Title says what the problem is, I figure I'll change the ini instead of trying to do it from the launcher or in game, neither of which seem to have any affect once the game loads again. What I'd need a hand with is which values to edit to have the settings at max (draw dist, texture size, shadows, water, etc.). I'm looking through it and I have a rough idea of what might work, but I don't want to just go at it trial and error all night, even if I did make a backup. Any help is appreciated!

Download http://obse.silverlock.org/ and after you have installed it download and install http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=22410 . Your problem is in that, that your game crashes every time you try to exit the game. Fast exit will solve that problem, and OBSE is required for Fast Exit to work

An alternative to fast Exit(If for some reason you cant use OBSE) is to type saveini in the Console after making any changes to your video settings.

Thanks, I just did a fresh install and Fast Exit was one of the things I forgot to grab. RoflLizard, thanks as well.

Thanks for this post. I have had the "crash on exit" problem forever. Fast Exit works like a charm.