Hello, this is going to be a long post, but I am desperate for some help so please, do your good deed for the day.

I am a confessed mod addict and when I first started playing the game, I was clueless on how to do this safely and properly. I was trying to use mods incompatible with other mods, I was playing on 'dirty' saves, I don't have a very powerful computer but I was playing save files with over fifty mods installed (and god only knows how many 'deleted' mods lurking in my game files).

Anyway, I stopped playing Skyrim for a while and wisened up a tad on the computering side of things. I have the upmost confidence that I could now mod games correctly and sensibly. Although. I turned Skyrim on and started a new save. And the game was completely unplayable. Stamina wouldn't regenerate, there were insane amounts of texture poppin, NPC's flying around, weapons doing no damage. You get the point. I don't know if I enjoyed myself a year ago, loving the complete chaos the game was in whilst continuing to break my game with mods or what. I deleted the local content from Steam, deleted all my skyrim folders and did a complete reinstall only to find my game still unplayable! The NPCs had calmed down and weapons went back to normal, but that was about it. I've searched the web for everything. Tried reverting back to complete vanilla and nothing. Tried moving it to SSD drive and nothing. I've clicked 'Verify Game Cache' one too many frigging times. I've archived and unpacked everything ungodly amounts of time yet my game is still throwing one hell of an irritating tantrum. I am at wits end. All I want to do is spend the rest of my holidays immersing myself with a brand new Bosmer archer and some new mods but these infuriating glitches make it impossible.

Please, reader- you're my only hope.

PS I've noticed that two folders seem to be missing from my Skyrim directory- 'DotNetFX' and 'reslists'. I probably deleted these files accidently while trying feebly to uninstall a mod last year and verifying my game via Steam brings back 'Two files missing will be reacquired' or whatever, but they are still not showing up. Are these what could be causing my texture pop in problems? And if so, where can I retrieve these files as I've ran a file retrieving software and they didn't show up in my hardrive.

For the love of god- help.

You know what, I hope someone knows what's going on with your game. Lately I've been surprised to see a number of people clearing mods and reinstalling but then have issues just playing the vanilla game (all old folders and files deleted). How is that even possible?

Check the STEP guide wiki.

If i remember correctly they have a bit in their installation section about how to do a proper clean install of skyrim- as just deleting the files and re-downloading still leaves some changes in place it seems.

Wish i could help more but i have never had to reinstall normally. Only time i reinstalled skyrim was when i got a virus so i had to wipe the hard drive and start over completely.

Also, the STEP guide has a nice section about backing up skyrim so you dont have to re-download. Just in case something like this happens to you again.

Did you delete the Skyrim folder under Documents/My Games?

Thag has the .ini file and the first time I reinstalles I forgot to delete this.

My only advise would be to verify in the DATA folder that the SCRIPT, TEXTURES, and MESH folders are deleted as well as any BSA files that are not vanilla.