ISSUE RESOLVED (has now returned, detailed in latest post)

A good while ago, all of my saves suddenly disappeared. They were simply nowhere to be found (I do know that the location is C:\Users\Documents\my games\ect ect). I cursed myself for not making backups, but moved on.


Earlier this evening, I was in the middle of a new playthrough when the game froze, to the extent that I had to restart the PC. The issue is that the save I had been using had disappeared from the game's load screen... and the saves which had disappeared months ago were back. The "correct" save directory still contains my current save files, which appear to be totally intact. However, it does NOT contain those old save files which so mysteriously reappeared. I can search my computer for the name of the save of my recently disappeared save, and it will return the results. When searching the name of the reappeared (OR any newly created save), nothing returns at all.


So essentially, Skyrim is now saving to a location which I am not aware of, and that I cannot access or find. Any ideas?

The cloud restored them? Is it enabled for Skyrim? Try this: Rename the saves folder. See if it DLs and restores the old saves.

So the load screen in Skyrim now shows the old saves? Can you successfully load one?

Very confusing, but that appears to have worked. Renaming the saves folder resulted in it being restored by the cloud, though missing the files for my most recent character. I copied those files in from the renamed saves folder, and they were recognized. Thank you very much! I assumed that it wouldn't work, as I had already attempted removing the saves folder entirely, which somehow resulted in the game still having those save files (even though they had not been restored by the cloud in that instance).

Okay, the problem appears to have returned. The exact same issue as before; Skyrim appears to be saving to some location other than the default, one which I cannot find anywhere. Renaming the saves file worked previously, but has stopped working. Nothing changed in between yesterday and today besides restarting the computer.

Are you on Windows 10? Are you using OneDrive? My Documents can sometimes be stored there.