I would love to get some help since my graphics are stuck on low. If i change them nothing happens at all. Though, i found out how to fix it temporarely. I made a new user on my computer and then it was just fine. THough i dont wanna log into another user everytime i want to play skyrim. Anyone got a solution?

Based on the zero input you offered, you will get zero output, sorry. If you have the console version, you are in the wrong place. PCs are all different. No two are ever the same after they leave the store, and many that purport to have been the same before purchase are not so similar after all.

Basic Hardware Specification Chart (Empty so far)

Processor Manufacturer: AMD / Intel
Processor Name / Type: Athlon X2 / Pentium D / C2D / dual core / quad, etc.
Processor Speed: ?.? Ghz
Operating System / Service Pack: WindowsXP with SP #?, Win7, Vista ?
System RAM: ? ? GBs (MBs, if less than 1024 ? )
Video (GPU) Manufacturer: ATI / Nvidia (only those two are supported, PERIOD, so please answer which of them you have)
Video Card Model: (examples) Radeon HD 6670 / Geforce GTS 450
Video Card Driver Version: Catalyst ?.? / Nforce ??.??
. . (please use the numbers, and dates, *not* the word "latest")
Video display's default screen resolution
Video Card onboard RAM: ? ? ? MBs
Sound Card Manufacturer:
Sound Card Driver IDs:
Sound Card Model:

(And this is only for the raw hardware & driver variations. Potential software conflicts are far more likely to be game play problems, and developers cannot test for all possible program loads.)

Corrected Skyrim Minimum Requirements

* Windows 7/Vista/XP PC (32 or 64 bit)
* Processor: Dual Core 2.3 GHz C2D or equivalent CPU
* 3GB System RAM
* 6GB free HDD Space
* Direct X 9 compliant video card with 512 MB of RAM (and
sufficient performance to actually put that VRAM to use)
* DirectX compatible sound card
* Internet access for Steam activation

Processor Manufacturer: AMD
Processor Name / Type: Amd phenom II x6 1090t.
Processor Speed: 3,2 Ghz
Operating System / Service Pack: Win7 64bit
System RAM: 4gb
Video (GPU) Manufacturer: ATI
Video Card Model: 2x Radeon Hd 6870
Video Card Driver Version: Catalyst 11.12
Video display's default screen resolution: 1920x 1080
Video Card onboard RAM: 2048
Sound Card Manufacturer:
Sound Card Driver IDs:
Sound Card Model:

It sounds like a file permissions issue within your 'my documents\my games\skyrim' folder and its files, it sounds like your own user doesn't have the permission to write to the contents of that folder so the changes aren't sticking. You didn't do something silly like follow some advice to make those files read-only or something did you? Any ways go into that folder and right click on skyrim.ini->properties. Make sure the read-only is not checked, then go to the security tab and make sure your user has 'full control' for the file. Do the same for the skyrimprefs.ini file as well.

(To deflect 'but but read only is good!' people: No, I don't have that set and unless I change the display adapter or Skyrim is force updated I never see that file change unless *I* change it myself, those are the only two conditions that Skyrim edits it on you behalf).

no i dont have read only checked still doesnt work

And the 'full control' flag under permissions for your user?

Another test would be do something like in the setup panel set the game to say 4xAA or just some value, commit it with a done and then go check skyrimprefs.ini to see if 'iMultiSample=4' is there to match it. If its not then its a file permissions issue, if it sticks but the ingame really don't get influenced then maybe you have driver settings that are over-riding things. Even if you change resolution it doesn't stick? Gotta be a file permissions thing, I mean really.

it changes in the file :S but shouldnt the driver settings work the same way on the other user i tried on? though it worked there

Driver settings should be consistent between users for sure (but I'm not terribly familiar with how ATI does its things), so the settings take in the file but don't show up when you run the game with that user. You tried the classic 'run skyrim as administrator'? I'm still kind of leaning on it being a permissions thing but now it sounds more like tesv.exe isn't allowed to read that file or something along those lines under user A while it can just fine under user B. Do you have any third party 'game enhancers' perhaps running as User A (through perhaps the startup folder) that may not be running as user B?

Even telling the setup app to run the game as a window vs a fullscreen has no effect with user A eh? I must admit, this is an odd one.

only had one user when i fist tried. I got nothing else then just skyrim. no mods not anything. Didnt work the classic way either I could change to windowed mode though so things happens but the textures stays at the lowest setting

You know, I don't even know what variable within the ini files is the one that relates to texture quality...okay now I'm curious for a whole new reason Sec.

Okay there doesn't seem to be any single 'make textures pretty!' setting, when I set that value to low through the options and then compared my skyrimprefs.ini vs the modifications it made about the only things it really did was maul the AF down to 1, set some distance settings down to much lower values and reduced some decal counts. I'd say the most prevelant setting here would be the asitropic filtering (af), make sure its 16 and have 'at er. Or at this point it could be some setting it doesn't modify but something else did. You could always backup your current pair of files (just rename them) and let the game rebuilt some. It sounds like the settings are taking but there's a setting among your own that's influencing what you're seeing and the launcher's options editor isn't tweaking that particular value.

tried generating new files. And every settings your talking about seems to change in the file. This is just wierd

Okay, at this point: Post two screen shots to visually demonstrate what you're seeing here. One from the user that won't show full texture detail and then the exact same view using the other user profile please. You can copy save files around between the two users' folders to accomplish this best.

User A:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/201/2012011800001.jpg/

User B:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/88/2012011800002.jpg/

Heya, hrm well okay yah that's very clearly lower resolution and by a pretty noticable margin there. What I might suggest is go line by line through user A's skyrimprefs.ini vs User B's skyrimprefs.ini and spot any differences.

Anyone else: Happen to find the difinitive settings the setting(s) that the options menu texture quality toggler edits? I'm at a loss as to providing a specific 'this variable controls that', only a small handful of draw distances seem to be get edited when I went looking.

They were not the same at first. I tried to just do it simple, copy paste so they were exactly the same, though its still not working :S

Well, I'm at a loss. About the only thing I could think of is what if those higher resolution textures came from a mod you were using but user A doesn't have the permissions to load it (been a while since I've seen vanilla textures in Skyrim due to modding so I kind of forget what they look like). Perhaps try locating and then forcing what's called 'AF LOD bias' into a negative value, like say -0.5? This makes the driver take over how much detail to show in a texture and to show more then normal amounts of it. Neat trick and it might be a work around for whatever the hell is up with this situation. I agree, this is really odd.

Have not modded anything on my skyrim Pure vanilla textures hehe but since launch. i havent been able to get higher textures.
Where can i find that?

Kay, give that AF LOD bias thing a whirl then through the ATI control panel. There's a thread around here that talks about it and I believe gives rather good instructions on how to do it:
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1333168-lod-understanding-what-we-see/

I dont have that kind of problem i guess. Those screenshots in that thread seems to be another problem since im still loading the textures. Those in the Af Lod bias thread are even more horrible

But check out the negative LOD bias settings ones, that's what I'm saying is the negative LOD bias settings force textures to show more of themselves (and sweetly enough this is pretty universal, I've gotten a lot of neat little extra detail out of some other games doing the same thing to those game's nvidia profiles). Just give it a try any ways becaus this will over-ride what the game is telling the card to do and just do it as per that setting.

but i cant seem to find the Af lod bias with Amd

kind of a shot in the dark, but was your my documents ever attached to a networked domain located off your actual pc? IE work, school, multiple pcs in home etc.? I had almost exact same problem with a different game years ago and it was due to the aforementioned issue, I had a domain set up so that any pc I touched at home had my specific my documents folder, but when I disconnected it I ran into a whole slew of permission and file writing errors that caused similar issues - I ended up making a new user account over hassling with vistas my documents settings, just figured I'd toss it out there!