Yesterday (or early today), Steam updated Skyrim to 1.8. But when the update was complete, I had no TESV.exe in my Skyrim directory.
Verifying the integrity of game cache doesn't help, Steam just downloads something but it sure doesn't download a TESV.exe.

This crap started the last time I updated, that time I was updating to the 1.8 Beta. When the update was finished, I noticed that my TESV.exe was gone.

So I verified the intergrity of game cache and Steam said that 1 file was missing and was going to be downloaded. This prompted Steam to download something (I have no idea what) but there was still no .exe file in the Skyrim directory.

So I opted out of the beta patch and into the beta patch over and over again, verifying the game cache again and again, and the last time I opted out of the beta patch, the TESV.exe was simply there again.

I have absolutely no idea how to get Steam to download a new TESV.exe again. I guess I'll just continue to verify the intergrity of game cache until the end of times.

Do anyone know anything about this? Why does Steam/Skyrim behave like this!??

I don't know, but you're not the only person with this problem with 1.8. Check out http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1420421-skyrim-wont-launch-after-update/...you and Varus should definitely start comparing notes.

I might try reinstalling Steam using the method I posted in that thread, and double-checking to make sure you don't have an anti-virus or firewall going berserk on you. Reinstalling Skyrim from scratch and verifying game cache integrity so far haven't worked.

Thank you! I'll head there immediately.

Seems that it's Steams way of forcing users to update even in offline mode -- once you connect to steam it deletes the exe file on games that have downloads available even if you have the settings to not update automatically -- that way the next time you go to launch the game you are forced to install the update even if you did not want to or you can not play the game.

That is not how Steam works, and that is not what's going on here. The problem AW8 and Varus are having is that although they are online on Steam, and despite repeated attempts to verify the game cache, for some reason when patching to 1.8 Steam has deleted their TESV.exe. (Or rather more likely--it deleted the old TESV.exe to make room for the 1.8 one, and for whatever reason is now failing to acquire the new TESV.exe from the Steam servers.) They are trying to download/run the update, not avoid it.

Conspiracy theories really won't help anything here.

OMG Finally. Thank god someone else is having this problem. I'm going to watch your thread, and I hope you watch mine. Stay in touch if you find a solution! ..Whew..

I was beginning to think that maybe my computer was totally bonkers... or that windows was corrupt or something awful.

I suspect this is what's happening too. For whatever reason, the old tesv.exe was removed (most likely) to make room for a new version of the file, but that new version is not downloading. I don't know why. If you use the previous version there are all sorts of odd behaviors in game, such as the world map not showing up properly. I think this is just due to using an old .exe with the new patched game that is supposed to have its own version.

I'm not sure if something that Beth sent over to Valve is causing this, or if Steam is having a stroke. Either way, at least there's more than 1 example of it.

Actually it is the way Steam works -- Awhile back I had steam in offline mode and set to not auto update but when I connected to steam for another game and later went to play Skyrim my EXE file was not there and after connecting again to steam to try to recover the exe learned that one of the patches had gone live -- I did not delete the exe and I had Steam set to not auto update yet the EXE file was deleted by something !!

I wasn't in offline mode, and I always let steam keep my games up to date. It has nothing to do with what's going on here.


Update:

Hey hey! TesV.exe is back. I don't know when it was downloaded, but it just now showed up in my folder. The game still won't launch though, not from steam. It will launch if I double click the .exe though!

So I dunno what happened there, maybe a steal ninja hotfix?

Does it show as version 1.8.151.0 and 17.1 mb ? Also if you right click on the exe and go to properties and it will show the last time it was modified (which will let you know when it was downloaded !) -- I just finished letting Steam update mine and the update worked properly (ie. tesv.exe was replaced) - so it might just have been a bad upload on the server that you updated on and they may have fixed it now - Hopefully you can now at least play !