Hey, I was trying to complete the college of winterhold questline for the second time with a new character, and it worked the first time (I think it was around February), but it won't work now. I think it may be a problem with one of the new patches. The questline glitched after Ancano blew up the Arch-Mage, and now nobody will respond to what just happened. Even Ancano is walking around, but he's trapped by his spell.

Can I uninstall a patch even though my most recent character only has really recent (1.7) save files, or will that screw the game? I'm planning on re-downloadong patch 1.7 after I finish the college of Winterhold.

Well, if I understood right, you want to uninstall the patch so you can maybe finish the quest without the patch and then install it again? (Correct me if i'm wrong). The thing is that the game won't let you load the save without any patches. It will say this save game was made with a newer version of the game or something like that. So don't even try.

It seems that when you installed the patch the mages guild NPCs reset to their original state when you first entered the college. It's like even though you are halfway through the quest but they don't have any idea that any of what's happening it's actually happening. I bet they don't even now you went to Sarthal. The same happened to me when I installed the patch when I had already finished the civil war quests, went to Windhelm and Ulfric and Galmar started having the same conversation that they have at the begining of the quest: "so, you think Tullius wants to take over Whiterun?"--- me- "Tullius is dead!!!, WTH are you all talking about???"

Sorry, but unless so have earlier saves, it seems that Rootkit 1.7 destroyed your save and you won't be able to complete those quests. Only way to do it is by starting a new game :/