Snubbing the bow

First, open up your favorites and scroll to whatever you want to hotkey, then hold left or right on the D-pad until a 1 or 2 appears next to the item. After exiting the favorites menu when you press left or right on the D-pad you should switch to whatever equipment you set with that direction.

I have also had issues with one sword being unequipped when using the favorites menu. For me this usually happens when it is two of the same one-handed weapon so they show up as one entry in favorites. The icon to show which hand it is in is fairly small and it is hard to tell the difference between when it is L, when it is R, and when it is both. Just tap R1 and L1 when your swords selected in the favorites menu until you can tell the difference easily.

A macro program like autohotkey is what you're looking for.

Since skyrim has a consolified interface, almost any action can be done with keystrokes alone.

The trick is to use the favorites menu, and walk trough it while selecting the things you want.

A macro I have for example is:

• q opens quick menu

• wwwwwwwwwwww moves to top of list (number of items in list.)

• eseequips or unequips an unrelated weapon and shield

• the desired weapon is has a known state (unequiped)

• sse moves to wapon and equips it.

• ssse moves to shield and equips it.

• q closes quick menu.

It isn't instant or very quick, but it saves a lot of time.

However, this setup is fragile and basically only works when all items of the Quick menu have consistent names.