Skyrim has worked very well previously. I recently upgraded to the latest 1.7 patch AND purchased Dawnguard, and now have issues whether Dawnguard is loaded or not - but I don't know for sure if the problem is just Dawnguard or the patch or both, so I include that information here.

I have various issues that do not go away even with a new character created - the issues are in all save games (pre-patch/pre-Dawnguard) and new characters as well.

I have no mods installed, and have never installed any Skyrim mods.

Issues:
- Most loose objects in rooms are now poised to fly away, everywhere. I took heavy damage picking up a longbow from a table as it caused all loose objects in the house to start flying around - got hit multiple times with a shield which bounced off the walls a good 2 or 3 seconds.

-Any NPC animation that has them place their hands on a surface with loose objects generates a loud thumping sound which continues until the animation ceases and they remove their appendages from the surface - I'm guessing this is related to the above issue.

-Water sound effects and underwater animations "stick" to my characters now when they just step on a pooled liquid. After stepping on any pooled surface, any elevation change (like going up a ramp) triggers the underwater animation of treading water to begin (as they are walking) and the screen starts flashing as if the camera is constantly bobbing above and below the surface of water. Once this starts it sticks with the character for some time, usually ending after a cell change. It will start in the new cell again after the first wet surface contact.

-Interior cell water textures are not right - don't know enough about the details but pooled water/liquids have their textures flashing frequently. This also happens to running water in interior cells but is far less common in water running than in the pooled water/static liquid areas. I have not seen this new issue in any exterior areas that I can recall.

-Horrible slowdowns in most of the caves and internal cells added with Dawnguard - they are not alleviated with reduced graphics settings but seem more akin to a resource leak. Rebooting the computer clears it, playing in standard Skyrim areas will then be fine, but entering Dawnguard-added interior cells causes it to reappear. To reiterate - once the slowdowns begin, they affect all Skyrim areas. It quickly makes the game unplayable unless the computer is rebooted (and Dawnguard interior cells are avoided).

-Unloading Dawnguard obviously removes the above issue with Dawnguard-added interior cells, but the perfomance of Skyrim is still far worse than it was prior to my installing 1.7 and Dawnguard, and all other new issues above persist regardless of Dawnguard being loaded or not.


I do not believe I've had any hardware issues as everything else plays as usual on my system. Only Skyrim has seen a noticable drop in performance, and the new issues.

I'm playing on an Alienware Intel Core2 Duo E8400 at 3GHz, 4 GB ram, Windows Vista (32 bit), NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 video card, driver version 301.42.
If any other information is needed, just ask. Any help is appreciated.

Krag