Always do THIS Before Starting | Clean Install 2019 Skyrim Special Edition Modding Guide 

If you have installed mods in Skyrim make sure you delete them first in-game before you uninstall Skyrim. Steam/Bethesda will remember which mods you have installed in-game. Very annoying cause you could go through this clean install tutorial and ran into the problem I had. You can manually delete everything out of folder and it won't matter. Steam/Bethesda will remember which mods you install in-game via mods menu in the Skyrim game. Spent a lot of time doing this and it is very annoying.

You really should put these videos in a playlist so people can follow this guide better in the future.

These videos are like a free version of what should be on Master Class as "The Art of Modding Skyrim." Well done so far.

I lost it when you called vanilla Skyrim "stable".

"so fresh and so clean clean" Subscribing just for that

Finally installing Skyrim SE on my PC. I have worked with mods on my Xbox, but it is time for the major leagues. Your info is extremely insightful and detailed. I'll be tuning in for more content. Thank you.

0:39 I love the way you choose your words. I can see this series is going to be a fun ride. XD

Well after 2000+ hours in modding Skyrim legendary and after 2yrs of pause and with new gpu it seems my wife will not be very happy when she sees my freshly installed SE:(

Bro this vidéo is still in my music favorite play list, and I'll still liste to it

There's a program to create a second library on the same SSD for steam. This saved me a lot of time as all I had to do was move the install folder for Skyrim SE but you'll make up for it in the future if you plan on modding other games.

I gotta say, something about your voice is so understanding and straight forward....ya just maken sense

i only have the c folder and it only comes up with the program folder, i feel stupid but how on earth am i supposed to fix this?? how can i possibly install it in any other folder

Skyrim anniversary edition is coming soon, can’t wait for a remastered tutorial for this

Thank you so much I messed up mine and been trying to fix it and you have helped me so much I wish more people make vids like this

For those of you who have a clean vanilla Skyrim installed in either of the Program Files folders (usually x86) and wish to install it in a different directory within the C drive to avoid issues when modding, you may notice that when trying to create a Library folder within the Steam client, it will give you an error saying that there already exists a Steam Library in the C drive. This is something that Steam introduced in recent years that can be annoying for those of us who only have one SSD and several games installed already in the Program Files (x86) directory. HOWEVER, there is a way to make one that is fairly simple if you follow the steps I am about to lay out. 1. Exit the Steam Client so that it is not running. 2. In your C drive (outside of your Program Files folders), create a new Steam Library named something like "SteamLibrary2". I made a folder dedicated just to Skyrim, so my file path is "C:\\Skyrim\\SteamLibrary2". Inside "SteamLibrary2", or whatever you named the folder, make sure to also create a folder called "steamapps", otherwise you will get a disk error pop up when trying to install games to that directory. 3. Next, Go into C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Steam\\steamapps 4. Open the file "libraryfolders.vdf" in notepad. In here, you can manually change the file paths and add library directories that you wish to use for Steam games. Manually type in the file path for your newly created directory. Make sure whatever folder and file path you type in here actually exists beforehand as Steam does not make it for you; *It must be an existing directory.* So make sure you made one with the steps above. My file looks something like this (the XX's will be random numbers specific to you): "LibraryFolders" { "TimeNextStatsReport" "XXXXXXXXXX" "ContentStatsID" "XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX" "1" "C:\\Skyrim\\SteamLibrary2" "2" "D:\\SteamLibrary3" } Note: This list does not include the one in Program Files (x86), just any additional ones. Here I have a dedicated Steam Library Folder just for Skyrim and one on my HDD as well. Once you have added all the directories you wish to add, Save and Exit the file. 5. Reopen Steam. Go to View>Settings>Downloads>Steam Library Folders and check to make sure that your Library folders were added successfully. If so, move to the next step. If not, repeat the steps above again to make sure everything is done correctly and make sure that the file path is typed correctly in the libraryfolders.vdf file. 6. If Skyrim is not yet installed on your machine, go ahead and install it to your new Library folder, making sure that you select the new file path when prompted if it is not yet selected. If Skyrim is already installed and you wish to move it, simply right click Skyrim in your Library in the Steam Client and go to Properties>Local Files>Move Install Folder. Select your new Library in the drop down list and click Move Folder. Steam will then move it for you and it should only take a few seconds (for me it was very quick but may take longer on other machines, I don't know for sure). Double check in the previous Steam Library in File Explorer to make sure nothing of Skyrim is left and that everything has been moved successfully. 7. Congrats, you are now ready to move on with modding Skyrim without any Administrative issues (hopefully). If your new Steam Library is in a folder called "Skyrim" like me, you can also add your Modding Utilities folder here as well to keep everything neat and in one place. Hope this helps! Comment if you have any questions or issues!

Your voice is so soothing and everything is so understandable. Thanksm now I have a fresh new skyrim I can mod again.

I only have one hard drive so I will need to install into C. However, Steam will not let me change the default directory. It gives me a pop up that says I already have a directory in C and steam will do it for me. Any help? For now, it seems I have to download to program files until I figure this out.

When I was downloading Skyrim on steam, the little tab that shows the loading time was having a seizure and went from 10 minutes to over 1 year, and I found it quite funny and entertaining to watch.

Did not know about the do not install in programs directory, helped a lot, thank you. (subed for that alone)

Steam now has an option to move the game directory, so no need to uninstall/reinstall.

I have a question... yall do know how to just Partition your hard drive? It makes it so virtually there is more than one drive but hardware wise it is just one. So if you have a tb ssd you can set it to a 750 gb drive and a 250 gb drive. People often just have their operating system on one drive and everything else on another incase of a virus or something of the sort.

You could also FRESH install steam and then change games / downloads directory from the steam's options. You will have all your newly downloaded games in that newly designated folder. Please, also note, that you would have to move / link (MKLINK command) your download folder (inside steam's) to that location in order for steam to "see" those.

you can go to the steam folder delete everything BUT the userdata and steamapps folder and the steam exe and then just move those to the new folder and then use the exe and let it do its thing

On my new laptop there is win 11 & only C drive, for some reason i can't pick another folder to install the game on. I tried, it still installs it on program files anyway! Dude i think this guide needs a little update on win 11 & Skyrim AE

I cannot do anything about having steam download skyrim to a modded games folder in my c drive root directory as it says 'selected drive already has a steam library folder. steam will manage multiple game installs in a single folder for you' and my modded games folder that i had created doesn't show up when i am installing the game. edit: i found out how to fix this issue on my own, i will leave this up for anyone with the same issue; you have to re install steam out of your program files folder and into your c drive root directory

the guide is next level! Can´t wait to watch the next video!

Steam doesn't allow you anymore to change your installation folder. When I try to do so steam just says "Selected drive already has a library folder. Steam will manage multiple games install in a single folder for you" and thus doesn't let me create a second library folder.

I know this was posted 3 years ago but would doing anything in the video make my game look like that with a baked potato for a PC lol, I mean I sometimes get 60 FPS just standing around doing nothing lol, but i get at most if i'm luck like 30ish FPS lowest i've gotten was a whopping 6PS in combat? But I'll still watch the video and try cause for some reason I trust you :).

Steam won't let me add another steamapps game directory on the same drive. And I only have 1 SSD on my PC. So it's forcing me to use the steam directory in my "program files" to download Skyrim into... How do i get around this to have a clean install of Skyrim outside of program files, and just on my C:\ drive?

dude thank you so much! this is so helpful to get my foot in the door with modding!

im confused on my save games folder. the location you mentioned contains all my saves for a playthrough i did 2 years ago, but my current save is nowhere to be found. obviously it exists *somewhere* on my machine because my game can load it up perfectly fine. but i have absolutely no clue where to find it

Hey I'm getting back into modding and wanted to ask something. My local c drive is my ssd. Should I buy another one for modding? You said in here use an ssd but not your local c drive. Thanks! PS. My other drive (F) drive is a 2tb hd I don't want to play Skyrim on a HD.

In the first video you say that it is only supposed to be made for skyrim remastered, but i only have the original one so do these tutorials apply?

I'm getting: "Selected drive already has a Steam library folder. Steam will manage multiple game installs in a single folder for you."

Very informative and objective!

All my games are installed in Program Files on C:, How do i install them out of Program Files but still in C: drive? (It's the only ssd I have.)

Ever heard of MO 2 doesn't polute your data folder

Hi, thanks heaps for this! Just what I needed. Not to be impatient at all ;) but what's the ETA for the next installment?

you should make a vid on how to you know transfer steam out of programfiles because I think I fucked up my game and steam

I did a reinstall and when I attempted to run the game, Steam started restoring deleted save games. I don't know how many they have, but each one takes about 15 seconds to be restored and the game appears unable to fully start until the process is complete. There could be hundreds of saves so this could take a very long time. It would have been nice to know how to prevent this part.

What if I just bought the game and installed it, do I still need to do all this stuff?

do you still need to do this in 2022?

Which is worse, installing Skyrim on your c drive or a hard drive?

I had to move it into programs since it wont give me any other locations

steam won't even let me create a folder for modded games, there goes my second attempt at modding

Also I am doing this for Fallout 4 I know most steps are basically the same and have most of this down. I am just doing it to familiarize myself with the whole process so I don't have to refer back to the videos every time. Would a full on Fallout4 series of the same thing be stupid to ask for?

I just want to do a few mods like Textures, Weather, weapons, and a couple others lol

If you don't have a separate SSD drive and don't want to use an HDD, you can also partition any free space on your C drive to create a new drive. This might not be efficient if you require a lot of data, but it will still be better than putting it on your C drive. This is what I am doing for now until I can afford additional SSD's. But if you do this keep in mind you can not shrink over half of your C drive, and you will more than likely need to do some tweaking with settings in order for disk management to even allow you to shrink beyond a certain limit. See this link for a guide and to shed some light on what I mean: www.diskpart.com/disk-management/unable-to-shrink-c-drive-0310.html Or alternatively, you can use third party tools, but personally I try not to do that as I am not very trusting of a lot of third party tools for such tasks... I believe another way is to do a clean install of your windows 10 OS and shrink the partition before the OS files are installed using the utilities on the installation media, or command line. I didn't want to go through that much effort though...XD Hope this helps :)

You're talking about a separate SSD for installing Skyrim, to avoid installing on C: drive. I agree with this, but does it have to be a separate physical SSD or is it enough to have a second partition on the same SSD with C: drive? The latter is probably enough if you're just worried about permission issues, but maybe you have some bottleneck in mind that will slow down the game because the operating system is on the same physical disk as the game?

I am having an issue where at 7:47 after pressing play I get stuck in an infinite loop of launching and waiting. What can I do to fix this?

This is a stupid question but, is there any way to ensure that I dont lose my custom racemenu presets when I do a clean install?

Im havving un issue changing the downloads library folder. It says i cannot have more than one folder in the same drive. Please help me! your toutorial was so accurate

Should I stick to my primary SSD or secondary HDD for installing a modded SE?

why do you keep pressing on that you should change the install location? does it break everything?

I have an 2 TB that I use for games only, besides filling it to near max capacity, is there anything else that could harm the load times of a modded skyrim? maybe including other modded titles within the drive?

Im having troubles when it comes to the deletions of the saves. Even when I delete them and reboot the game the saves are still there.

so if you have only one drive (mine is c) and your games not in program files (mine is in games file) where do you put the modding utility folder? because you put them in a different drive and i dont have another drive . idk if i make a new folder and call it that or i have to do something else . i messed up big time last time i tried modding the game and nothing went right and it just felt like a bundle of mess but now ive brought back skyrim to its vanilla state i didn't wanna mess things up again and be extra careful. (btw im using normal skyrim not SE idk if that makes a difference)

I'm getting a message "Selected drive already has a Steam library folder. Steam will manage multiple game installs in a single folder for you." when tried to change the Steam Library folders to any location other than C:\Program Files\Steam. How do I get past this?

Exactly how/ how much would I suffer is I installed on cdrive? I'm playing on my uni laptop and I can't afford an external ssd. I'm pretty sure I have decent/ok specs if that plays a part in it.

You should be covering both bases for those of use whom do not have skyrim through steam or have no internet. Or like me do have internet but through proxy servers and steam hates me for it and wont allows me to connect. This same issue prevents me from updating masterlist on loot and vortex. I just wrecked my modded game trying change out fnis_pcea2 for nemesis....don't do it..while you get access to combat gameplay overhaul. All attack animstions are f!@@@!@. I tried using dynamic action replacer to fix but vortex hates DAR and i cannot find a guide in how to properly use it. Just people writing drop animation files..like that explains shite. I am currently reinstalling skyrim se 1.59. And have hope you know what you are getting me into. I have hate boner already for your use of mod organizer and the lack of streamlining. I understand this is how you know best, however i think it woyld gace been far more prudent to find the most user friendly path vs the most comfortable path. I see myself coming back here many times just to go rewatch how you went about fixing issues.

Can you do a clean install with these steps with MO2 still installed? Or would you have to delete it as well as loot?

what about all the hundreds of mods in mod organizer, should i just igoner them?

I dont see anyone else ever talk about this bug, But if i install skyrim to anything but C Drive i get a issue where half the sounds in the game just dont work anymore and are silent. Like attacking/etc. Does anyone know a fix for this?

steam doesnt let me choose a location...

I will still getting 60 fps and it makes my game much bad like pyhsics bugs...

i cant figure out how to install skyrim outside of program files...

Hi there thanks for this guide, I have had a feeling my new version of Skyrim SE is doing some strange things and it seems you have the solution here, although I could do with some advice. I've installed Steam on my SSD C drive and that's the only option I have, so I have installed it in the root of C. I let steam install to its usuall directory outside of program files and followed your steps, however my SE installs 6 files everytime I try to delete them and reinstall. I think I'm sharing this game from my other profile too, I have no idea what m issue is now and hope you can help.

what happens to my save files when i delete the game?

i find this so confusing all he done was delete the skyrimprefs.ini and such then uninstalled and reinstalled skyrim am i missing something like that seems too simple?

Used a quick Ctrl + F and didn't find this so I'll ask (again if it's already been asked somewhere) Would a partitioned drive work just as fine as a separate SSD from the OS?

So should I install it on my SSD or Regular Drive? Laptop.

so when you say to install the game out of local c and put it in a different folder, can i put it in to a usb driver?

do you have to do this if you haven't even bought the game yet?

I use a gaming laptop for Skyrim. Since i cant put an SSD inside of it, would it be stupid to invest into an external SSD to use for Skyrim and Modding?

Thank you.

Making C: drive into two partitions?

Hey, how do you feel about Vortex vs MO?

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-NZ0gA0scnyw.html This video shows you how to add a new save directory in Steam on your C drive. I noticed a lot of people in the comments couldn't figure out how to do it. If it would be better to create a separate partition on my C drive to keep Steam separate from my Windows files please let me know. If you run into any issues this comment pinned below the video helped me out a lot - If it isn't working for you follow these steps. This fixed my problems: 1. Make sure you close Steam.exe in the task manager completely before you change anything 2. In your new folder, you MUST have a folder called "steamapps" (this will not be included in the directory in wordpad, just make sure it is in your new library folder)

What should i put in modding utilities ?

where should i reinstall skyrim btw i only have a c drive

I don't have _CommonRedist! Why?

What’s your desktop background

Is it really THAT big of a deal to install on an HDD?? I'm gunna try it and see if it works...

Hi i want to ask what shoud i do when i have only DISK C and not any other hardrive ?!

I delete everything the way you say but my save files somehow remain. Any Ideas?

What if my " My Games " Profile is outside my " Users " Profile , is it okay?

Arent the modders the guys who create the mods?

I tried installing Skyrim in a new Folder like you mentioned, but I kept getting a "Disk Write Error" when trying to install to that folder. Is there a fix for this? Do you have a Discord where someone can help?

Wont let me create a new folder to re-install skyrim to a new location not within the program files.... I only have my laptop c drive

Bruh... I'm eighteen, haven't taken a single computer/tech class, and this absolutely fucked me in the brain. Basically, I'm too weak for these guides.

whenever i try to acess setings on steam, it's just a black box, any help there?

Would you consider these decent specs? Intel core i5-7200U CPU 2.50 GHz 8gb Ram 64 bit operating system

x86 and 0 Bug yes men

Turning off depth of field cant be problem i guess?

really don't need to read out loud your hard drive's letters. I doubt that will prove useful. Don't think like you're making a tutorial, just say what you think is needed.

Can you please explain root directory? Or even link a video. I feel like a lot of us only have "C:"

Well that's annoying and inconvenient as all hell. Steam won't even let you change the directory if it's on the same drive...

My saves are corrupted now. It says that I missing certain mods and game crashes on start up :(

I have like 2200hrs in Skyrim and I never really bothered with the Remaster but I have the itch to just mod it because tinkering with the Game is almost more fun than actually playing. Pretty much every time I play I see something that is not 100% perfect and then I go on to fixing it. I started to edit most Mods myself and tweak them to my liking.

I haven't watched more then two videos and I already feel more informed then the past two weeks looking into help for beginners. Just got a gaming laptop to start myself in modding Skyrim and haven't known where to start. Never liked the hand holding and just want someone to tell it to me straight. So happy I came across your playlist. Appreciated Immensely.