First the wait for Dragonborn release on Xbox, now suddenly the wait for Christmas too since I just learned my husband will gift me a laptop that happens to be Skyrim-capable! (and Oblivion, and Morrowind Overhaul...) I can't stand all the combined excitement right now! Life is good.

Anyway, I have plenty of lead time to begin my segue from Xbox to PC, with its attendant learning curve. I'm hoping to limit the future Duh-level troubleshooting questions I would ask on forums like this one. What would y'all recommend as a good RTFM starting place for someone who is not a computer jock to begin with?

I trust in UESP and have found this page there: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Console to begin, but are there other solid pages at UESP, or elsewhere, that I really should check out? Thanks for advice!

Welcome! Once you PC you never go back...unless to play some sweeet Metal Gear 4
You sound as if you already know the vanilla game pretty well so you should check Skyrim Nexus; the top mods lists have some pretty good and poplular mods to get you started, first off check the Hi Res patch

Well first thing you need to do is install a UI mod to replace the garbage one in the vannila version, head over to http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/ and tour the forums on how to install mods, but apart from that its just a matter of getting accustomed to pc controls, just make sure your pc can handle the mods you are installing.

Although with a laptop, that might be too much. Clothing/Armor/Weapon mods would be fine.

From the OP, it doesn't sound like mod recommendations were being asked for. Simply what the most common things to do were in case something breaks.


On topic, here's the rundown:

1) Make sure not to install Steam in the Program Files directory on the system's root drive. If you do, move Steam: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7418-YUBN-8129
2) Keep as little as possible running in the background
3) Turn off all auto-saves for Skyrim
4) Only save with the Esc menu and keep all of your saves in case something goes wrong. Here's my standard post on this:
5) Don't touch uGrids or do any memory "tweaks" you may read about, as those can cause problems

And now for common fixes:

1) Refresh the INI files by deleting the INI files in (My )Documents/(My )Games/Skyrim and running the Skyrim Launcher to regenerate them
2) Verify the files via Steam. Right click on Skyrim in the Steam Library screen and click properties and find the Verify Game Cache option somewhere in the window that pops up
3) Wait 31 in-game days in an isolated location
4) The nuclear option: go back to a previous save (part of why I suggested the save managing above) from before the issue occurred

Thanks gentlemen! Re "tour the forums" that would be a second step, for my finer-grained learning of the PC environment. What I'm hoping for as a first step is to get pointed to some solid general-overview type links.

Re mods, the Christmas Is Coming! feeling is just to have a piece of hardware that will run the darned thing at a basic level without crashing (I'll be moving off a 2006 lap). Anything else is icing on the cake. What I hear about Xbox visuals, apparently even a medium setting will be an upgrade so I can only be pleased there. And apparently I'll be saying bye to those vitality-draining load screens.

But I do have my eye out for some mods for world enrichment: Birds! Carriage rides! And stuff I'd never even dream of till I see it at Nexus (rubs hands).