Update: It's really not necessary to use the old exe anymore. You'll want to use the new 4GB launcher instead so you can update in the future. Check out the http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1285418-new-laa-4gb-launcher/.

Note: This assumes that you have Windows 7 with System Protection enabled on the drive where Skyrim was installed.

• Navigate to the Skyrim folder (\Steam\steamapps\common\skyrim)
  
• Right-Click the Skyrim folder and choose Properties
  
• Click the Previous Versions tab
  
• Find version of the folder from before today, highlight it and click Open
  
• Copy the TESV.exe file and paste it into your game directory

You might want to keep an extra copy of the original exe in case it gets over-written again.


Happy hunting! And I'll thank you to keep the Bethesda bashing out of my thread. You can post that crap in any of the other threads.

Note that System Protection seems to be enabled by default, let it search for an old version for a minute or two!

Love that, even our own OS is protecting us from this BS.

Thank you,

I had totally forgot about Previous version under Properties!!

I was about to System restore! Thank god for collective brains!

Edit: I now have an 11/11/11 copy of the EXE!!!!

DUUUUDE THANK YOU!

You are a life saver bro. I can go back to actually playing the game again.

Hey bethesda, stop punishing your legit consumers will ya?

Thank you very much

Also, if you want to keep Steam running (for your other games) you can just rename TESV.exe to something else (TESV_LAA.exe) and it will load just fine and steam wont update it.

No previous versions available for me...I guess I'm hosed for now.

Thank you so much for this. Hope it works. Patched Exe crashes about 3 mins into gameplay every single time.

I didn't even have to rename the executable and I can still launch it via Steam. Thanks for reminding me of a simple step I'd forgotten, OP. You are to be commended.

I would've never though of this. Thanks a lot! No more CTDs every 10min!

Thanks for this, was crashing in the first 5 minutes of gameplay every time.

Not cool Bethesda.

Sweet, thanks.

This CTD crap from steam running is the only problem I've had with this game. Glad I can go back to the old TESV.exe instead of the frustrating 15-20 minutes or less of playtime I get before a crash with Steam running.

I am starting to think that single player games such as this shouldnt use Steam. I thought it was good for updates and such, but it is starting to svck since they rewrote the EXE to not use the 4gb patch... Thank gosh for the other thread on here that told me how to revert Steam's "damage"...

After reverting the damage, I set Skyrim to not autoupdate through Steam and won't enable it again until a BETTER patch comes out that fixes the stupid random QTDs...

Yay, it worked! Thank you so much!

Posted link with a download for those that can't recover.

Thanks for this I just restored the two exe file TESV and the launcher and that worked.

Strange move by beth/steam this it just brings out your inner pirate with [censored] like this... Smooth move

Restoring mine did not work, but using someone else's linked backup did.

Thank you so much, my wife can again play the game. I did not suffer the CTD issue so much as she did. The LAA fix made the game playable for her. Sad it took a whole day to get the game working again all because Bethesda and Valve decided to drop some stupid DRM to, I guess encourage piracy, since it definitely was not legit copy friendly.

Large Address Aware is not a hack, its simply letting people with nice rigs and large amounts of RAM to play the game nearly as nice as those on GTX 580s and 580ms.


Alexis
*smiles*

Oh man I didn't even see the update but I started playing had CTD CTD CTD - Noticed steam said "1 item complete" and died a little inside. Noticed it was only a .exe change so restored it - reloaded the game and played fine again and thought hmmmm... best go share this on the forums and it seems people are already well aware.

As I said in the attacking the playerbase thread. Adding more security to an already cracked, appearing on 2nd hand shelves game is rather stupid. WP Steam... WP indeed (unless it was someone here at gamesas at which point I tip my hat to them and say well played sir... well played... you broke my game... Again.


Oh and for anyone who does this either set Steam to offline, stop it from starting or set your "keep games updated" to "DONT" and you will be fine

So are you guys saying that replacing the new EXE with the old one allows the game to run properly with LAA? I read that it was producing all sorts of in-game errors.

Also, who has actually tried and had luck with the modified FONV thing?

Dude your are a Life saver man!! Woo..Crash be gone.

thankyou u saved my game!!!

Yes replacing the new .exe with the old one (I downloaded 2 sets, one guy labeled his "filename"BAK, the other chap, "filename"BU) worked great, the BU ones worked for me never tried the BAK ones. Setting yourself to offline mode and not to update, and then using LAA works. Works just fine. No reason it would not. It is like playing an older version of the game without access to updates. If the game had updated more than just the .exe we may have had more issues, but with it being an exe swap its a cakewalk and plays perfectly once more when fixed. As was said in this thread we don't have to worry til 1.2 when we have to decide if the fixes are worth the loss of LAA.


Alexis
*smiles*

This fix did help me get past the initial run game loop but now I am getting an immediate CTD when the Continue, load, save options are written to the screen immediately following the Bethesda splash screen.

Anyone else having this issue?

Ahhh shoot, someone rezed this thread... oh well. I'll make an edit with my current recommendation.