Now that we've reached the final update of the game at 1.9, I disabled all automatic updates to the game through steam. I also disabled future steam updates and set steam to start in offline mode.

I have 250+ mods (steam and nexus) in my Data folder andI use SKSE/BOSS to manage them. These are also up to date. But today when I went to launch the game, Steam automatically forced an update?? overiding the manual settings. Steam is installed in the Program Files x86 directory, so I'm not sure if this is a Win7 runninng interfearacne deal or not. Regardless, after it's update and resynching of all my workshop mods, all my save games were deleted.

I copied a backup of my save games folder and successfully launched the game.

Except now, SKSE no longer loads??? I'm getting the vanilla inventory handling menu?? And now the game no longer recognizes any of my mods?? So 90% of the content in the original save games have vanished.

To make it worse, I can no longer access the "data files" option when you press "play" in the steam library to access the game. All the other menu options work except this, so I can no longer access my mod stack.

BOSS won't enable/activate my mods either. So the top 3 most critical mods (USKP, UDBP, and UDGP) aren't activated. Which basically f$#@ks up all the mods which rely on this in the mod loading deck.

I have backup copies of the Skyrim folder in Program Files x86 as well as my saves. But the problem is the steam client? or steam itself which updated. Somehow it's causing the game not to recognize my mods.

To be able to enable your mods: You need to navigate to the following location in Windows: Documents > My Games > Skyrim and open the SkyrimPrefs.ini file in notepad (or another text editor). Assuming it doesn't already exist, add the following entry under [Launcher] in that file: bEnableFileSelection=1

Also, you need to have Steam running when playing Skyrim or else SKSE will not load. Unfortunately, Steam is required to play Skyrim, so trying to bypass it or disabling all automatic updates will likely lead to problems. I'm not completely certain, but you may need to re-enable all automatic updates for Skyrim in the Steam Client and possibly allow it to operate in online mode as well for everything to work properly.

THANK YOU!!! THANK YOU!!! THANK YOU!!!!!!

The ini file only needed to be tweaked. I was that close to losing my mind. So even if you setup steam to launch in offline mode, it will still force an update on you? This really svcks. I'm wondering if I might need to relocate where it's installed altogether to avoid this crap from happening in the future?

I'm wondering if the saves got deleted because Win7 is really sensitive to what apps install/write the Program Files?