I asked before, but never really got much response. My issue is the following: Shadows in my game are completely screwed up. They flicker back and forth between different positions or appearing and not appearing every time I move the view on my screen. There are also random oddly shaped shadows that seem to pop up with nothing casting them based on my camera angle. Many shadows do not appear when I am in 3rd person, but different weird shadows from nothing do appear. On a side note, I also get nothing but a green-grey screen when I go underwater. Anyone know if there is a way to fix this? Issues started appearing as soon as I downloaded the patch (against my will, mind you). EDIT: As for mods, the only one which I imagine would affect the graphics would be "Realistic Lighting", but I've tried deactivating it and the problem persists.

Oh, for specs, I don't know if there's a way to get more details, but here's what it says in "system".

I kind of think I know what you're describing. It's called shadow "banding" or "striping". You get it on objects like rocks etc?

Go to SkyrimPrefs.ini in Documents/My Games/Skyrim

Change the line ShadowBiasScale=

To 1.000

I think it's default is 0.3000

See if that helps.

It's NOT that. That is one feature that shows up a lot, but it's a lot more. Like I said, shadows go CRAZY. They're everywhere. I think it actually started off worse when I first updated but it's still terrible and unplayable. They flicker and they dissapear and they go places they shouldn't be, and they sometimes move with my camera as if the sun were locked to move with it, and in 3rd person, depending on the angle I'm looking at, there will be a big square off to my left of shadowed area and then a most of the screen will have no shadow, but then not always, it's really all over the place, it's more than a simple banding issue or a blocky shadows issue.

Have you tried deleting your INI files? It's good practice to do so after every patch, especially when the patch makes changes to graphics.

I tried doing this... it's supposed to recreate them when you next start the game right? I deleted Skyrim_prefs.ini and when that didn't work, I deleted skyrim_default.ini. When I went into the game after each of them, nothing apparent had changed. Same issues. I left, went back to the folder, refreshed and the game hadn't seemed to make new files for the game (but without the .ini how would it run?). Going out and then back into the folders also did not show anything, neither did searching in the main Skyrim directory.

Have you tried verifying the game integrity in steam?

Hey man, how are you?

I encountered that problem your talking about... it happened for me in riften, suddenly all shadow and light effects went crazy,
what helped me solve this was to load a saved game where it hadnt started (it started at a very certin point at the entrence to riften) and then i exited the game...
when i opened it back it went back to normal even though i passed the same point the did it.
tell me if this helps you in anyway.

goodluck!

I gave it a shot, but the issue persists on all saves and even a brand new game using the "new" option.
I don't know how to do that.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=2037-QEUH-3335

Also try updating your graphics card drivers. What gpu does your laptop have by the way? Have you always had that shadow problem or is it just since the latest game patch?

From my time spent on these boards and other Skyrim forums the best way to solve the erratic shadows issue if mods were in play prior to this issue is this:

Uninstall the game(back up save games found in documents/mygames/skyrim) delete everything .ini files everything including the entire skyrim directory located in steam/steamapps/common/skyrim as well as the skyrim folder in documents/mygames/skyrim

CCleaner (free download)....install > registry tab >scan for issues >select issues that are related to Skyrim >when it asks if you want to make a backup click yes> run scan for issues over and over until all Skryim/Bethesda stuff is gone.

Once this is done start up steam disable the cloud support for Skyrim under the properties on the game library list in steam and then install the game fresh....ensure that you are not using bandwidth for other downloads while the game is downloading and installing just to be safe.

Start a new game to generate a fresh .ini then log out of the game move your save files back to where they were

This is obviously last ditch so try quick fixes first but end of the day this should solve it.

ATI users will want to set drivers to 12.1 or 12.3 officials as well...

We already have a thread about this: http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1361153-update-15-shadows-are-invisable-move-with-camera-have-lines-issue-possably-figured-out/

No solution at the moment, you'll have to wait for the next patch.