After a very long battle getting my system to run Skyrim again I’ve run into one last issue. After starting a new game no NPC talks, and when we get to Helgen we don’t get off the truck (presuming because none of the NPC chat activated).

Any ideas?

OK, I’ve done some deep digging and it appears people stopped complaining about this bug soon after the 1st patch. So naturally I figured maybe Steam wasn’t patching my game, but checking the version on the pause menu shows I have the most recent patch... so that’s not it... unless the pause menu is lying?

Any other way I can verify I am correctly patched?

I did load 30+ mods but only two are sound related (Sounds of Skyrim). And sound works fine at startup, it’s just dialog. When it’s time for Ralof to start talking he just looks at me... and we all get stuck in the cart when it parks in the courtyard...

OK, maybe I forgot to update my sound card driver... trying that now...

Ok, sound card drivers updated... CreativeLabs took almost an hour to download them... weird as my d/l speed is 7Kb/s....

So... I still can’t play... anyone have an idea how to fix this issue?

Another night passed and no Skyrim. If anyone has a solution please share!

Any mods? If so remove all of them.

Yes, I had about 30 mods installed. Per your suggestion I uninstalled all of them through NNM, and I still have the problem.

I guess I'll try re-installing the game, but I'm scared that will mess with the registry files again and I don't want to restore my computer to factory setting yet again...

This has become the most stressful experience with gaming I've ever had... any other advice out there?

You dont need to re-install. Simply verify the game cache in steam and it will correct any erronous files in the game install. Ensure that all mods are properly deactivated in the games launcher.

Did you try to verify the cache of your game in its properties in Steam? And what's the connection between the registry settings and re-installing the game?

In simply terms; The games stores its instalation directory info in the registry. If you install multiple times the registry can become cluttered with erronous instalation directories and cause the game to stop working. Though any halfway decent registry cleaning application would resolve this problem. Many are available for free.

Uh? I think I installed my games about 10 times each and I've never had any problem with them...

Many times. It never fixed the issue. All mods are deactivated in the launcher, and still the problem persists.

I just re-installed windows 7 yesterday, ALL my drivers, the game, and still I can't get it working. I didn't even have a good reason to delete the game that was working fine in the first place other than a bit of OCDness and now I am totally stuck... what else could it be?

I'm suspicious of the ini. files as I made very careful small changes in there per modder instructors for a couple mesh mods like Floral project, SMIM, etc... But those should have been re-written with this latest re-install?

I don't think so (actually, I don't remember) because they are not in the main folder; they are in My Documents/My Game/Skyrim. You can back them up, delete both the Skyrim.ini and the SkyrimPrefs.ini, launch the game and see what happens.

unless you format the HDD prior to reinstalling the OS, then in most cases it will keep and restore your My Documents folder and info inside it. That means your ini files are probably still there from earlier. As said above delete both and let the game generate new ones to verify.

OK, whew... I'm getting there... I deleted everything from everywhere based on advice from the other thread I started (sorry about that), and it appears to be working fine, however...

Steam shows the Update is paused and I can't figure out why... I want to start downloading the texture mods I use but I'm worried I shouldn't do that until Steam finishes updating...

Maybe Steam is a lot busy, we are Sunday. The "update" they are downloading also contains the texture packs anyway, so you won't have to do anything about that.

I hope everything we be fine after that. Just try your game before adding any mod though!

Thanks everyone! My game is running awesome! Got all 30+ mods installed and it’s running smooth as butter... so so so happy! Off to escape Helgen...

Glad to know! Come back here if anything wrong happens.