Skyrim special edition for PC freezes at specific points

My rig

i7 2600K, GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, 16 GB RAM, Windows 10.

What I'm facing

Walk towards Solitude (along the road, or from the direction of Morthal), or walk away East or Northeast from Markarth, and the game freezes. Try to quicksave near one of these places and it freezes. Stop near one of these places and try to fast travel and it freezes.

What I've already tried

• Disabled all mods (I use Nexus Mod Manager, and yes, I'm aware that the mods are different for this versus the original game).
• Reset graphics to 'optimum' as recommended by GeForce Experience.
• Tried compatibility mode for Windows 7 and administrator settings on the game executable.
• Verified that Steam itself isn't running in compatibility mode.

Anything else to try?

Solution 1:

Verify Game Files using Steam

Reason:

To make my comment into an answer since it helped, the reason for crashes like this is usually when the game loads something that is broken. Since mods have been deactivated it won't be due to anything in the .esm or .esp files.

The problem is left over files that the mod manager wouldn't have known about, usually files generated by mods after installation (think FNIS or DSR). Not only will these files not be deactivated by the manager (as it doesn't know they exist) but the other files they are connected to in the mod have been disabled. This leads to one or more unstable files that are still being loaded into the game. A related cause is mod files overwriting those belonging to the vanilla game.

Without knowing the mod list there's little point in speculating what could have caused this specifically, but verifying game files through steam will ensure that all of the original files are replaced.