I've uninstalled Skyrim, purged every last game and mod file related to it from my computer (registry files included) and done a clean reinstall, with no mods installed, and it's still giving me the gray face bug. And it's not just for custom NPCs, its happening to every vanilla NPC I've come across, and even the player character. I've tried adjusting the graphics settings to see if that did anything, but it didn't help at all. I've tried the 'Set NPCWeight' command on both NPCs and the player character, and nothing happens. Same with exporting and re-importing the face-gen data, too.

I'm at my wits' end, here. I can't get it to go away, no matter what I do. Is there ever going to be a reliable fix for this?

In case anyone's curious, I'm running the game on Windows XP SP3, with a Radeon 4870 HD 512MB GPU.

You should look here: How to fix the "Grey Face" NPC issue in esm files

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/626710-how-to-fix-the-grey-face-npc-issue-in-esm-files/ (post 1)

Here is a Video: Skyrim Creation kit (Custom NPC Grey Face mismatch texture bug FIX)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOXF89QtgYM

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But, why you get the same on a vanilla skyrim, i don't know really.

Are you sure you wipped any data related to skyrim ???

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Is it only with the new NPCs added by the mods? Then you should check to see if a .bsa file with the same name is present in the Data folder.

Sometimes the .bsa file ends up in the Skyrim folder instead of the Data folder. If there's no .bsa file, then the modder has forgotten to upload that file or Steam upload didn't work for the .bsa file.

If there's no .bsa file with the FaceGenData for the new NPCs you will experience grey faces and neck seems.

I'm very sure I wiped out every trace of Skyrim and any and all mods from my computer before reinstalling. I don't have any mods installed, other than the HD texture packs from Bethesda. I've tried starting a new game with those enabled and then one with them disabled, and I still get the gray faces on vanilla NPCs and the player character in both.

Do you have this folder on your computer now !!!!!

Steam / SteamApps / common / Data / Textures / Actors / Character / FaceGenData / FaceTint / Skyrim.esm

Actually, you shouldn't !!!!