How do i uninstall game?

[hurrdurrmurrgurr]

I've managed to mod my game into a state where it crashes every few steps so i want to uninstall and reinstall to start over. I tried deleting local content from Steam but it did nothing then I tried redownloading the content thinking it would saved over the top of the old skyrim folder. After several hours of waiting for it to download I found that my old skyrim folder was still there just as I left it.

 

How do I completely uninstall the game and get a fresh installation?

[knovack1]

Bump

 

I would like to know this aswell. Seems that Stupid ass steam is preventing a fresh re- install.

[fms1]

Have you ever backed up your Skyrim folder or do you have automatic backups enabled in Win.? If unsure go to Skyrim folder left click once to highlight then right click, select properties, click on previous versions tab, if yes then this will be much easier, especially if you have slow internet, just go back to a date that's not corrupted and revert to it. you may loose all your installed mods if you don't copy\ paste somewhere else first for temp. usage to copy\ paste or drag\ drop your simple (just esp. file) mods so you don't have go re download all your mods.

[hurrdurrmurrgurr]

Have you ever backed up your Skyrim folder or do you have automatic backups enabled in Win.? If unsure go to Skyrim folder left click once to highlight then right click, select properties, click on previous versions tab, if yes then this will be much easier, especially if you have slow internet, just go back to a date that's not corrupted and revert to it. you may loose all your installed mods if you don't copy\ paste somewhere else first for temp. usage to copy\ paste or drag\ drop your simple (just esp. file) mods so you don't have go re download all your mods.

There aren't any previous versions it's going to have to be a complete rewipe. So how?

[fms1]

Delete Skyrim folder or move temp. location, because uninstall may not remove extra folders mods installed thus when reinstalled you may get same problem, at this point you may be able to just go to Steam library and redeem code, if Steam is in Program files and you want to run mods here's where I suggest uninstalling Steam and reinstalling Steam somewhere outside Program files like C:\Steam, do not make a Steam folder to put Steam in, or it will be this C:\Steam\Steam . the reason I suggest this is every time you want to add or remove a mod the User Account Control will popup and ask "do you want to alter\ change this file\ folder" and after a while this gets very annoying, especially with mod manager software. to uninstall go to Start Menu> Control Panel> Programs> Programs and Features once there find steam click on it and then click Uninstall button, once uninstalled you can put your Disc back in and reinstall to the path I showed, type in your Steam account info and go back through redownloading Skyrim. Once done if you have the HDD space I recommend copying Skyrim folder for backup and place it somewhere safe for if this happens again you won't have to go through all this trouble. I hope this gets you back to gaming.

[Custard7A]

This all seems like a lot of trouble for a mod bum-out, you shouldn't need to be uninstalling your game to clean it up.

 

I'd recommend:

 

1. Go to your ../skyrim/Data directory and delete everything but the following.

 

Skyrim.esm

Skyrim - Animations.bsa

Skyrim - Interface.bsa

Skyrim - Meshes.bsa

Skyrim - Misc.bsa

Skyrim - Shaders.bsa

Skyrim - Textures.bsa

Skyrim - Voices.bsa

Skyrim - VoicesExtra.bsa

Update.esm

Update.bsa

 

These are vanilla master files, so they will be clean. Leaving these just saves you a whole lot of time in step two. If you have the "HighResTexturePack" you can leave those as well.

 

2. Go to your Steam Library, right-click Skyrim, go Properties, go Local Files tab, and verify the integrity of your game cache. It will find missing files and re-download the default versions of them, your game will then be clean (No mods if you didn't save them elsewhere, but you should mod a bit more responsibly by the sound of it anyway).

 

3. In the off-chance you were making ini changes as well, you can go to My Documents/My Games/Skyrim and delete the two configuration files there. They should just remake themselves with the vanilla settings when you start the game up next.

 

4. If you have the Creation Kit you will need to verify the integrity of that as well, in the same way. It will be missing some files that it uses from the Data folder.

 

I suggest uninstalling Steam and reinstalling Steam somewhere outside Program files like C:\Steam, do not make a Steam folder to put Steam in, or it will be this C:\Steam\Steam . the reason I suggest this is every time you want to add or remove a mod the User Account Control will popup and ask "do you want to alter\ change this file\ folder" and after a while this gets very annoying, especially with mod manager software.

You can change your Program Files permissions and security settings to prevent those annoying messages.

Edited March 6, 2012 by Custard7A