I've been playing skyrim for about 30 hours now without a single hitch, everything was running smooth, and not a single freeze or ctd or anything like that. All of a sudden it becomes unplayable with the most time I've spent in-game in a single session was about 30 minutes, most times it dies after a minute or two, gets stuck on a loading screen leaving me trapped inside any area I managed to enter, or doesn't even get past the initial loading screen.

I've tried:

• Turning off all mods (resulted in freezing on first loading screen every time
  
• Turning off only mods I've downloaded in past day or so (managed to play for a half hour after this, then started freezing again)
  
• Reinstalling Skyrim (no change at all)
  
• Reverting to original .ini files (nothing)
  
• Verified integrity of cache on steam (also nothing)

Load order:

[IMG]http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/2583/loadorder.png[/IMG]

Really at a loss here, I've had a similar issue with Fallout 3 where auto saves and constant overwriting of a single save would make the game unstable, but I've managed to play around 30 hours each of New Vegas and Skyrim using only manual saves always in new slots and haven't had a problem until now. Short of starting a new game and hoping for the best, is there anything else I could try? Would loading a save hours before this started possibly be any help?

For mod issues, here's the proper board: http://www.gamesas.com/forum/183-skyrim-mods/

Since you're in this one, completely revert to a vanilla game. Uninstall, not disable, any and all mods, script extenders, injectors, etc. Wipe out all INI files, even ones in the Data folder. Verify the files. Start a new game and see if the issue persists.

Is it possible, or rather, likely that one of the mods I downloaded screwed up any saves I made after I installed it? Been playing on an earlier file for an hour or so and it "seems" to be working fine although I fully expect it to crash as soon as I post this.If it does crash and I need to wipe everything I will, but I'd rather not go through all the trouble if it's something as simple as "the mod tainted all saves made post download, use an earlier one".

Edit: Think I got it, been playing a while from an old save with no problems, thanks for the help.

I keep mods to a minimum for this reason. Perhaps after I exhaust all re-playability I will mod more...

Yes this is the typical issue with Skyrim and has been for a while now.

The save file becomes borked which in turn causes the game to behave strangely.
The save file becomes broken due to quest bugs and conflicts between them accumilating.

Whether or not this is due to old save games being broken by certain patch releases is hard to tell.