Certain effects aren't showing up in-game at all, namely fire - fire pits, fireplaces and fire spells as they leave the hand, although people on fire are rendering - frost spells and a few other spells. Are these a certain class of effects that I need to set my display setting in order to render these properties?

A variety of unusable graphics solutions will "start" the game, but be unable to carry through with a host of the included effects. Anyone playing this game on PC, but coming from consoles, or having been years away from playing a high intensity game on PC, so totally ignorant now of current hardware capabilities, should have visited this thread and checked on their system, particularly video:

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1316509-unofficial-will-my-pc-run-skyrim-thread-56-w-hardware-guide/

Corrected Skyrim Minimum Requirements

* Windows 7/Vista/XP PC (32 or 64 bit)
* Processor: Dual Core 2.3 GHz C2D or equivalent CPU
* 2GB 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