in my current game,companions use the armor and shield and everything i given to them but never the bow even i gave them a bow which is way better than their default one
and werid thing is i dont have this problem in the early game until i use the huntess in companion HQ and she cant use the bow i given to her so i swich back the companino to lydia who now is also use her default bow can anyone please tell me if there is a way to fix it

I play a sneak, so I've yet to use any of the companion/followers. But can you also take items away from them? Take their old bow away and see if it forces them to use the one you gave them.

I am having this problem too. It seems to do with the quality of the bow. I had the Elf Archer guy from the first town (Fandal or whatever) for forever. Game him a plain Dwarf bow, then an enchanted dwarf bow, then an orc bow...all those worked fine. He would use the heck out of them and he was really useful. Then I gave him an elven bow...and it has all been downhill from there. The elven bow, and subsequently, the enchanted elven bow, the glass bow, and the enchanted glass bow I gave him would all be put away once combat actually started in favor of the default bow (the bow he uses if he has no bow in his inventory, it's equal to the worst bow in the game and make it where he is worthless in combat).

So you give him the nice bow (elf or higher) and he equips it, and runs around with it out and ready. The moment he goes to fire it for the first time, he puts it away (animation for "sheathing" the bow) and draws the plain default bow and starts firing away. I first noticed this while in a cave full of the snow elves (who I bloody hate btw). They have their own bows, which are garbage, and so after testing all the bows I had, and noticing he would only equip and use the crappy ones, I gave him the snow elf bow;. He used that just fine for the rest of the cave (it was GIGANTIC!). But it svcks too. And he still did basically nothing.

So I get out and I go and take all his stuff, dismiss him, and go get the dark elf chick from the Drunken Huntsman in Whiterun. My thought process is that maybe Fandal (or whatever) was just bugged and surely it won't happen with this chick too...but it does...Sigh....

This is KILLING my ability to play the game. I need some backup (as I am playing a mage and magic seems REALLY underpowered in this game). But I can't have some big barbarian getting between me and my targets and getting killed by my own ice storm spell (or whatever). The archer is perfect...except that now he/she is a glorified porter who can die and leave me stranded with too much loot at the bottom of a dungeon.

So anyone know what's going on/a way to fix it? HELP! :OD Thanks in advance.

EDIT: I found a fix over on the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages Wiki. This will only work on the PC (but hey, I'm in the PC forum, so here's hoping it helps). Open your console (Default ~). Click on the companion (this should cause a little set of letters and numbers to appear by/on them). Then type "/removeitem 10e2dd 1" without the " (obviously). This will force the game to remove the default bow from their inventory. You may have to do this several times to get them to stop doing it for good (I had to use the command twice) but it totally works!

WARNING! This WILL disable your Steam achievements. Sorry. Steam thinks using the console in any way is cheating. Sadface.