Major issue with Skyrim on Steam - game is unplayable : V

» Wed Jan 20, 2016 3:55 am

Okay, so I just bought Skyrim for PC. I downloaded it from Steam, it’s the Legendary edition and is 100% legit in every way. Unfortunately, it’s broken.

Since I’ve already played a lot of vanilla Skyrim on Xbox, I added some mods before starting. (I now realise that starting for the first time with mods enabled was a bad plan.) I had three texture mods (no conflicts, I checked), a spell added, and a mod to add cloaks. All were highly endorsed on Nexusmods so I figured they’d be safe.

Then my game glitched. I followed Hadvar through the cave just fine, but when we exited and he sneaked to avoid Alduin, he said nothing. His lines didn’t trigger and he never left sneak mode. The quest couldn’t advance.

After removing all of the mods, including the textures, I tried again. He was still stuck.

So I uninstalled and reinstalled, taking all of the mods far away from the Skyrim files as possible. Still bugged. I started a new game and found that now the issue started immediately - no speech played, and the on-screen dialogue was blank. This meant that I couldn’t get out of the cart at Helgen .The game is unplayable.

To fix this issue, I have:

verified the game files (no issues);

reinstalled once (as mentioned above);

loaded without mods active;

loaded with no mods available to the game at all;

downloaded a different version of DirectX;

deleted my save files;

unpacked the .bsa files using a program from the nexus.

That last one did partially fix the problem. The early part was fine, but the moment we got to the Helgen gates, everything fell silent again. All other sounds are playing normally.

My laptop is a bit glitchy, but its hardware is in theory perfectly capable of playing Skyrim normally. All of the settings are set to “low” and I have done everything in windowed mode and fullscreen. I have 808GB of storage free, and nearly 4GB of RAM. All of my drivers are up to date. Like I said - this laptop is more than capable of running Skyrim with all the DLC.

Any information or advice? Does anyone know of any fixes?

» Wed Jan 20, 2016 12:55 am

Did you do a clean uninstall of Skyrim and deleted all of Skyrim files in the steam folder as well as the Skyrim files in My Documents.

Also post a full dxdiag.exe report

» Wed Jan 20, 2016 4:38 am

First do a standard uninstall. (Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Programs and Features-> Uninstall The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim)

Next, delete your skyrim folder under C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\

Then delete your Skyrim directory under Documents\My Games

Then under C:\Users\[Your Username]\AppData\Local\ - Delete the Skyrim folder that is in it.

(You should enable to see the hidden files under windows to delete that folder.) HOW: (View - Options - Folder Options - View - Advanced Settings: Show hidden files, folders and drives)

Go to your Steam folder. Delete the folder named appcache. (Important)

Use Ccleaner after all this (http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner), Go to the Registry tab and hit -

In the Options tab go to Monitoring and uncheck: Enable System Monitoring and Enable active Monitoring

Also make a Windows HDD check: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/check-your-hard-disk-for-errors

Reboot your computer (Important) Then install your game again...

Also i would reinstall Steam again from here: http://store.steampowered.com/about/

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Start your game first without mods, do see if it works correctly!

» Tue Jan 19, 2016 5:02 pm

mark5917 - it won't let me quote you for some reason, but thank you, your fix worked!

» Tue Jan 19, 2016 9:59 pm

Glad you fixed your problem. :goodjob:

Now, be careful which mod(s) you are installing!