I played yesterday and everything worked fine. I play now in offline mode. I am patch to 1.3. (Not 1.3.10 patch). Every time I click on the Elder Scrolls icon on my desktop I get this same message.
"The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim failed to start (error code 51)" I do not want to leave offline mode because I do not want to patch. My family member does not have this problem as I do. She is Widows XP and I am Window 7 I do not know if that makes any different. Does anyone have this same issue? How do I fix this error?

Edit: No I do not use 4GB patch. I just patch my game and then it work. Thanks anyway.

Did you use 4GB patch? Ditch it because the update was to make Skyrim use 4GB tuning without using LAA.

I'm getting the same error code. I had four error files after verifying file integrity, so now its patching those files. Hopefully when the download is complete I'll be able to run my game.

I'm able to run my game now.