I'm not sure what happened but after February the 15th the game locks up on loading screens between areas. Whenever I try to fast travel it shifts over to a loading screen that never goes away.

So far I've:
-disabled all mods.
-restored backed up saves from 2 weeks ago.
-started a new character.

While using backup saves or a new character seemed to fix it for a little while, it eventually stops mid load again. I just created a new character (no mods or hi res packs) yesterday and today when entering a cave it game me an infinite loading screen again.

Has anyone had this problem and if so is it tied to any particular patch or update. I do have the creation kit installed if that matters.

I'm having similar problems. I simply can't load recent saves when I start up Skyrim. I have to load up an older save and then load a later one afterwards in order to resume.

Same problem here...ironically after I upgraded my computer to a 3.6 ghz with an HD6950. Maybe they want us to empathize with the PS3 players.

@ Omnomnam: It's not actually when loading saves. The game loads saves just fine, no worries. Its in the transition from one area to another via doors, fast travel, or teleport spells/commands (if I have a mod active that gives teleportation).

@Killstofferson: I haven't changed anything software or hardware-wise in over a week. I can't think of anything it could be aside from a Steam update.

I just uninstalled the game and deleted all local content (after backing up saves and such) and am reinstalling to see if that fixes anything.

And now the game is even more broken. I uninstalled and reinstalled the game. If I restore my backed up saves, on the load screen the moment I hover over a save file the game locks up right there in the main menu. I tried deleting them again (along with that .ini) and started a new game from scratch and guess what. It locked up right after I hit the "New Game" option.

This is really infuriating as it kicked in only last week and I've been playing since launch with no problems.

Update:

After reinstalling I had Steam "verify integrity of game cache" and I also turned off that dang cloud syncing. It found 7 files that needed repairing and after that the game worked fine again. I wish I knew what it was that killed it in the first place but I'm just happy it's working again.

I had this problem because I changed INI files to get the World Map in Full 3D. Perhaps your case ?

Well I originally had one of those map mods installed. With the new install though I left out any but the simplest mods (no fiddling with .ini's basically). It worked for a day or so but last night, bam! Infinite loading screens. And that's after the full reinstall and checking the cache. I doubt its the mods as it does it with or without mods activated, new game or old save.