Hi all, just bought Skyrim the other day. I'm wondering if someone can help me out with lighting and shadow issues I'm having. I've provided all details below, including .ini files and a video, so hopefully a solution can be found!

So there are 3 issues, which all might actually be manifestations of a single issue. All of these issues are present, no matter what detail setting the shadows are on.

1. Light from point light sources:
If there is a point light source (for example a candle or the sun) then as soon as the light source is out of the line of view of the camera all of the light given off by the source disappears.
This has the effect of a room suddenly becoming lit once you enter it and can see a candle. Or the general environment becoming a lot dimmer once you go under an awning.

2. There are no character or NPC shadows whatsoever.

3. Shadows come across the camera.
As far as I can tell these are the real shadows of objects/scenery which are being projected onto the camera in a weird way.
For example, I was in a room with a high light in the ceiling. There was a chain spanning the room which went under the light. If I positioned the camera directly above the character then the chain shadow is shown ON the camera! This means that there are constantly shadows going across the camera when I'm running around.

Video showing issues:
youtube.
com/watch?v=lDc6enFQVLA

Here are my Skyrim.ini, SkyrimPrefs.ini and RendererInfo.txt files:
pastebin.
com/n5a432Yk

Laptop Details:
Windows 8 64-bit
Core2 Duo 2.6GHz
4GB memory
GeForce GT 230M in Hybrid SLI with GeForce 9100M G
DIrectX 11
1080p screen, but I'm running the game at 720p for performance reasons.

It is good enough for medium settings on Just Cause 2 (with working shadows etc) so I'm annoyed Skyrim is causing so many graphical problems! The 230M is on the Unofficial List of Hardware for Skyrim forum post in the "medium/low" section.

Latest version of vanilla Skyrim through Steam, no mods. Graphics mostly set to the Medium default settings but I've fiddled around and nothing changes these problems. I haven't touched the .ini files.

The graphics driver is the newest I can get. It is version 197.16. nVidia dropped Hybrid SLI support (what my laptop has) quite a while ago. Any newer driver than what I have just doesn't work and makes my laptop not see the 230M.

Any contributions would be very helpful