GAME WON'T START

[ajmccssjoer]

I am having a problem getting skyrim to start. I have loaded the game many times on different drives and always get the same result, when I press play nothing happens, the game will not load. Last week I noticed after installing the mod manager that the skyrim esm file and update file was missing so I deleted the game , went to Gamestop and purchased a brand new game, I came home loaded the game and still have the same problem. the game has worked for me in the past but know I have no clue on how to get the working. No mods have been installed at all i just loaded the game and it does not work. Please help me solve this problem. My operating system is windows 7 pro 64bit nvidia gforce gtx 275 video card

[Kurylenko1]

Did you not previously own the game on a disk or a digital copy? Could there be a possibility that your drives or registry has become corrupted. Do a check-disk (CHKDSK) test to verify that it doesn't have bad sectors.

 

The command is: chkdsk /f

It may ask you schedule a CHKDSK task due to the drive being locked.

 

Have you recently installed any new drivers or updates from Microsoft?

For now that's all I can think of. Hopefully some other more experienced members in troubleshooting will be able to provide some other diagnostics.

[steve40]

Why on earth would you repurchase the game if you already owned it???

[bben46]

My guess is that if the game was installed previously you may now have a corrupt registry entry or an old registry entry pointing to the wrong location. As you haven't started the game yet, you have no mods or save games to worry about.

First completely remove the game - run the steam uninstall to remove the base game

Then delete the folders from your hard drive all of them, including the ones that the install created to hold the ini and save games.

 

Reboot the computer - this is important - this sets any left over registry entries to orphan status, allo9wing a cleaner to easily find and remove them.

 

Run your choice of a registry cleaner - my own preference is CCleaner.

 

After running the registry cleaner - Reboot again - this completes the removal and allows Windows to clean up the gaps left by cleaning.

 

Now install the game as if it was the first time - either from your DVD or from your steam account. If you are installing from DVD be sure to allow it to set up through steam to get the latest updated version - The DVD doesn't have the updates and the are only legally available through steam.

 

Start the game ONLY after it is fully patched to the newest version - some mods won't work with older versions and will crash your game.

 

DO NOT install any mods right away. First start the game and make a manual save as soon as you can. NEVER overwrite that one as it is now your emergency fall back for when things don't work. Now, before installing any mods play all the way through the tutorial - some mods seem to have a problem with this part. Once you are out of the cave and in the game world, make another permanent manual save. and start adding mods - add one mod at a time and test it to be sure it works properly and doesn;'t cause any problems before adding another one. :thumbsup:

 

More troubleshooting help

Here is a link to my troubleshooting blog. http://s1.zetaboards.com/bbenlibrary/topic/4751769/1/#new

 

 

If you use any of this and have some success - or even if nothing works - please post back here what you did that worked or didn't work. That kind of information can be invaluable to other members having the same or similar problems - And to me in fixing any problems in the blog.