Hey all, I just reinstalled Skyrim today after a couple months away from it, and all of a sudden http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjAtOEnrLB8. I'm assuming it has something to do with one of the latest patches (I'm on version 1.5.24.0), since when I installed the game a few months ago it ran perfectly fine without issue. I've noticed other people having problems with shadows as well, but I don't think I've seen anyone with this exact issue.

Since this is a clean install, there are no mods installed, nor have I even touched the SkyrimPrefs.ini.

NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M, if that helps.

Any thoughts on why this is happening/how to fix it?

I have same the kind of issue with shadow excepts not that severe. It seems to be a problem only in indoors areas.

I have a similar problem, but not as severe as yours, however mine occurs if i face away from a light source, any light at all simply drops out suddenly into blackness. See here my vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b4cXcIwgP0 I have 2x ATI HD 4850 crossfire. Any reason why the reinstall? Anyway check your Display Adapter icon in Decive Manager (find it in Control Panol) as there may be a warning icon. Is the stage your at from a previous save? its possible your save file is corrupt, test by starting a new game (Save your progress first) then see how a fresh begining looks compared to your present save. Sorry for not having a clear solution but hope this points you in the right direction until someone has a concrete solution. Btw my issue is still unsolved, a real head scratcher.

I have not seen these shadow issues post patch, I am wondering if it is a setting in either the control panel or somewhere else. Another poster had this issue around the last patch and it turned out to be a setting deep inside the Nvidia control panel that was interfering with the game.

My hard drive died on me some time back, so I probably should have specified I didn't uninstall and then install the game again, so I really was starting with a completely clean slate. Didn't even have any saves backed up, so I tried starting several new games and had this issue with all of them, both in interior and exterior environments.

I'm going to delve into the Nvidia CP and see what I can find. Hopefully I'll come across a solution. If all else fails I suppose I can reinstall again and keep Steam auto-update off.

I have this issue but less severe. I have a ticket in with CS. Hopefully I will get a fix soon.

It's not control panel. IIt's not the driver. It's not the card. It's not mods. It's the 1.5 update not playing nice with some of our vid cards. It disappears if I run 1.4. I have tried ini settings, high and low settings, various shadow setting suggestions, regen inis as well.

Nothing works.

It is the patch changing .ini values namely shadowdistance has been halved in most cases.....I was able to revert mine to what they were before and have the ini keep that setting by changing the ini properties to read only after making changes.

Setting .ini files to pre-1.5 patch values removes all the shadow flickering? Anyone know exactly what values has changed?

No.....it fixed my shadowdistance being nerfed in half on a computer that could double the default maybe quadruple it and even when I reset it to the 1.4 value it would revert. I had to (for the first time in my life) set an .ini to read only. The shadowdistance is determined by your config my value was 8000.0000 for Ultra/High after 1.5 it was 4000.0000.

So to be clear you can experiment by using 1.4 ini values and setting the ini to read only to ensure that the settings are actually taking effect. I have no idea what they change in 1.5 but they def changed something.

Tried that. I mean, it might work for other problems, but like I said. I messed with the ini so much I had to regenerate it.

Ya def more going on with shadows and 1.5 but I have no issues with my rig and that is all I can report aside that strange nerf and the whole needing the file to be read only...never had to be like that before. I def don't doubt you at all and can't say I have put a ton of hours into 1.5.

Hopefully customer service will have some answers. Even sent them my DXDiag text, so they're at least taking it seriously.

My theory is they scaled back on shadows to help with performance and screwed something up....seems they don't test on a vast range of setups.

Oh. Well, I've officially been told to bugger off due to my graphics card not meeting minimum requirements...??? Uhhhh. Actually... it does! Let's see if he closed the ticket on me...

What card? I also find this hilarious since Skyrim is a heavily CPU tied game...

ATI Radeon Mobility HD 3670. 1 gig, 512 dedicated. Just ran a different diag tool and it said 740 dedicated. DXDiag said 507??? Never hear od 507.

And after I told them I know it's BS, they said, they cannot guarantee performace on systems below recommended specs. Therefor, they hope that I figure it out for myself or that update 1.5.26 fixes it (if they ever stop rolling it back I'll check.

Direct X 9.0c compliant video card with 512 MB of RAM

Talk about fail......and for the record a friend of mine runs a crappy Zotac 260 on medium so they are lying to you.

I think they broke the launcher and are playing damage control by any means possible.

What pisses me off is why advertise minimum specs and then refuse to support people who meet those? Is there some sort of language that says we now have to have recommended specs to get service?

It's crap and I'm email outside the Tech Support chain now. Not because I need help, but to show them how formulaic 'cut and paste' their tech team is. They literally pasted company approved replies. I can get that on a website FAQ, ya jerks.

But anyways... Haven't had time to test 1.5.26 yet, but man... this is going to be a sad sad day if all future updates fail to address this.

Again, for anyone reading this, please read all of my posts before replying because 1.) I've tried everything that is routinely suggested. 2.) it's not my card and it's NOT the garden variety shadow bug.

1.5.26 went live earlier today, so you'll have to address this issue one way or the other. I would normally suggest updating your video card drivers, but I know that can be problematic for some laptop/notebook GPU configurations. Then again, I would be hard-pressed to consider any "mobility" GPU sufficient to run this game.

I'll post the stats when I get home. It's good enough, trust me. I used 3 diagnostic tools to verify that.

Also 12.3 driver is out and seems to fix a ton of other issues. Fingers crossed, but between the two it should be good.

I have exactly the same shadow problem on my 'patch test' system, although far below minimum specs, it can run skyrim without problems, apart from running as a slideshow
I just use it to see if my major complain about the game (the keymappings) is solved, until then steam stays offline on my more capable system.
My testsystem is a pentium4 2.4GHz with hyperthreading and a Nvidia 6800 AGP with 256mb, and its directx 9 capable.
The patch 1.5 introduced these horrible shadows, copying only the TESV.exe from patch 1.4 over the 1.5 version solves this.
What Bethesda did to 1.5 I do not know, but also the 3D players have trouble with these 1.5 shadows, and someone made a workaround for them, maybe it works also for the 2D users.

Skyrim on absolute low is a joke guys even if you(with good PC's) set it to low.....YOUR low will be different than someone who gets autodetected to low. Bethesda drones were just reading off a little sheet that most likely has a flowchart of crap responses that make you thing they aren't even listening to what you are saying but waiting for a keyword so they can use their next pre written response.

@Tuckley Have you tried to do a complete uninstall(you would have to back up saves and remove the file with your ini etc. in Documents/Mygames after uninstalling) registry sweep and a reinstall? Tends to solve any issues I cannot rectify by other methods but takes a while and thus I use it as a last resort. That said I have had to do it for 3 major patches already even on my rig.

You must have read my mind. I did just that last night. I kept getting interrupted by stupid real life junk, so I think I might have messed up the registry sweep, so I'll have to try again tomorrow. It didn't work this time, but just to be sure, I want to give it one more shot.

Yes, they even cut and paste the same 2 paragraphs twice.

One intersting note. Since 12.3 catalyst, the game now detects as 'high' and runs much much better (minus the obnoxious shadows, and truat me I took some even more spectaculary fail screenies to mail to the.

Basically, I was told to eff off because they say the card only has 128 dedicated. So, how come every diag tool I've used says over a gig total and over 512 dedicated? When I bought the notebook, the specs said 512mb dedicate ram video card with crossfire.

Basically, now I've jumped over to the customer service side to try and see if they will ask Tech to work with me a little bit.

All I want is to know that when the first DLC comes out, I can play it without these broken shadows.

Lastly... if anyone knows how to do this.... it appears to have made the shadows approx 10 times larger than they should be. So, me thinks the shadow scale got bumped up one order of magnitude somehow.

I might actually make a whole new thread for my specific problem.

After updating to v1.5.26 (directly from v1.4.27) my game shadows also started to act like crazy (nevermind the lag, I was running low on disk space while recording): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puZftjv7Dds

As you can see, there are sudden light/shadow transitions without motive and shadows go specially crazy around trees, for example.

Using latest AMD/ATI v12.3 drivers with a Mobility 3650HD 512MB - before updating to v1.5, did not have any problem with shadows at all and could run the game nicely.

No mods whatsoever, no .ini tweaks and no Catalyst Control Center configs (running everything default), the game is as vanilla as it could be - the only addition is the official high resolution textures DLC.

This is exactly what is happening to me!!!!

Notice something.... the shadows are there, but they are like 10 times bigger!!!

You and I should start a new thread because this one has been buried.