Hi there!
I postponed this thread to cool down, yesterday I was full of rage so I think I wouldnt convey my problem but rather offend some people - which is counterproductive.

Here I go:
I was playing the game from the time of release on custom settings inbetween high-ultra settings, with 4GB workaround when it came out. The fps was somewhere between 30-40 at all times, I was happy. All the marvels...

Now, here I am, after taking a break - I piled 170 hours, not even half of my journal is completed - for several months from Skyrim. I fire it up, steam and the game updates, it tells me it can handle more ram now, oh the glory! Fine I say! Lets try the original launcher! I load last save and ... I see a slideshow.

WTH I think to myself... Check again, 12-13 fps on my last settings. What?
REstart the game, choose high settings, disable hi res textures pack. 15-18fps. What?
Restart the game, defrag & integrity of the files check, nVid configuration check, boot, load, MEDIUM settings... 20-23fps. WHAT?

Can someone explain to me WHAT HAPPENED? Is this a new way of patching a game nowdays? I would like to know what is the cause and how do I fix it? I want HIGH graphical settings at the least, with 30fps constant if not higher. Damn people, how am I to read this course of action when I could run the game smoothly and after some version change I cant even get close to the quality I had before.

I am really irritated right now. Some insight would be nice, thank you.

EDIT:
How do I correct typo in the subject of the thread?

Delete your .inis and let the game regenerate them and see what happens then. I might also delete RendererInfo.txt in the same location (Documents\My Games\Skyrim) and let Skyrim redetect your video card, just to see what happens.

Also, make 100% certain that you removed whatever LAA (large address aware) solution you were using, since Skyrim now supports it natively. The other thing I would do is check and make sure your drivers are up to date; it's very possible that, in all the optimization and tweaking that's gone on under the hood in the last few Skyrim patches, it's made some tweaks your current (older) driver set disagrees with. There's been some issues with older AMD Catalyst drivers and v1.6+ of Skyrim, at least; I don't know about Nvidia.

And finally...without any information on your hardware, there's not much more anyone can do to help you. Please post your system specs.

Thanks for the reply and some ideas!

As for my specs, from memory:
phenom, 3,something mghz (960 black edition maybe?), quad core
geForce 460 gtx 1gb (or more, cant remember)
8 (or more) gb of ram
Win7, 64bit

Any mods? Just asking, because if you use them, and they date from your previous gaming stint, they are likely broken and can cause a whole lot of problems. After being away for a longer time, while the game is being patched, it would always make sense to restart from a vanilla configuration, ensure that it works, and build on that.

You don't. It is something you may have to live with for the rest of your life.