Skyrim instantly crashes to desktop

Two weeks ago I borrowed an Oculus Rift for the weekend and installed some mods for it, following this guide. Now I’m trying to run it again without the Oculus, and it instantly crashes to desktop.

Behavior

I click on Skyrim in my Steam library, and then click Play from the launcher. A console window pops up for half a second, closes, and the game doesn’t run. Sometimes I see a black screen flicker up and then close.

What I’ve tried

• Running Skyrim from SKSE. In this case, I see the SKSE console window flicker up, then another console window, and the game doesn’t start.
• Uninstalling all mods.
• Deleting my Skyrim.ini and SkyrimPrefs.ini files.
• Reinstalling Skyrim in Steam by clicking Delete Local Content, followed by Install.
• Running Skyrim in a Window.
• Praising Talos.
• Changing Audio settings to DVD quality.
• Restarting my computer.

System specifications

• OS: Windows 7 Ultimate, 64-bit
• Processor: Intel Core i5-4670K CPU @ 3.40 GHz
• Drive: Samsung 840 SSD
• Graphics Card:: AMD Radeon HD 7900
• Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD4H ATX LGA1150
• Monitor: BenQ XL2420T

Solution

Per SevenSidedDie‘s recommendation, I deleted d3d9.dll, hijackdll.dll, and libfreespace.dll from my SteamappscommonSkyrim folder. It’s alive!

Generalized Solution

Uninstalling and reinstalling via steam does not remove the Skyrim folder. If you manually added any DLLs during the modding process, you may have to remove them manually as well. Alternatively, if you don’t know which DLLs to remove, uninstall the game, delete the Skyrim folder, and then reinstall. You will not lose your saved games, since they are stored in UsersUSERDocumentsmy gamesskyrim, rather than in steamapp.