I spent the better part of the day (yesterday) trying to figure out why my weapon racks did not work in my house in Whiterun. I talked with a couple of friends of mine who also play Skyrim like I do on the Xbox. One of my friends has the house in Whiterun and every rack works. Another was having the same issue as I was, where the book shelves worked but the weapon racks did not. My friend that was experiencing the same issues that I was having loaded another character of his and bought the house. To both of our surprise, everything worked. With that in mind I started a new character and quickly accumulated enough money to purchase the house again in Whiterun.

This time, though, I saved my game right before I entered Dragonsreach before purchasing the house. I tried numerous different ways of purchasing the house, along with its upgrades and saw some success. Sometimes the weapon racks would work but the upstairs plaques would not. Other times it was the opposite. After numerous trials (and errors) I finally got everything in the house to work properly. My weapon racks, book shelves, and plaques all work, I've never been so happy about such a minor detail. Now, while I cannot say for certain exactly how to go about doing this, it is obvious that it is in some way tied to the series of purchases you make for your home.

I believe, although I'm not for sure that if you buy all of the upgrades prior to going into the house then everything should work. This is precisely what I did. If however you buy one upgrade, say the one with the weapons rack, that one will work but your next purchase will not. In the end, if you are like me and are obsessive over these minute details, I can suggest that you save the game before you make any purchases and keep trying until you get the desired results. It worked for me. With that out of the way, along with the fact that I found out how to move dragon skeletons, I'm finally ready to start "playing" the game.

Obvious question: when you activated the rack, did you have a weapon active in your inventory?

The weapon has to be "equipped" but it does not (contrary to popular belief) have to be out literally in your hand. You just have to have it equipped (on your side, back, etc.).

The problem, when the weapon racks do not work is the game does not even give you the option to "activate weapon rack" when you move the cursor over it. Its as if you're just looking at some other, random object in the game.

Nice. You may have just saved me some time and frustration. I was just saving up the money to do this on a new character.

Cool, thanks for the info. I already moved to Markarth though, but I can report that all 6 weapon racks work, and all of the display cases as well.

Did you buy all the house upgrades at the same time and prior to going into the house for the first time. I'm quite certain that you must do this in order for them to work.

The racks in my Whiterun house work and so do the armour stands in my windhelm house. Although the display cases/weapon racks do not work in Windhelm.

Pain in the butt.

I was wondering about this because I now thought to try them out and noticed that none of the displays in my Whiterun house work for me, except for the bookshelves. And I have not purchased any other houses yet so I don't know about those.

I honestly don't remember what I did for Whiterun, but I know the weapon rack by the front door didn't work, and I didn't even know about the other one. =/

As for the Markarth house (it's acquisition is bugged in itself) I did buy all of the upgrades at the same time before even entering the building.

Omg I did for whiterun and did not for my other houses!!! Bet thats the problem! Omg I so hope I have an auto save still from before I bought the upgrades -.-

Yeah, I did some testing last night and again, I'm almost certain that if you buy all the upgrades BEFORE you ever set foot in the new house, they will work. If not, any upgrades you buy after you've moved in don't.

Either way, you can get it to work but you have to save before you buy one. It will be a process of trial-and-error but its better than nothing. Again, before on my old character I had the bookshelf downstairs and the weapons plaque in the loft working but nothing else worked. After buying everything on my new character I got everything to work. It is definitely something with the order or sequence of events that happens when you purchase the home.

I fixed breezehome in the following way....

This issue of the weapon racks and plaques not activating has been really bugging me. I tried buying one set of house furnishing at a time for my whiterun house, then waiting 24 hours before buying the next.

Now ALL my plaques and rack in breezehome work fine. Could someone else try this to see if it is a solution/fix at least until it it (hopefully) patched?

I bought all upgrades at once. The weapon racks are still broken. 360 here.

^Same here - last night (after having Breezehome bug) I purchased the house in Windhelm and purchased all the upgrades including the cleanup service - only then did I go in the house. The results were as follows:

Bookcases: Work fine, can activate both shelves upstairs and downstairs.
Dagger Cases in the bedroom near the door: Give me the click to activate when opened, was able to place a dagger in both. EDIT: But can't remve the dagger - and trying to "swap" out with another places them on top of each other - doh!
Armory Dummies: All 3 could be activated and dressed.
Wall Mounted Sword & Shield rack combo: None work anywhere in the house - no message to activate
Large rack in Armory: Also bugged - cant activate.
Medium display and large display cases: No click to activate - which if by design, is poor because just dropping items seems to be hit or miss getting them into the case.... and with gems, when I did drop some in and came back to the house later found them not in the case anymore but sitting atop it.
Other Shelving: Again I figure by design, but placing anything on them is a crapshoot with the physics a bit on the touchy side - dragging anything on the shelf then releasing it seems to have a lot of stored velocity so the item goes crashing across the shelf. Items seem to either need more weight or remove the force applied when releasing the item. Even better would be to have those shelves work like bookcases with certain open spaces to place items in.

Same here. And I have played quite a bit after the fact, so I am not starting over. Hopefully this will be fixed in a patch, but I understand that it is a lower priority than some of the other issues. Maybe I'll just move to another town with a house that works - are all the houses experiencing these issues or just Whiterun?

Cleanup service?!

I bought all my house upgrades separately a while back, and my weapons racks are borked, they simply do not activate - whether I have a weapon selected or not.

There's no way I'm reverting to an earlier save on the premise that it might fix them. I've done too much since then.

This bug should be fixed.

All this time I thought my weapons rack in my house in Whiterun was just "decoration". So it actually does work, thank you for pointing out the glitch. I hope this gets fixed soon, I am too far into my game since I purchased my home to want to go back and try your suggestion.

Yea - sorry don't want to spoil it for you, but it is needed before you move in - trust me :whistling:

how do you move the skeles?

I purchased all of the upgrades prior to going into the house, and all of the weapon racks work, except for when i tried putting an Orcish Battle-axe and a blades sword on them. It seems to be all weapons of a larger size that dont work

I reloaded an auto save and repurchased the same upgrade four times, before it finally started to work.

I'm sorry you didn't catch it in time. For a housing person like myself, it was irritating. I hope they patch it.

I too hope a patch fixes this I bought the house in the Markarth and the wall mounts work and the armor display works. None of my display cases work this is annoying. I hope they patch it soon.

So buying all the options when initially buying a house does seem to make all the interactive options work. How do you stop the hurricane that comes through your house randomly and disappears all the shelfing and the alchemy lab and dumps all the [censored] in your house on the ground?

Buying everything at once did NOT work for me. That landed me the glitch. Only going back and buying upgrades one at a time worked.