Dear Community and Support,

After last update and HD texture DLC I can't start SKyrim through Steam. I always get error code 51. I even tried to redownload the game completely, but no luck there. I also added it to exclusions in my KIS2012 - still no luck.

Can you advice what might be the issue?

Thanks

If you are using the latest Nvidia beta drivers, roll back to a previous version. The newest beta drivers don't exactly play nicely with Steam.

I had a similar problem after I had installed the high resolution textures pack. I quit Steam, re-opened it and launched the game clicking on the "play" button. The problem solved by itself after that and I'm now able to launch the game directly by clicking on the TESV.exe, as I always do.

Use the "check integrity of game files" option in steam to check for any errors with the game files.

Integrity of files is fine (checked through Steam and through CFToolbox). I'll try to roll back the drivers though..

I can confirm that I had the exact same issue and after installing the new nvidia beta drivers. Installing the older (stable) release fixed the issue.

Indeed, it helped! Thanks for the advice!

Note that this resets your vidcard settings to be re-detected at launch.
Also resets your .ini file to default.
Also resets your in-game settings ie. level of difficulty, joy/no joy, everything except your buttons.
Doing this is like re-installing the game (just so everybody knows).
L8R

Indeed, thats part of the point of it since many issues can be caused by the user and its a way to rule it out somewhat.

I was about to make a post about this problem, with one slight difference, I just upgraded my hardware to whats in my sig(bar the Case, I get that tomorrow) anyway
I reinstalled Win7 64bit, updated steam guard so i can login using my new machine, and when i went to play Skyrim, it gave me the Error 51.
So i tried the verify files "didn't work" i tried unnstalling "didn't work" I have DVD version so i used it to install and steam updated the rest. still nothing works.
When I finsihed installing Win7 I d/led the latest Nvidia drivers 290.53 beta i figured the newest would be best, but from the above posts I see i need toget a older set of drvers.
Just hope when i finish that the game works.

Right, the 295 drivers are not Steam friendly for some odd reason. I'm sure Nvidia is aware of it, but they haven't fixed it for some reason.