When I recently wanted to start a new game to test a few new mods, Skyrim froze a few seconds after clicking "New game", during the loading screen with the Skyrim symbol and fog in the background.
I had to use the task manager to kill Skyrim.
Of course I suspected that one of the mods would be responsible, so I disabled them, but to no avail.
I have then disabled all my mods, then removed them completely, let Steam check the game files, deleted most of the content in the Data directory, as well as the skyrim.exe (and then let Steam check the files again, of course), but it didn't help.
4 out of 5 times when I start a new game, it freezes.
When it works, it seems to run fine, but I'd like to find the reason behind the freezes.

System info:

Phenom II X4 965
GTX 460 1GB
8GB ram
Win7, relevant drivers should be up-to-date, with the exception of GPU which got an update only today (NVidia) which I have not yet installed.