I've been having some issues with Skyrim lately. The compass at the top of the screen expands past the endings, and my magicka and stamina bars don't shrink at all; instead, they just move to the left and right when they go down, while my health and experience bars are always at full and don't move at all, even when I level up or lose health. Whenever I use books, they don't seem to work right either, the pages will just clip with each other and make the text unreadable. For some reason though, this has only been happening within external cells, like the Skyrim exterior and inside cities. When I'm in a dungeon or in someone's house though, everything works fine. Is this an issue that can be fixed by changing the resolution or graphical quality of the game? Any help would be appreciated.

Are you using mods?

Nope, I'm running vanilla Skyrim.

It's a good old driver problem. You must downgrade to the previous version.

How would I go about doing that? Sorry, I'm a bit lost when it comes to hardware issues.

You must install an older driver to your graphic card. You'll find them on the web-site of the card maker.

And end up with a bigger problem. ATI issue so guessing your card is ATI. Follow this guide to uninstall your current driver completely which is important when going back to a prior driver: http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2012/4/4/guide-how-to-completely-uninstall-amd-graphics-drivers.aspx?pageid=1

After that is finished and you have rebooted you can install the 12.1 catalyst for your system. This link is for 64 bit Vista/Win 7 if you have a different OS and or bit package(32 bit and or XP) you will have to do a google search for 12.1 catalyst for that particular OS and make sure it is from the AMD site and not another one.

Also the driver issue is fixed so if you have a card that is on the list below you can just skip all of that and update to that by using this page here assuming your card and OS is listed below:
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx

Supported Cards for 12.10:

AMD Desktop Product Family Compatibility

AMD Radeon? HD 7900 Series
AMD Radeon HD 6500 Series
AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series
AMD Radeon HD 6410D Series
AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series
AMD Radeon HD 6370D Series
AMD Radeon HD 7660D Series
AMD Radeon HD 6310D Series
AMD Radeon HD 7560D Series
AMD Radeon HD 6300 Series
AMD Radeon HD 7300 Series
AMD Radeon HD 6200 Series
AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series
ATI Radeon HD 5900 Series
AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series
ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series
AMD Radeon HD 6700 Series
ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series
AMD Radeon HD 6600 Series
ATI Radeon HD 5600 Series
AMD Radeon HD 6550D Series
ATI Radeon HD 5500 Series
AMD Radeon HD 6530D Series
ATI Radeon HD 5400 Series

AMD Mobility Product Families

AMD Mobility Radeon? HD 7000M Series
AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5400 Series
AMD Mobility Radeon HD 6900M Series
AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5100 Series
AMD Mobility Radeon HD 6800M Series
AMD Radeon HD 6620G Series
AMD Mobility Radeon HD 6300M Series
AMD Radeon HD 6520G Series
AMD Mobility Radeon HD 6300 Series
AMD Radeon HD 6480G Series
AMD Mobility Radeon HD 6200 Series
AMD Radeon HD 6380G Series
AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5800 Series
AMD Radeon HD 6310G Series
AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5700 Series
AMD Radeon HD 6250G Series
AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5600 Series


AMD PowerXpress? enabled notebooks

using AMD chipsets

Compatible Operating Systems
The latest version of the AMD Catalyst software suite is designed to support the following Microsoft^? Windows^? platforms:

• Windows 8 32-bit version
  
• Windows 8 64-bit version
  
• Windows 7 32-bit version
  
• Windows 7 64-bit version
  
• Windows Vista 32-bit version
  
• Windows Vista 64-bit version