So I've had Skyrim on the PC for about 3 months and recently the game wouldn't even load at all. I did a complete reinstall, and then disabled all of my mods (except for the high resolution textures). Now the game works and most of my saves work fine. However, every time I try to start a new game now, when the carts reach the wall at Helgen, all the prisoners hop out of the carts, and then everyone just stands around. No one has their name called and no one proceeds towards the chopping block. Hopefully someone can help me get this sorted out as I'd like to make a new character now that horse combat is out

Welcome to the forums!

Your reinstallation was not really complete, if after it you still had enough mods to be able to disable them.

Rather than disable your mods, you should delete/erase/purge/eliminate/annihilate them down to the very last individual file. Show no mercy at all.

If nothing else helps, delete the whole Data folder, and reacquire the vanilla files from Steam yet again. (Though, if you know what you are doing, you can also first set aside some of the largest, clearly not mod-related files and return them to the Data folder after having cleared it, just to reduce the required amount of downloading.)

May sound radical, but you have nothing to lose, especially if you have back-ups of your mods. The fact just is, that there are many mods that are not yet compatible with the current game version, and the best course of action may well be to start from scratch, and gradually rebuild you mod setup while looking out for incompatible mods. (Some mods, particularly those, that contain loose files rather than .bsa archives, may continue to have an effect, even if disabled, as long as their files remain in the Data folder.)

One note about removing mods: DOUBLE-CHECK the Scripts folder!!! If you are unsure, delete that folder and then use Steam to verify integrity. MUCH faster than redownloading your entire Data directory!!

Edit: Also check for BSAs that are not vanilla.

Steam says about another half an hour to go. Anything else I should be checking for?

EDIT: Everything is now working.