! Over here!" - Do they still think that works?); Mari remembered a time when such nightly encounters were her blackest nightmare, but the attackers were vanquished easily. A little further down the road they came across Dark Sister Babette, standing over the corpse of her latest snack. Mari wondered whether Babette had been hunting with the other vampires; the strange coincidence prompted her to consider how she herself had been one of these nightmarish hunters for a while and reflect on the, shall we say, flexible standards by which she's wont to judge things.

It was past midnight when the trio approached the fort. There were no sentries outside, and they left the camping refugees alone - these shelter-seeking civilians had no part in the feud (and were too poor to rob). Inside everybody had retired to their beds or cots. Celann and Agmaer were stabbed in their sleep; Durak awoke and made a bit of a ruckus before his death which alarmed Isran (Sorine, Gunmar and Florentius hadn't been recruited yet, it seems). The leader of the Dawnguard put up a bit more of a fight (mostly because it took a bit of console-trickery to make him killable at all), but in the end he fell to Bloodscythe and Soulrender.

As Marilyn stood there over Isran's corpse in the great central hall of the old fortress which had stood empty for so long, then been filled with life again for a little while only to become a giant tomb, there was a weird, fleeting moment when she questioned why it seemed to be her fate to bring death everywhere she goes, and whether she hadn't done more than her share of killing already in her young life. Scandalous thoughts for a daughter of Sithis and Listener to the Night Mother, but if there's one thing I've learned in this playthrough it's to take nothing for granted.

Today I decided to play Eryniel instead of my latest character Rufus.

Eryniel started from Icewater Jetty, having just defeated lord Harkon and convinced Serana to cure her vampirism. But alas, for her there was to be no rest. She had the Elder Scroll needed to learn Dragonrend, so she hurried to the Throat of the World, only stopping for a night at Breezehome. She read the Scroll and defeated Alduin for the first time. She anticipated a hard battle, but found the World-Eater a quite easy opponent.

Then Eryniel organized the peace council, and helped to broker a deal where Ulfric would get Markarth and the Empire got the Rift. In this she was helped by Ulfric's pride, since she accepted his demand to remove Elenwen from the council room. By that gesture the Empire might have saved a whole Hold. After that it was time to hurry to Whiterun, where Eryniel trapped Odahviing and flew on his back to Skuldafn.

The temple was a long ordeal and would have been very hard, had Eryniel not been so good at sneaking. As it was, she sniped rather easily the draugr overlords that crowded the place. At last, she emerged from the temple, fought the dragon priest and gained entry into Sovngarde. Eryniel found the place very impressive and dream-like. But there was danger, too. Eryniel found a few souls and spoke with them, only to see Alduin swooping down and catching those poor souls. After defeating Tsun she recruited the three Nord heroes, and together they defeated Alduin. After Tsun booted her back to Tamriel, she had a chat with Paarthurnax.

Prompted by a sudden urge, she then climbed to the very highest peak of the mountain and gazed long to every direction, at the wild, rugged land that sprawled in the sunlight beneath her. At that moment she realized she had fallen in love with Skyrim. Even for a child of Cyrodiil's groves and plains, it now felt like a true home. Musing over this, Eryniel descended the mountain to Ivarstead, where she played her lute in exchange for a bed in Vilemyr Inn. And there, in the peace of her room she suddenly got an idea for a song: Pulling out her lute once again, she played The Tale of the Tongues for the very first time.

But she still can't rest on her laurels. Now she has to fight for her country and Emperor the second time, so that peace will be restored to her new home. And there's still the matter of this mysterious Miraak who sent his goons after her.

----

I have to say I'm now a bit disappointed at the main quest. The first time around I completed it Alduin did seem a bit weak. But now that I use Dragons Reborn mod, he was a pitiful opponent as even a normal blood dragon is a tougher opponent with that mod. Heck, Sahlokniir nearly killed my character, but Alduin went down with maybe twenty arrows, no healing potions needed. I think I'll find and install some mod or other that makes Alduin really, really tough.

Finished the DB quest line for the first time. Easily the most interesting quest line in the vanilla game.

Had a self-soiling moment when I went strolling through the restored Dawnstar Sanctuary. Wasn't expecting the creepy Nightmother to begin speaking to me. Just about dropped the controller. And the torture chamber is just plain disturbing. Good way to level-grind some magic skills though.

And that stained glass window is like a combination of Predator and BDSM.

I decided to load up my old PS3 Bosmer earlier and vowed to finish leveling her damn pickpocket skill. For who knows how many hours, I've struggled with it. Which is funny because it's usually not a problem on PC. All the usual [&@%!] involving NPCs on the complete opposite side of the dungeon going hostile on me every time I failed a pickpocket, making me unable to attempt pickpocketing them because they're all trying to kill me. It's like the bandits have some odd telepathic link or something; one went hostile, the rest followed even if they were nowhere near. I could understand that happening if they shouted "Intruder!" or something (even then only those within a reasonable distance would be able to hear it), but they don't. It's really annoying. So many lost opportunities.

Anyway, several hours after finishing the Dawnguard questline, that temporary character hadn't encountered C++ errors, so I deleted her. She had spent a while on Solstheim, though. Mostly involved a lot of fiddling with textures.

I've now switched back to Kas'Lei, who is going to continue with the Thieves' Guild.

Exactly. The others had much potential, but squandered it at least partly by either bad writing (Thieves Guild), all-around obscurity and abruptness (College of Winterhold; I still don't know why exactly the Eye of Magnus was such a big deal or why exactly the Psijics chose the player character as their instrument) or by being too short (Companions). The Dark Brotherhood at least is consistent from start to finish and has a good plot structure and just enough exposition not to be too obscure or too boringly wordy on the other hand.

Also, Bethesda made a good choice by not avoiding disturbing the player now and then with things like the torture chamber and the Night Mother. Oblivion's DB was dark, too, but as a whole it was more airbrushed and easier for the player's sensibilities (assuming the player has those, of course). Even things like Lucien's corpse had more shock value than lasting horror effect. In a word, the difference is like between the movies Scream and The Shining. I only wish Bethesda had put as much thought into the other guilds. Hmm, maybe I should play an evil character again some day...

Today, Eryniel finished the civil war. Yes, the whole war. It was quite a blitzkrieg. Also, Eryniel must have set some kind of promotion record with her rise from an auxiliary to legate in some two weeks. When she went to join, she expected to be accepted instantly, but was flabbergasted when Legate Rikke demanded her to go massacre some bandits. I imagined the conversation continuing in the following way after the "canon" part:

Eryniel: "Wait a minute. I'm the Dragonborn, as you surely saw in High Hrothgar. On top of that, I've killed hundreds of bandits and cleared half a dozen forts already, not to mention all those dozens of dragons and Alduin himself I've killed. And you still won't accept me into the Legion until I go and do this mundane task?"
Rikke: "I wasn't there when you did these things. For all I know, you might be good at killing dragons but suck at being a soldier."
E: "Are you serious, madam? You really think a bunch of Stormcloaks is a tougher opponent than the World-Eater?"
R: "Rules are rules. I can't give anyone preferential treatment. So are you going to clear that fort or not?"
E: "Hmph. Fine."

One of the highlights of the campaign was the siege of Whiterun. So far Eryniel had fought from a sense of duty, but in that battle the war became personal. Namely, when she was rushing towards the gate to join the fight, a catapult missile struck Breezehome right before her eyes. Luckily the house withstood the hit, but it angered Eryniel so much that she actually enjoyed shooting down the rebels by the score in the ensuing battle. Taught them to try to destroy her beautiful home.

Some of the battles were surprisingly hard, especially Windhelm. Eryniel couldn't really use her preferred guerrilla-style tactics and was very hard put to survive in an open fight. In Windhelm she couldn't even use her bow in the cramped alleys, and was forced to spend most of her fortify one-handed potions and much of her healing potion stock. So it felt very rewarding for her, when the Imperial troops finally broke into the palace. In the final showdown she killed Galmar Stone-Fist and executed Ulfric by a Fire Breath shout. She figured that was a fitting end for the war, seeing how it started by Ulfric killing Torygg with the aid of a shout. Then, she listened to Tullius' speech with her chest swelling from pride. Now she was a double war veteran, and this time in the ranks of the Legion proper.

Now that is taken care of, Eryniel thinks she'll go and see what's up with this Miraak business.

Been taking a break from Skyrim.

Do'razha, khajit Nightingale and his faitful Meeko:
- Helped hunter name Valdr to take revenge on some spriggans.
- Then he and Meeko hunted some things, like giant ghost-mudcrab (Kyne's Sacred Trials).

I had trouble getting in to the "skins" of my characters and back to playing, so I created new one (and deleted some old ones): Raynard is a redguard with very bretonish name. I'm planning to play him as sorceror. So far he's escaped Helgen, spent to some time in Riverwood, made it to the Whiterun while picking up flowers (and wolf-pelts). Crafted, enchanted, did alchemy, met Jarl and his court wizard. Delivered some frost salts. Just reached level 3.

Yeah, I know what you mean. It's strange: A character can feel the best one ever when actively playing it, but after a pause of even a few weeks you've maybe forgotten what the character's "guiding principle" was and it feels strangely uninteresting or alien to play. Some kind of character journal could help with this, if one is really serious about roleplaying. For me writing in this thread now and then is enough. When getting back to an old character, I'll just check what he/she has done and how, and so get back in the mood.

On topic: Today Eryniel tied a few loose threads by doing some much delayed quests. For instance, she delivered the lexicon to Septimus. Even though she didn't want have anything to do with Cthulhu... er, I mean Hermaeus Mora, he was insistent she take the Oghma Infinium. Well, she did, but didn't read it, so Hermaeus got absolutely no claim on her. Who's laughing now?

Returning to Windhelm to obtain passage to Solstheim, Eryniel took as a follower Froa, the ex-Stormcloak she had befriended during the quest to help the Talos worshippers. Froa was living in Windhelm, so during the battle to conquer the city Eryniel was worried Froa would get killed or that they would even have to fight with each other. She was relieved, though, when she searched the guard rooms of the great bridge leading to the city after the battle. Froa was in one of those rooms, safe and sound. Apparently she had thought better about fighting the Legion.

Anyway, Eryniel now found Froa in the same room she had left her in and together they went to the harbour. There Eryniel persuaded the captain of the Northern Maiden to return to Solstheim. After reaching Raven Rock, Eryniel asked around about Miraak. It was very intriguing everyone seemed to recognize the name, but couldn't tell anything useful. Were they trying to conceal something, or were there something wrong with them? Either way, there's something very fishy going on and Eryniel intends to find out what, and, of course, take revenge in the process.

Kas'Lei finished the main portion of the Thieves' Guild crap a while ago and she has since been working on doing all those damn jobs required to restore the Guild. It's starting to [&@%!] me off. Why is it so damn hard to get a job in Markarth? Seriously. It's annoying. Kas'lei has done 13 jobs in Riften, 12 jobs in Windhelm, 10 jobs in Whiterun, and another 9 in Solitude... She only has 2 in Markarth.

I could always reload to get them, but I don't want to. There's no reloading for Kas'lei unless something bugs out.
There wasn't any fast travel, either, but I've temporarily abandoned that. It would take too long to do this by walking everywhere. I've already spent two or three hours doing these damn jobs and that feels too long.

[&@%!] Markarth. Ugh.

You can always quit the job if the destination doesn't suit you, then ask for another one in the hopes it will be in Markarth.

Kas'Lei doesn't quit jobs, either. She takes what she gets.

It's always nice when the rules you have for a character bite you in the ass. Bah. I'm just going to hope that I have better luck some other time.
Although I seriously doubt that. There always seems to be a shortage of Markarth jobs. Maybe it's the Forsworn.

Raynard, a redguard sorcerer with a breton name,
- Headed out to Bleak Falls Barrow, but not before he spent almost all his septims to buy a hunting bow with soul trap-enchantment from the khajit traiders. (He doesn't have the spell yet, but needs soulgems for enchanting.)
- He encoutered scavanger looting a battle field. Had to stop by in Riverwood to sell the loot from them.
- Roasted Arvel with his flames-spell ("let me burn off those spider webs...whoopsie").
- Watched draugr ran into wrong direction and straigh into the swinging pike-wall-trap. Always fun to see them die in their own traps. Good triumphs because evil is stupid.

Well, that's not the end of it. If you want to add every available bauble and trinket to the Thieves Guild, it requires doing 125 random jobs.

^I have to say I dislike the Thieves Guild for this radiant quest thing almost as much as for its writing. I still remember when I completed the questline, they wouldn't even make my character the guildmaster, because he hadn't completed a slew of mundane odd jobs. Why didn't anyone tell me of this beforehand? Plus, it's extremely jarring. My character had just defeated the bad guy whose fault the Guild's misfortune had been, and they still required him to do things that were more fitting for wet-behind-the-ears footpads. Just ridiculous.

And all this could have been avoided with a bit thought put into the pacing. In Dark Brotherhood Astrid orders you to do some random contracts in between the main missions, and it paces the questline very nicely so that you don't rush through it so easily. Why couldn't something like this have been implemented into the Thieves Guild? Like between every main mission requiring the player to complete a certain number of radiant jobs? That would have ensured the player would have done most if not all the "special jobs" before finishing the questline. Also, the radiant jobs could have been arranged to tiers, so that the jobs would have been progressively more high-risk, high-reward. This pacing thing is one of the reasons I love Oblivion's Thieves Guild and that game's guilds in general a whole lot more than those of Skyrim.

Oblivion's form of pacing is just "fence x amount of gold from stolen items." It's so easy to do that that Oblivion's Thieves Guild questline becomes like Skyrim: no break between the quests.

My main problem with the Skyrim Thieves Guild jobs is that they're so damn tedious. It's just "go here, do that, return" over and over and over again. For that reason, I tend to ignore them. Unless I have a character that needs to become Guild Master (usually Vulom -who is in this same position, actually- but this time it's Kas'Lei). I really wish they would have given that a different system. You can't be Guild Master until you've restored the Thieves Guild and you can't restore the Thieves Guild until you've done what feels like hundreds of little fetch missions or whatever in each city. It would have been much easier if they had implemented a system where you could ask for jobs in the city of your choice. There's a mod for that somewhere, but whether or not it works I don't know.

I've got everything done except for that gods damned rat hole of a city called Markarth. I don't know what's going on with that one.
It might be bad luck, but I have a hard time believing that because nearly every character I've had go through the Thieves Guild has had an odd shortage of jobs from Markarth. I could probably count on one hand how many characters have finished the Markarth special job earlier than others. Which is saying something because, in over 3000 hours, I've had more characters than I can even remember.


Blah. That's enough complaining. I'm going to go and play Skyrim now so I can slowly become more frustrated at the lack of Markarth jobs.

Edit:
Kas'Lei is now up to 19 Riften jobs, 17 Solitude jobs, 14 Windhelm jobs, 13 Whiterun jobs, and... 3 Markarth jobs.

Edit #2:
Urgh. Finally. Kas'Lei completed all jobs necessary to become the Guild Master. After doing a few more things around the Guild, she has wandered back to Lagview Manor so she could stash all of her stuff (all 2000 weight or so of it. Thank you, Lustmord Garter... Though I had to empty it anyway because there was so much stuff in it the inventory was lagging). Now she is in place to begin doing the Civil War stuff.
Final job count? 21 for Riften, 21 for Solitude, 19 for Windhelm, 18 for Whiterun, and the bare minimum of 5 for Markarth. Total time? 5-6 hours.

Now I'm taking a break because that was bloody tedious. Spore is looking pretty damn good at the moment. I have a couple of worlds and an entire galaxy to explore.

Surely I can't have heard of a mod that Mauin hasn't already heard of (and CTD). That can't be right.

Ahem. I already know of it, but I haven't tried it. I don't really bother with the Thieves Guild stuff enough, anyway. I tend to only have mods that I know I'm going to use a lot... Which reminds me that I really need to clean out my load order. Eh. That's going to have to wait until all current playthroughs are done. Particularly Kas'Lei. She's using the Black Horse Courier Reborn mod and I kinda want to get rid of it (I can't play my other characters until I do). The special editions are fine, but the randomly generated ones have a habit of either repeating or not making much sense (or just having a lot of [...] in certain spots). That and I find 500 gold for a month's subscription to be a little ridiculous. I don't think the average person on Tamriel would pay for that.

At the moment, I have another new keyboard to get used to. Logitech G105. It was on sale, which made it the cheapest option. No idea how it'll work for playing Skyrim. Still don't really feel like playing Skyrim... Burnt out on Thieves Guild jobs.

Speaking of Thieves Guild quest mods, I've found All Thieves Guild Jobs Concurrently quite helpful; being able to get three jobs from Delvin and four from Vex at the same time greatly reduces the shuttling between Riften and the rest of the world.

OT: Marilyn (II), Bosmeri archer, and Serana, Nord adventurer, visited Darkwater Crossing on their way from Riften to Whiterun, where Mari had a Brotherhood contract to carry out, and it occurred to Mari to take her girlfriend to see the Eldergleam while they were in the neighbourhood. In the sanctuary they met a young worshipper of Dibella and would-be bard by name of Amalee (3DNPC) whom they took under their wings and decided to assist in her personal quest for beauty. It led them first to the temple of Dibella in Markarth (where they were attacked by a dragon in front of the city gates), then northwards to the Bard's College in Solitude where Amalee fell under the sway of a charismatic bard, oblivious to the fact that he was (as Marilyn and Serana clearly perceived) a vampire. I have a feeling this will present quite a moral conundrum to our two ex-vampires...

This nicely illustrates what I love most about Interesting NPCs' quests: they're hardly ever just about "go places, kill things, fetch stuff". You do go places, you often have to kill things and sometimes fetch stuff, but this is never what the quest is about, it's always about the characters, and everything else is just to tell you things about them, and it's infinitely more interesting than oh so many miscellaneous vanilla quests. It's not so hard, Bethesda; all it takes is good writing. If one modder could do it, you can too.

Raynard, redguard sorceror with breton name:
- Cleared the Bleak Falls Barrow and found the dragonstone. Returned to Riverwood.

As a result of watching Vikings Tv-series, created
Thoryn Battlemaiden, a nord shieldmaiden (heavy (round) shield, 1-H axe and light armour)
- she escaped Helgen and made it to the Riverwood. Then she went directly to Bleak Falls Barrow, back to Riverwood and then to Whiterun.
- She killed her first dragon and reported back to Jarl. Got Thaned.
For some reason she seems to be getting levels faster than Raynard.

Kas'Lei has powered through the Civil War and a chunk of the main quest.

Today, though, she has started Dawnguard. I spent forever tweaking her appearance to make her paler while keeping the general design there.
She has only just become a Vampire Lord.
For the second time in a row, Harkon's eyes disappeared after he transformed. Not entirely certain what's going on with him, but I'd guess the game doesn't like the changes I made to his appearance (just making him look more like a monster). It doesn't really matter, though, since it has no effect on what happens.

Marilyn (II), Bosmeri archer, and Serana, Nord adventurer, completed Amalee's quest from Interesting NPCs, then got back to the Thieves Guild in Riften to report on two jobs Mari completed on the way and ended up taking Sapphire to Solstheim to meet her dad (I had made her a follower with AFT long ago, so I just had to tell her to follow me and then used AFT's "Dismiss but hang out here" command). Last we saw of her she was helping him out by sharpening blades on the grindstone while he was working the forge. I imagine they had a lot to tell each other.

What did I do last _week_ ?

Thoryn Battlemaiden, nord shieldmaiden
- After going thru whole Dragonreach looking for place to sleep, ended up in Jarl Balgruuf's bed. (Apparently sleeping with the Jarl comes along with Thane-title). She also picked up all loose gold.
- Come morning, she joined companions. (and picked up some misc. quests around Whiterun).
- Her first task was animal extermination...in Graywinter Watch! Trolls, eek, she took Lydia with her. She uses shield so, maybe Thoryn could do a shieldwall with her? Yes? Nope, apparently Nords of Skyrim doesn't know what that is.
- returned for reward, finally had enough money to buy Breezehome and first few upgrades.
- Adopted Lucia and left Lydia to guard her. Spent some time in Bannered Mare and had a brawl with Uthgerd.
- Headed out towards Ivarstead, via Helgen. Killed bandits, witches, Hagraven, found the Nettlebane for Danica.
- Spent a night in Falkreath Stormcloak camp, getting rid of some loot.

Shani, dunmer rogue with Teldryn Sero and her riekling-pet:
- Explored the Northern Coast and found a diary for her friend Brand-Shei (after killing some bandits).
- Then she and her company wandered around Riften's countryside, killing bears (and some other critters they ran into) for Temba. She managed to climb over mountains and found a back door route to Northwind Summit. Killed the dragon and got the word from the Wall.