so I've started having this bug where when I'm walking by NPCs they will start up their normal greeting, but then it will stop for a fraction of a second, then either continue or they will start saying something else or just stop talking completely.

It's most notable in situations where you're watching a story part and NPCs are talking to each other or you but not in an actual dialogue window with you.

Funny... I popped in here specifically to see if anyone else was having this issue, and this was on the first page.

It's exactly what you're describing. The speech starts normally, then it suddenly stops for just a second in the middle of a line, and continues immediately afterwards. It seems like it skips several seconds of the speech though, not just the half a second it's cut out for.

I don't remember this happening in older versions, but I only played about 10 hours before 1.4 came out. I'm using SKSE now (for SkyUI), so I'm going to try loading the game without either and see if it's still happening.

^^Tried it without SKSE and SkyUI, no change. Definitely seems far more likely to happen if I'm moving when the dialog is playing... I tested this talking to a guard in Whiterun. If I hit E and immediately back away, some of the speech gets cut out about 50% of the time. If I stand still it doesn't seem to happen. Nothing has changed about my system since I played with the pre-patch version, and I'm not using any other mods.

Something like this was happening after I installed the new texture pack. I had to delete local content, download it again, then going in and manually deleting everything, including everything in your "My Games/Skyrim" folder after making a backup of my saves, then redownloading it again, and it works now.

I haven't installed the texture pack, however I tried completely removing Skyrim and reinstalling as you described (including removing all of the folders), unfortunately it doesn't seem to have helped.

*Edit: Apparently I forgot the oldest rule of PC troubleshooting. Somewhere between installing new video drivers earlier in the week, totally reinstalling the game, updating audio drivers, etc. it never occured to me to restart the computer.

Seems to be completely fixed now. I probably didn't need to do any of the other things I tried, but hey... at least I know I have the latest drivers and a clean Skyrim install now.

This started during the 1.4 patch beta and was never fixed....maybe in the next patch.

Yes, this seems to happen to me as well. Usually when an npc greets me and I move in some direction.

Having the same issue here. Just for 1-1.5 seconds the dialog audio stops and then goes on as before.

Edit: it seems to work now that I restarted my computer

wow and here i thought I'd be the only one lol... guess I'll try restarting my computer like another poster said, haven't done that in awhile lol

Restarting will make it go away for a little while but it will come back....I have put about 50 hours into 1.4 and can say that a restart remedied it for maybe 10.

restarted and its fine, have you restarted once it came back to see if that fixed the problem again?

ya it has come back for me too, I'm going to check to see if a restart fixes it again, annoying bug though...

For sure I turned subtitles on for the time being but hopefully they fix it in a future patch. It only happens with random NPC speech so it isn't really game breaking.

This started happening to me too after the 1.4 patch (and long before I downloaded the CK & HD textures). I was beginning to wonder if my sound card had an issue!

Restarts have not resolved it.

Win7 x64
ATI 6950
Soundblaster X-FI Extreme
Mods: PISE, Deadly Dragons, some NPC change ESPs with Skyrim NPC Editor

Adding my name to this list, like everyone else, it started with 1.4, at first I thought it was because the ENB shaders I had were making it run too slow, but after removing that it didn't fix it, though now thanks to another lighting mod I get fantastic lighting at no performance cost. gamesas what have you done to your game with 1.4?

Ok so who uses VOIP? Skype ? Mumble ? Vent? I noticed that after using Mumble this bug starts to happen. When I restart my computer it fixes itself until I boot mumble again. So basically my theory at least as of now is that Mumble is changing something causing the sound to cut out randomly. This would make sense due to multiple sound card/onboard sound configs having the same issue post 1.4.

Still can't believe into 1.5 now and this issue is STILL here.

Same here, only started happening to me on 1.5 (that I noticed), it's only a small little thing and I assumed it was my CPU bottlenecking or something, so just ignored it, then I was browsing around here seeing if anyone has the same issues as I, and I spot this thread, and I read it, and I'm like, wow, this is OLD bug, wth.

Yeah, I can add that I've seen this as well. Usually when I walk up to an NPC, they sometimes start talking then either pause and restart their dialog or just restart their dialog. I notice it most when they fall silent and I head out the door, and then they suddenly appear next to me and the dialog restarts. When it's a shopkeeper and they appear maybe 100+ feet from their door and just start their greeting, it's noticable. Otherwise, it might be easy to confuse with just normal dialog.

Addendum: It's actually plugging in my Microsoft Lifechat Headset that is causing it for me. If I unplug it and reboot the issue doesn't arise at all.