After installing the 1.2 patch then installing to the hard drive, my box is now much quieter which is great and I have not noticed any texture problems as yet. Maybe I am lucky there. However the first lesson with tolfdir is still not fixed, he just stands there waiting for me. I have tried lots of times to get him to cast the fire bolt.
I am now level 28, I first noticed this early on around level 15 but left it as I assumed I did not have the correct ward spell.
I was never offered the tour around the college so not sure if that is involved in the bug.
I am reporting this again hoping it will be on bethesdas list for post xmas fixes.
Being a Mage I want to complete this quest line

It's been a while since I completed that quest line but I can almost guarantee I did NOT have a ward spell in my inventory, he gave it to me right there to use. I could be wrong but again, I don't recall having my own ward spell before hand.

Sounds like maybe not taking the tour glitched it out? With this game it could be anything

Hope ya get it working, that quest line was actually pretty good in my opinion.

Cheers spoonman,

I am not going to start ranting and raving about it, Bethesda know they have their work cut out.

I work for a software corp myself and as we request games of this scale and complexity, we need to appreciate the numbers of lines of code involved go into the millions. Just one variable or algorithm error causes stuff like this. Testing plans are complex enough as it is, this is why Bethesda along with many other software houses often learn as they go and use the general public as the real testers.

I am prepared to accept the above but some people are not which is fair enough.

Overall this has impacted less than 10% of my game play and even so far it's been worth ￡39.

He teaches you the spell there and then, you need to cast the ward first, then he'll fire at you, Hope this helps bud

I had several problems with this quest but now i have finished the entire college of winterhold questline.

My problem starting during the tour of 'first lesson's', Mirabelle would start the tour, show me the dorms then exit, a dragon would always attack at this point in which after i kill it i cannot continue the tour, luckily i have a save beforehand as i save very often (before going into a new location, before doing quest's etc). I managed to fix my problem by waiting 24 hours in game and the dragon did not show up.

Then came the ward part of the quest, the best thing to do is equip it and try your best to stand on the spot marked then hold cast for the ward, this took me several attempts and a few slight re-positioning to get him to attack me with a fireball. Just a case of trying to get on the sweet spot really.

Hope that helps.