I start Skyrim, sit thru the intro, get to the "who are you? screen, choose my race, get a "finish" Or "cancel" box, then can;t do a thing. Enter, esc, R, F rt arrow, etc. etc. have no effect. What am I doing wrong? Win7, Steam, high-end laptop, searched the forums.

Am I an idiot?

I am not sure what is going on, but I do know you are in the wrong forum.

After you finish creating your character's appearance, you press the "R" button, and it will open a window asking you to type in your character's name. Then you can press Enter to finish. You can also click with your mouse on the screen prompt where it says what key to press, and it will do the same thing as pressing the key.

Can you enter in a name? I am asking because it sounds like perhaps there is an issue with the game not recognizing your keyboard?

Also note that if you remapped your keys in the past, the game will still show the default key bindings in all of its prompts, even though you have changed them. If you have changed the function of the "R" key to something else, it also changes the function above to that same key.

Which forum should I be in?

I cannot enter a charactor name - no response from my keyboard.

You should be in the Skyrim PC tech help forums. Ask a moderator to move the topic for you.

It sounds like a hardware issue with your laptop to me, but I am just guessing. If your laptop has a function key that changes your keys, like to use some as a numpad, it might be that is turned on and you do not realize it.

It'll get moved to the right forum, don't worry.

I"m on PS3 not PC, but I remember this bit as confusing as well. I had to mess around with all the buttons on the controller until I figured out which one made me get to the appropriate screens for naming and creating characters, picking his or her race, etc. Not sure how this works in PC, though.

Think you have to use your 'Ready Weapon' key to finalize the character sheet.