Striker879

The instructions on how to install and run OBSE are in the file obse_readme.txt in the extracted OBSE download (and if you tried to use a mod manager to install OBSE there is your problem ... manual install, copy and paste only for OBSE and OBSE plugins like Blockhead). If OBSE isn't working then Blockhead won't work either, so get OBSE working first. Easiest way to tell it's working is to make a save and then check your saves folder. If you have two saves with the same name and different file extensions (e.g. MySave09.ess and MySave09.obse) then OBSE is working. If you only see one save each time you save then you need to go back to the install instructions for OBSE and figure out where you went wrong.

No I'm a non-PayPal type and don't do the credit card on the internet thing. Under those circumstances the best I can offer is what I'm doing ... doesn't help Dark0ne pay the bills but it's about all I can do. I'd mail him a cheque but that is an unreasonable expectation (he'd be opening the door to a lot of people wanting the same, and I wouldn't want to be any part of that headache for him). A long long time ago there was a post by somebody concerning dxDiag reports and what parts mean anything significant ... all I can tell is real basic stuff like not much RAM and then the CPU/memory needs to do all the sound stuff as well as gameplay stuff. What happened when you turned off bDSoundHWAcelleration and turned bSoundEnabled on? I only have 2GB RAM as well, but I do have a pretty good sound card so that takes a load off the CPU/memory system. I don't often try to play longer than 45 minutes or maybe an hour before saving and restarting the game (I always exit to the desktop before loading a save from a fresh game start). I also have made some tweaks to mods I use that are not recommended by the mod author as they cause the game to be less stable. I save quite frequently, never overwrite saves (I have a very large drive just for downloads and backups of saves etc) and have all autosaves turned off in Oblivion.ini (cuts down on the changing cells interior/exterior type crashes while saving and stuff like that). I get crashes to desktop (and infrequently just plain lockups), but generally I have a pretty good handle on where they are likely to occur (most often somewhere close to where an NPC is that has been affected by those mods I've tweaked). Generally the crashes don't have any detrimental affect other than needing to restart the game, though once in a while I'll lose the mapping I've made for casting spells on one of my Logitech mouse buttons (no big deal as you just use the in-game menu to set it back). That you are getting crashes more frequently when a lot is going on is due in most part to the fact that your CPU and memory are doing double duty ... when there's a lot going on onscreen there's also a lot of audio going on. I was hoping that maybe turning off sound HW acceleration would help (then the game wouldn't try to use your sound device and just route the sound processing to your CPU ... sort of cutting out a middleman who isn't really bringing much to the table). Outside of coming over to your place and sticking my head into your machine I'm kind of out of ideas (and I couldn't possibly come over anyway as in the morning I'm headed off to my summer gig ... no gaming for me until fall). Would have liked to end on a higher note than that.

Crash on exit is a common thing in Oblivion. My fairly heavily modded game almost always crashes on exit if I've been playing more than 10 minutes or so. You could check your music volume in the menu ... the master volume and music have separate sliders but both will affect the music volume (so if the master is set very low the music slider can't do much). If you noticed that the game wasn't crashing during gameplay then turn the sound effects back on (bSoundEnabled=1) and turn the hardware acceleration off (bDSoundHWAcceleration=0). You will probably need to go through the whole copy/paste/rename cycle again to get past Windows protecting you from you. If the game then starts back into the crashing while playing there's a mod we can try ... Quiet Feet. That way you'll still be able to hear the clanging of swords etc. without the crashing problem (well hopefully). Don't try Quiet Feet until you know it's needed (i.e. with bSoundEnabled=1 and bDSoundHWAcceleration=0 gives you crashing again). If the game was still crashing during gameplay with bSoundEnabled=0 then that tells us the the foot sounds problem isn't at the root of your crashes.

I see in the version history part of the MiniMap mod description about "Made dynamic map support configurable". I'm a vanilla map guy myself, so I have no idea whatsoever if this is relevant or not.

I didn't invent any of this stuff ... learned about from others and now I'm just passing the buck.

Could be a UAC type issue, with Windows "protecting" you from yourself and not allowing the changes in Oblivion.ini. Try this, open Oblivion.ini and from the Notepad (or whatever it's called in newer MS OSes) select all of the text (in Notepad it's Edit menu and Select All) then select Copy once everything is highlighted (Ctrl + c works) and in a new Notepad document paste the Oblivion.ini contents (Ctrl + v). Save this new file as Oblivionini.txt (so don't save it with an INI file extension). In this Oblivionini.txt make the change to bSoundEnabled and save the file. Next rename Oblivion.ini to OblivionBU.ini and then rename your Oblivionini.txt file to Oblivion.ini, run the game and see if sound effects (footsteps and weapon hits etc) are disabled. You will still hear the music ... that's a different Oblivion.ini tweak altogether.

The only "troubleshooting" mod I know of is more for finding install errors when installing mods ... RefScope can be helpful in finding out which mod is responsible for a "missing mesh" error (a big yellow exclamation mark displayed in the game). When the game starts it looks for a file named Oblivion.ini in the Users\[username]\ Documents\My Games\Oblivion folder. If it can't find a file named Oblivion.ini it builds a new one using Oblivion_Default.ini (found in the game's Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion folder) to build a new one. If you just change the name of the original Oblivion.ini the game won't find what it is looking for and assume it doesn't exist and will use Oblivion_Default.ini (which is just a stub that is added to and refined based on what the game engine discovers for your hardware) to build a new one. So the net result of merely renaming Oblivion.ini to OblivionBU.ini and then editing OblivionBU.ini is that you are never actually making a change to Oblivion.ini (the game will just keep creating a new one). You must make a copy of Oblivion.ini and rename the copy to OblivionBU.ini (which will then be your backup copy of the original) and then edit the original Oblivion.ini (which the game will find on startup and load, including your altered values). I don't know much about Morroblivion. I'm pretty sure it will use Oblivion.exe (the executable file from Oblivion that runs the game) and so if Oblivion isn't working I don't think Morroblivon will either.

Give it time ... start small and work your way up. I've got a busy day tomorrow getting ready to leave, so I'm off to bed. Don't stay up all night "starting small" or "working your way up".

Don't let a small success get in the way of greater glory. I don't even install most of the mods that I "borrow" stuff from. You need to pay attention to what textures a mesh needs and the exact folder path to that texture. A handy tool for getting that info is NifSkope. Maybe it's a good thing that I will shortly be away from my gaming computer ... if you spent too much time listening to me you'd be in danger of becoming a modder.

The only time the game uses Oblivion_Default.ini is when it can't find Oblivion.ini and needs to build a new one (first time you install and start the game and any time you rename Oblivion.ini ... one of the ways to get a new one). So if you made a copy of Oblivion.ini and named it OblivionBU.ini but then edited Oblivion.ini you were getting it right ... if you renamed Oblivion.ini to OblivionBU.ini and then edited OblivionBU.ini what happened when you started the game is it simply created a new Oblivion.ini (and by default bSoundEnabled=1). Turning Bloom and HDR off is the right thing to do for troubleshooting. The idea is get the game working and then slowly turn stuff back on until you break it again ... fun eh? Something I ran across elsewhere ... you said you used Avast, and when you follow the link to the BLODA list in this post in the Oblivion Reloaded mod comments low and behold, there is Avast listed (suggests to disable FILESYSTEM and BEHAVIOR realtime shields). All I can tell you is that Ilde has probably forgotten more about the workings of the game than I have ever known. Another avenue to explore anyway.

So let me get this straight ... Realswords adds armor to Burd you want him to have. I just looked at Realswords - Nord LO-NPC SI.esp and tbskGuardsFeatures.esp in Wrye Bash and both use the INVENT bash tag. Now in my BOSS sorted load order Realswords is higher in my load order than tbskGuardsFeatures so that means that because both use the same bash tag the one that is lower (closer to the bottom) will win any time they both want to change the same NPC's inventory (i.e. Burd will wear what tbsk wants him to wear). All I would need to do to change that is switch the two mod's order. If Realswords Nord is lower in my load order than tbskGuardsFeatures Burd will wear what Realswords gives him. Sure there may be some other things that tbsk did that may be lost, but Burd will be sporting a winged hat and whatever boots it was you wanted. The reason for no Burd armor (I believe, as I wasn't looking over your shoulder to see how you tried what you tried, and you were pretty sparse with the details of what "edit Burd" entailed) is because you tried to simply add the hat and boots to Burd (another guess ... you had both Realswords Nord and tbsk loaded in the CS at the same time, with tbsk active but didn't create a new Form (a new item) in the tbsk ESP and just dragged the hat and boots into his inventory ...won't work in the regular CS but will using Construction Set Extender). Don't let me discourage you. I personally only learn from making mistakes so I wouldn't expect otherwise for anybody else. With the tbsk active in the CS right click in the right hand pane of the Object window and select New after you have selected Armor in the left hand pane of the Object window (so all the armor is listed on the right side). Give it a unique FormID at the top field where it says ID (maybe MyBurdsWingedHelmet) and a name just below that (maybe Burd's Winged Helmet). Assign Weight, Light or Heavy, Health, Armor Rating (AR) and Value (hint do some research by loading Realswords Nord and write down some of this stuff, unless you want to be creative of course). Assign a slot in the Biped Object field (head in this case) and then you will use the Add NIF File, World Model (the _gnd.nif) and Icon Image buttons to open a dialogue box allowing you to navigate to where those things are in your game folders (you will need to have Realswords Nord installed before all this of course). You end by adding your new MyBurdsWingedHelmet to Burd's inventory and save. Now for this to work you will always need those files you "borrowed" from Realswords Nord left in their respective folders, even if you uninstalled Realswords Nord someday. You could also create your own ESP (maybe MyBurdsInventory.esp) and add to Burd's inventory using the same method (i.e. create a patch). Your patch would need to be always kept lower in your load order than both tbsk and Realswords Nord, and I'd add a bash tag INVENT so that your bashed patch gets it right. The first way and you don't need to learn how to add bash tags, the second you probably should (considering that both tbsk and Realswords do use bash tags, and the bashed patch is normally kept at the bottom of your load order ... alternatively just keep MyBurdsInventory.esp below your bashed patch, bash tag problem solved). You have a cat to skin, and cats can be skinned in more than one way.

Which may turn out to be a good thing, rather than a bad thing. I got my start by editing someone else's ESP. If instead somebody just made the changes I wanted I would not have gotten that start, so in a way they wouldn't have been helping me but instead hindering me from learning something that brings me great enjoyment today.

I edit things to suit my taste, not someone else's taste. Unless you have read and understood all of the meanings/reasons for the different patch options I wouldn't mess with them. Bash tags may be of some help, but where two mods use the same bash tags load order determines the winner of any conflict/overlap. Sometimes you will find you either need to accept what is provided or learn how to modify it to your liking. That won't happen in 10 or 15 minutes, with a few posts or PMs.

You're wrong there ... I edited tbskGuardsFeatures.esp myself, plus I replaced some of the armor meshes to ones I preferred. It was quite a while ago so I can't recall what all my ESP edits were, think the armor replacements were primarily for female armors for Viera Lerus in Bravil and a female guard added by Brotherhood Renewed in Bruma. After you install BOSS and Wrye Bash run BOSS from the icon down at the bottom of the Wrye Bash window (just left of center I believe) and once BOSS is done right click on the bashed patch that will be at the bottom of your mod list in the Mods tab and select Rebuild patch from the right click menu. I use the CBash option myself, but the other should work just as well. Don't change any of the options on the next dialogue and hit Build Patch. You'll get a couple of further dialogues that report what has been done and once everything is finished (give it some time) close WB and see if it has helped.

Yes and I had a look and didn't see any guards in winged helmets. Then I looked at what I had installed from Local Guards Features and remembered I edited that esp and changed some meshes for others from other mods I have and so I don't really know without a lot of investigation what are Local Guards Features original stuff and what is my tweaking. Was getting late last night and I'm busy getting ready to go away for most of the summer today and tomorrow (where I won't have access to my gaming machine at all type "away"). I should have posted a report, but all it would boil down to is "I don't know for certain". Best bet for you is to use BOSS to sort your load order and then build a bashed patch in Wrye Bash and see what happens.

The game doesn't do well with task switching, so the switches to Task Manager may be enough to bunch up it's shorts. Something that has occurred to me is how some people are affected by sounds in the game (particularly feet sounds). The test to see if that is indeed all or part of the problem is relatively simple. In Oblivion.ini (found in Users\[username]\ Documents\My Games\Oblivion not Oblivion_Default.ini found in the Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion folder) find the entry bSoundEnabled (should be in the [Audio] section) and change it to bSoundEnabled=0 (should be bSoundEnabled=1 beforehand). What this does is disables all sound effects but not the music. If this stops the crashing then the next step is to check bDSoundHWAcceleration (should be at the top of the [Audio] section). If you have bDSoundHWAcceleration=1 change it to bDSoundHWAcceleration=0 and switch bSoundEnabled back to bSoundEnabled=1 and run another test. I'm guessing your machine doesn't have an actual sound card but just uses an on-board sound chip (which works by just shifting the sound processing over to the CPU and RAM). I'm that old Win XP dinosaur so I don't have much more than cursory knowledge about changing the CPU affinities. My old Core2 Duo is a dual CPU chip and I have made some of the Oblivion.ini tweaks mentioned in the Oblivion Tweakguide to try to get the game using both CPUs as much as possible. I think the main advantage of having more than one CPU with this game is that those background tasks can be run on the extra idle CPUs, but I very seldom have anything more than necessary running in the background when playing (and even then it's usually just one or two instances of Windows Explorer open to folders on my Data drive and game drive when I'm working on something ... almost never something like an internet browser).

I've zero experience with how Steam handles uninstalling the game. With the disk version of the game you should run a registry cleaner if you are going to install the game to a different location (say if you uninstalled from C:\Program Files (x86)\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion and wanted to reinstall to C:\Games\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion). As far as I know if you are reinstalling to the same location then left over registry entries shouldn't cause issues (the reinstall will create those same registry entries and overwrite what was there ... a different location reinstall would have the old registry entries and new ones that point to the new location, and Windows won't know which to use). A couple of resources for uninstall/reinstall ... Oblivion reinstall procedure and the more recent version by the same author Bbens Complete Uninstall/Reinstall for Oblivion. Though lots of people have the game installed in the default C:\Program Files (x86) location I discourage it ... game (and Steam) belong outside of any UAC protected folders. C:\Games\... is the recommended location. That spot you describe also has zombies that spawn right after that area if I recall correctly. Have you tried a don't pick up anything/just try to make it through type run through? When troubleshooting I always try to limit the variables as much as possible so you're seeing the problem and not some side-effects of something else. The standard Windows "Stopped working" message is normal on a game crash (or crash on exit, another Oblivion "feature"). The unrecognized video hardware is also a common thing ... none of the video hardware you can buy today was even conceived back when the game was last updated. That's a problem with many old games on modern hardware. I have a game that requires a patch to add wait states to the processing because it can't run properly on fast CPUs. Others won't work with modern video cards. Privateer is from another age all together. I first ran it on a 386SX 25 MHz Toshiba laptop that cost me the price of more than two desktops to buy (and was bleeding edge for all of about two weeks ... lessons learned). The last I remember playing it was on one of my first Pentium 3 machines. Tried installing it on this WinXP Core2 Duo box and wasn't able to get controllers to work (and didn't want to dig out one of my old joysticks and find a soundcard with a port that would work for it). Playing using the keyboard wasn't much fun (and the graphics didn't suit a 24" widescreen monitor worth a darn).

I use both Realswords Nord and Local Guards Features myself, though I can't say for certain if I've noticed any of the Bruma guards sporting the winged helmets or not (don't get to Bruma much). Something I'd like to add to Manus812's suggestion is to use BOSS to sort your load order. Even with the use of bash tags load order is still the number one thing that decides what the game will display (so if two mods have the same bash tags then the one lower in the load order will be the one that gets included in the bashed patch). Not sure if I have a save from near Bruma ... if I do I may pop in to see who is wearing what and report back.

I'm not a good one for that kind of face advice. I always start from one of the OCOv2'd vanilla characters for my own NPC creations (pretty sure I even started out that way for my own male Dunmer character). My taste for females runs to more prominent cheek bones and fuller lips ... I have a soft spot for the exotic.

The current state of the art for faces is Oblivion Character Overhaul version 2. Read the mod description and sticky post in the mod comments carefully.

Oblivion. And when I get tired of playing Oblivion, I play Oblivion. Actually that doesn't happen (getting tired of playing Oblivion that is). I'm not home for most of the summer and don't have a machine to play games on when I'm away. Seems strange to say, but sometimes it seems winters aren't long enough (scary thought). I have a ton of other games, I even have games that have never been installed (Homeworld GotY for example). I owned Oblivion for a couple of years before I got around to installing it ... been lost in Oblivion since. Hard to say what's the right course for you. I can tell you that upgrading a store bought desktop was what got me started down the road towards learning to build machines (and it was a video card upgrade that started the ball rolling). Unless you have absolutely huge hands it's not a particularly challenging task physically, the challenge is in the researching of components to meet your expectations. Back in my building heydays there was always that next game I wanted and so I always started by comparing game reviews with an eye to their testing hardware. Know this ... building your own is not equal to cheaper, in fact I'd say it adds at least a 15 to 20% premium to the machine's cost. What is does equal is that you are in control of where the compromises happen (and there will always be compromises ... just one of the laws of the Universe). I got away from playing multiplayer a long time ago. Got tired of the kids bunny hopping around in TFC, or stuff like one of your own guys capturing their flag but instead of bringing it home, taking it to your equipment room (where you can't kill him and the other team can't reach him ... effectively making it impossible for your team to score captures). Tried a couple of LAN parties but it never gained enough traction in this little city to be more than an infrequent thing. I found that for the most part single player FPS got to all be the same. Never been a fan of real time strategy games (e.g. Age of Empires series or Command and Conquer) ... too much of a frenetic click fest for me. I like turned based strategy games like Alpha Centaurii but they don't hold me for very long. Way back at the start of my computers/computer gaming days I was seriously addicted to the Privateer series. Maybe that's why I gravitated to Oblivion so strongly. I didn't know that Privateer was a role playing game at the time, but as soon as I played Oblivion I could feel the similarities. Both are open world, do what you want when you want ... and with Oblivion you can change/enhance what you want too!! Just had a look at the specs for the Quadro FX 580. It's a bit on the shy side for VRAM size (512 MB) but I've run the game on a GeForce 9800GT that only had 512 MB (so a bit different type of GPU but the same GDDR3 memory). The Quadro is designed more for graphics/CAD type applications where the GeForce was designed for gaming but I can't see any reason why the Quadro shouldn't handle the game on minimal settings (my GeForce was OK at middling settings). I wouldn't spend a bunch of money on a graphics card replacement before trying other things. I see in rereading your original post that you haven't actually been able to get outside the tutorial dungeon (in fact I see you say you crash before trying to exit ... is it while you are in the loading screen after activating the gate or before you activate the gate, perhaps when you should be getting the menu popups for character finalization ... the exact time of the crash may hold clues).

HGEC is one of the body replacers for female bodies. All of the popular body replacers use a different texture mapping onto the body than the vanilla game's bodies, and so require both a mesh and texture replacement. This also means that the clothes/armor designed for the vanilla bodies doesn't display the correct skin tones on all areas that show exposed skin. If you don't want to see some weirdness you need to use a compatible armor/clothing replacer. For HGEC the only one that comes with a complete clothing/armor replacer that I know of is EVE HGEC Eyecandy Variants Expansion.

You are missing some texture files (so you probably didn't install your race mods/body replacer correctly).

Yes that is the reason that Wrye Bash is far superior to OBMM for installing mods. That is what the Auto-Anneal is all about. When you use Wrye to uninstall a mod then it will put any files installed by other mods back if they were overwritten by the mod you're uninstalling. Auto-Anneal should be enabled by default ... you can confirm it is by the right click context menu in the Installers tab.

We all start out not knowing any of this stuff. OBMM is the only way I got my first mod install working and I arrived with a long history of knowing how to do things on the computer.