I have a problem. First, I have had a stable game for a while now, no recent mods added. I use NMM, LOOT, and TESVedit. Today, my game started having CTDs. It was fine this morning, saved and quit. Started the game this afternoon, and the problems started. I looked at NMM first, the load order was wrong, and I didn't change it. Fixed that, no help. Checked LOOT, only to find hundreds of ITM's where there were only 6 before. Cleaned them up with TESVedit. I checked my Steam data file, only to discover my esm files missing. I went to Steam to verify and re-acquire. All showed up except the skyrim esm. Next, I went to my save files and deleted down to one I knew was good. I moved my save file, deactivates all mods. Wiped Skyrim and all data files, anything skyrim, from my computer. I then went back to Steam and re-installed. Started the game to get my folders. I use SKSe, so had also deleted that, and after the re-install, I re-installed SKSE. I did not even re-activate all the mods I had previously.

I just finished all of this 10 minutes ago, loaded the game. I get to the main menu, then the loading screen, and the ctd at the end of the loading screen. LOOT again shows the hundreds of ITMs, NMM had skyrim and update esm unchecked, and again, no skyrim esm on the Steam data file.

I've made no changes, Steam says it's re-acquired, but it's appparently not. Can anyone give me an idea of what is going on, and how do I get my blasted esm file back?

Edit: I get the same results whether I use the Steam launcher or SKSE.

Ouch. That's a bad thing. I guess you don't have a disk to acquire the file from?

Only for the 360. It just gets' better....apparently my CK also lost files, and when Steam re-acquired, my Kerik file was gone. I just booted up a few minutes ago, and haven't tried the game yet, but when I opened LOOT, after cleaning everything twice, all the ITMs are AGAIN back! I haven't tried the game yet, but I doubt it's going to work. The data file in the Steam launcher still does not show the Skyrim esm. Every time I open Steam launcher, the skyrim esm and update esm unclick in NMM too.

Oh dear.... I guess you didn't back Kerik up somewhere else? svcks....

I did, but nothing is recognizing it. I did get the game to finally load, on an older save. So lost a few levels, but I'll have to try to rebuild Kerik. I'm still not sure what happened, but this time Steam seems to have actually re-acquired the missing file. I still have to reclean with TESVedit though, I don't know what's up with that, or if I do all this and the whole thing repeats like yesterday.

I don't know if it's because I play from disc, but their is no Skyrim.esm in my "Skyrim Data Files" on the steam launcher either... It starts of with Dawnguard.esm

But I hope you err fixed what ever the problem was. I hate not know why something happened...

I do too. I just cleaned the files again. I guess I can handle rebuilding in the CK, but, unless it repeats, I still have Ake's game. SO frustrating, especially when it happened out of the blue.

I hear that.. it would be. As I was about to launch my game I took a look at my LOOT.. the Skyrim.esm is their, but not in the Data files for the steam launcher... odd.. but.

Well, I lost some progress, but not the whole of Ake's game. It appears to be running ok now, files where they are supposed to be. Maybe there was a steam update and I never noticed the change in esm location? I have no idea, it's working, but I'm going to be paranoid about it for a while. I also re-built Kerik in the CK, though he is straight vanilla for now, though the only real difference is the hair.

Glad you got it sorted! Before I let steam update any time soon, I believe I'll copy the entirety of my game folders off to my other drive....

Yeah, I turned auto updates off.