Below are problems I have personally encountered while playing and modding Skyrim. Some issues are related to modding while others are vanilla game problems. Tested and confirmed solutions or workarounds have been included.
Experiencing mouse and/or keyboard lag
If you notice a slight delay in game when turning with the mouse or using the movement keys it's likely the fault of the mouse and accessibility settings in Windows Vista/7 control panel. To fix, open up your control panel and click on the Mouse icon (Start > Control Panel > Mouse). Then click on the Pointer Options tab. Make sure that any or all of the following options that appear are disabled including Display Pointer Trails, Smart Move and Acceleration in Games options. Click Apply, close the window and click on Ease of Access Center (Go to the Start > Control Panel > Ease of Access Center).Click Make the keyboard easier to use. Make sure thatTurn on StickyKeys, Turn on FilterKeys and Turn on ToggleKeys options are disabled.Click on Set up Stickey Keys and Set up Filter Keys. Uncheck the Turn on Sticky Keys when SHIFT is pressed five times and Turn on Filter Keys when SHIFT is pressed for 8 seconds options and click Apply. For additional help solving mouse and keyboard lag in game visit Steam Support.
NPC eyes missing, invisible or disappearing
One cause is the use of antialiasing in game. It's a known vanilla game bug that prevents some video cards and specific driver versions from displaying NPC eyes correctly. The only solution is to disable antialiasing, either through the game's launcher or by editing the SkyrimPref.ini file under the Display section. (MO users must edit the ini file from within MO.) Find "iMultiSample" and make sure it equals zero. As an alternative to AA use FXAA. It's a similar effect that softens screen objects and their jagged edges. It's not as good as AA but has the added benefit of having a negligible impact on framerates compared with AA.
Experiencing excessively long load times
The main cause of long load times is too many high-resolution textures and meshes packed in the ugrid you are attempting to load into. If it's taking you too long to load into areas of the game try removing some texture or mesh-enhancing mods, using 1K textures instead of 2K or 4K, and/or using a texture optimizer. This can dramatically speed up loading and has the added benefit of lowering general game instability while boosting your framerate.
Followers have all become cowards
If you're using Skyrim Immersive Creatures, it may cause your followers to occasionally loose their confidence during battle. This will persist for several real world minutes before they regain their confidence and decide to fight with you again. I have not found a way to disable this undocumented feature or bug apart from disabling the mod. Also, it cannot be overridden by console commands or other mods as far as I have tested.
Experiencing low framerates and freezing crashes
If your game framerate is consistently below 30 frames-per-second (FPS) then you're likely also experiencing stutters, long load times and maybe even periodic freezing crashes. There are many reasons for this. Your CPU, graphics card and or memory may not be good enough. You may have too many graphical and script-heavy mods installed. You may have misbehaving mods installed that are poorly optimized, buggy and/or out of date. Your PC may be in need of optimization. I recommend reading through my Skyrim guide from the beginning for tips and recommendations for overcoming these problems. Even with good hardware and careful selection of mods, you're still going to have to limit the number of resource-intensive mods you choose to use due to limitations in the game engine.
Good game performance but experiencing abrupt locational CTDs
If you find yourself crashing to desktop without warning while trying to load into a new area or moving to a specific location, this is often the fault of errors generated from specific mods, sometimes with problem scripts or unclean and bad edits. In many cases this can be overcome by isolating the problem mod, uninstalling it, saving over your "corrupted" save, and finally cleaning your save of residual scripts from the problem mod if any exist. However, a script mod will likely leave a permanent mark on a save file that cannot be purged completely and this may continue to cause problems until you start over with a clean save. Another cause of abrupt CTDs is the use of too many high-resolution textures whose requirements exceed your available video memory. Try sticking to 1K or 2K resolution graphics, using texture optimizers and removing demanding texture mods one at a time to test game stability in a problem area where CTDs typically occur. CTDs can also occur when faulty meshes from mods are loaded or where conflicting game resources from two different mods try to load at the same time. From my experience and regardless of the exact cause, most abrupt CTD problems can be overcome by isolating a problem mod and removing it. If all else fails, get your character away from the area that is causing the CTD. If you're trapped in an interior location where attempts to leave through a load screen are causing a CTD, open up the console and use the COC command to teleport yourself to another area, ie. "COC Whiterun." Over time the game will reset assets in the area and
NPCs and creatures sometimes not moving or behaving as they should
There are primarily two reasons for this problem. One is script lag from too many modded scripts running at the same time. The other reason is a limitation of the game engine that only allows a maximum of 20 NPCs and creatures within a game cell to run their autonomous AI routines at the same time. Overcoming the script lag usually requires the removal of one or more script-heavy mods to reduce the total number of active scripts at any given time. As for reaching the cell limit on active actors, you can solve this by either removing or tweaking mods that add extra NPCs to keep numbers below 20 or try using a mod calledArtificial Intelligence Limit Increaser which increases the cell limit to 100 active actors.
Followers such as Farkas won't self heal and keep crawling around
This is a vanilla game bug where a scripted, essential follower gets stuck in a wounded state and won't stop crawling around after combat is over. A quick fix is to use a shout on them or try a shield or weapon bash. Alternately, try a heal other spell or the "resetai" command in the game console.
Dragons have very low-resolution textures up close
This is a vanilla game bug that occurs when dragons fail to switch out their LOD textures when coming within close range of the player. Installing alternate dragon textures from a mod will not correct this problem because the dragons will still switch back to low-resolution textures at long range. One fix is to install a mod called No Dragon LODs. This ensures that dragons spawn with full-resolution textures no matter how far away from the player they are. Unless you're using a mod or console commands to spawn in a lot of extra dragons in the game world or have extended ugrids this should have little impact on performance.
Custom NPC face/head texture is darker than body
This is a known bug and can be corrected using the Creation Kit. Load up the modded NPC in CK (from within MO) and find them listed in the Actors section. Highlight the name and type control + F4. This will give you a prompt to "export face gen data for all npcs." Select "yes." Now start up your game save and the NPC's head and body textures should match.
Custom NPC forehead is red
This is a known bug that can be fixed by opening the modded NPC's texture folder in MO and deleting any face gen data files that were created by the Creation Kit. If that doesn't work, load up CK and find the Character Gen Parts section of the actor you wish to fix and turn on the head preview. The same color mismatch should be visible. Isolate the specific face texture causing the problem (it's often the lips.dds) and manually adjust the face tint color. With a little patience you should be able to match the rest of the head's color.
Upon loading a save, all NPCs are frozen like mannequins
If you haveFores New Idles in Skyrim installed and subsequently install or uninstall any related animation mods without patching FNIS, this is usually the result. To fix, activate GenerateFNISforUsers (from within MO) and follow the prompts to create a patch that will allow FNIS to register the changes.
My followers keep getting lost
In the vanilla game followers can easily get stuck on objects and if you stray too far away from them they may stop following you. Vanilla game solutions may include waiting in place for a time, sleeping, initiating a load screen by fast traveling or passing through a cell-loading door in the hopes your companion finally catches up. Failing that, you can use the console to teleport yourself to the NPC by typing "player.moveto xxxxxx," where x is the reference ID of the NPC (these can be found online). A much easier solution is to simply install a follower management mod like EFF that automatically teleports your followers to you if they get stuck or fall too far behind. A final tip relates to followers who cannot keep up with you because they're too slow. Use the targeted console command "set speedmult xx" to make them run faster. The default setting is 1.0.
Uninstalled mod files in MO keep loading and won't disappear from the esp/esm list
This is the result of having modified mod files created by a program such as the Creation Kit generated from within MO. The way MO works is that any modified files are sent to the overwrite folder that appears in red italicized text in the bottom of the left mod list panel. Even if you delete the main mod, any related files that you edited from within MO will remain in this virtual folder. To get rid of them double click on "overwrite" and right click to delete files. The benefit of this setup is that you can keep modified files separate from the original mod, optionally turn them into permanent mod files, and toggle them on or off or move them up or down your load order for testing purposes.
