May have messed up my game... help

[charliechip95]

A month and a half ago I changed the Skyrim .ini settings in order to get the visual benefits. I used the following guide (I have a GTX 680):
Optimize : Five Fast Skyrim Tweaks Guaranteed To Make Your Game Look Better | GeForce

I read through the article and used all the tweaks that are listed there. Unfortunately, it made the game a bit jumpy and crashy, so I decided today to change my .ini settings back to the default. After doing this, my most recent save files all crashed on load. The saves made before I messed with things will work, but going back to them I will lose a lot of progress.
I looked online to find a fix, and it turns out that changing the "uGridsToLoad" line can create problems with save files. So I tried the following fix (which I found on the same geforce tweak guide):

1. Backup SkyrimPrefs.ini, Skyrim.ini and your Skyrim ‘Saves’ folder.
2. Right click on Skyrim.ini in My Documents\My Games\Skyrim and uncheck ‘Read Only’ in the file’s properties.
3. Load your last save game.
4. Press tilde on your keyboard, most commonly placed directly to the left of ‘1.’ If it is elsewhere, the keyboard symbol should be ` or ~.
5. In the now-visible in-game console type setini “ugridstoload:general” 5
6. Hit Return on your keyboard.
7. Type saveini
8. Hit Return on your keyboard.
9. Type refreshini
10. Hit Return on your keyboard.
11. Close the console using tilde.
12. Create a new save game.
13. Exit Skyrim.
14. Delete Skyrim.ini in My Documents\My Games\Skyrim.
15. Reload the Skyrim configuration tool.
16. Close the tool.
17. Re-tweak Skyrim.ini if necessary (and SkyrimPrefs.ini if it has since been modified).
18. Reload Skyrim and your most recent save.
19. Enjoy the game.

First, I re-moddifyed my .ini files so I could open my recent saves. I opened the game, typed all the console commands listed above, saved. Back to the .ini files, made them clean again. I was hoping this would have worked, but instead the game opens with a reddish hue:

And the game still crashes on load. If anyone has any thoughts or fixes they would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Tara]

lol, that's pretty funny (I'm easily amused). You can always make a backup of your saves and then re install the game. The game installs a lot faster than most commercial games- or at least for me it does.

 

[charliechip95]

The main problem isn't really the game install, like you say that shouldn't be too hard to fix. The problem is that I removed the

"uExterior Cell Buffer=36"

...line in Skyrim.ini, and added in it's place...

"uExterior Cell Buffer=64
uGridsToLoad=7"

And then saved my game... Which theoretically shouldn't be a problem, but it was making things laggy, so I changed it back:

"uExterior Cell Buffer=36"

And now the saves that I made will not load. I'm wondering if changing the UGrids alters the save files themselves, so that going back to default the saves are no longer 'compatible'.