I put in about 100+ hours into Skyrim, but didn't really play over the holidays. I tried to play for the first time today and Steam will not load. I get the little screen that says preparing the load and it flickers open and shut but the game never runs. None of my other Steam games are having this problem. I already deleted all mods and uninstalled/reinstalled the game. I tried to uncheck the Steam community in Steam settings. I have never had this problem so I don't know how to fix it. Any ideas?

check cache tried it?

Yes I ran the Validating Steam Cache files but no go.

Playing in offline mode seems to remove the problem. Not really optimal thought since I like to stay on-line while I play.