Horrible Problem - Can't Enchant, Do Alchemy, Forge, & More

[Guest Maja]

I have Skyrim with the DLC and Hearthfire add-ons and have been consistently experiencing a horrible glitch that prevents me from enchanting, forging and improving weapons and armor, doing alchemy, building my house, spending dragon souls, reading Oghma Infinium, and now even starting a new game!  What happens is that whenever I begin these tasks and the question box pops up asking "are you sure you want to do [whatever action]," I am unable to select an option.  I can still move the cursor, and when hovered over an option within the box, the option does light up as if it recognizes the cursor, but it won't let me click an option or even Tab escape from the task, such that I literally have to Ctrl Alt Delete out of the game every single time I get a mini question screen like this.  VERY rarely, the box will work for certain random quests (for example, when it asked whether I wanted to extract blood for Discerning the Transmundane and during my first and only character creation).  Everything else is okay, but obviously this is preventing me from experiencing a lot of amazing game features.  Someone please help because this is a pretty horrific problem. 

[David]

Doesn't sound very fun. 

 

Before going into anything else, let's try verifying the game cache.

1. Go into Steam and find your game list.
2. Right click on Skyrim and select "Properties" at the bottom of the pop-up.
3. Go to the "Local Files" tab.
4. Click the "Verify Game Cache" button.

That should make sure you're not missing any files.

 

Oh, and you should also disable any modifications you have running. If none of the above helps, post back here and we'll try something else.

[Guest Maja]

Interesting, when I did as you suggested, it said "1 files failed to validate and will be reacquired," but didn't offer any further options after that.  My question at this point is what I need to do reacquire said file, which I seriously hope won't involve deleting my game thus far (and if this next step is obvious, please excuse my complete lack of tech savvy).  By the way, I didn't yet download any mods, so that shouldn't be a problem.  Thanks for the help.

[David]

It should have automatically reacquired the file. Have you tested the game to see if it was fixed?

[Guest Maja]

So I just opened the game, and a window popped up asking to lower video quality to medium (which I did), and a second Steam window then opened, asking if I wanted to redownload fixes or something along those lines, which I also did (though that didn't really seem related to the missing file).  However, when I just tried to craft a potion, I once again had to ctrl alt delete out of the game because I couldn't click on the little pop-up box.  Ironically, though, the tide button commands work, so if you happen to have any suggestions about using ~ to replicate alchemy, enchanting, etc. I'd love to try that.  (Player.enchantitem, lol?)  Also, it still claims that one file failed when I just ran the check again.