User blog comment:Antony1197/Super annoying courier glitch/@comment-24.52.180.225-20120705175631

I had this exact bug after updating, and here's how I fixed it:

I just left the town. The Courier didn't follow me, and so when that town was unloaded from my getting far enough away, it refreshed him, and he was able to find me near the next town with the letter he wanted to send. This glitch happened again later, and the same thing fixed it. In the case that the Courier DOES follow you out of town, try going to the console, clicking on the courier (make sure you've got his reference ID and not another object's, because clicking on things in the Skyrim console is really buggy/fickle) and typing disable. You don't have to enable him again, because the courier's real reference ID is 00000000, and by disabling his current NPC avatar, you're actually just refreshing him. Wait a while with this fix in place, because I really doubt 5 minutes is enough time to declare that it doesn't work. You have to play the game for a loooong time after disabling the courier to make sure that he definitely isn't coming again. Trust me, he is, eventually. You could also just not be getting any letters. Try manually triggering a letter. Faendal died in Bleak Falls Barrow for me, and after going to Riverwood, sleeping, and traveling to Whiterun, the Courier found me with Faendal's inheritance right outside the hold. This all happened several in-game days after I encountered the courier bug and disabled him.

Also, Saratje's post is wrong, and the long anonymous reply to his post knows what's up. I had this exact glitch once before Skyrim's first patch, with no mods installed, and walking out of town fixed it. It's a freak dialogue scripting bug. It could be triggered by mods that add new dialogue or areas or quests, or by Skyrim's own quirkiness, but either way, you CAN fix it with my method.

Speaking of mods that add new stuff, DON'T use mods that add (a) new area(s) AND (a) new quest(s) at the same time. They all used TESVSnip to be created, and TESVSnip (along with Wyre Bash and FNVEdit) is currently not very compatible with Skyrim (Wyre Bash, in fact, is only 5% compatible with Skyrim). As a consequence, those mods will most likely cause a CTD when you try to load anything in the game. If they don't cause a CTD, the quest/area experience will be very very glitchy and/or corrupt your saves into unplayability with that mod-caching system Skyrim's saves have.