Once I click "start a new game," skyrim hangs up on the Imperial Dragon iconic Skyrim symbol that is normally displayed, complete with animated smoke in the background, and goes no further. The typical options disappear, and it sits on that loading screen for eternity. It's not frozen, per se, the smoke is still animated, as well as sound, but it will go no further.

Any suggestions on how to fix this?

Are you using any mods, enhancements or texture or anything atall?

Yes.
I'm supposing I should probably disable them and start reenabling them...
... I'll see if this works and report back when I have the time to evaluate it.

Thanks, that worked. I've been able to one by one restore my mods as well to try and figure out which it is that's the problem.

That's good mate. It's a learning curve with mods and elder scrolls games