Striker879

UAC is an integral part of Microsoft's security system protecting against malware and virus threats to your machine. I wouldn't recommend disabling it. I'm a WinXP dinosaur on my gaming machine. I do have Vista on a non-gaming laptop and have setup my grandkid's various laptops and netbooks over the years on Win 7, but all but one were non-gaming machines (and on that laptop all games were installed to C:\Games). All I can suggest is Google and take your chances. If you decide to get the game installed in C:\Games you can use Bben46's wiki article Oblivion reinstall procedure as a guide. If you use the Steam version of the game don't miss the link near the top of the page concerning moving your Steam install location. Also don't miss the part about registry cleaning ... it's important.

You have the game installed in C:\Program Files (x86) or C:\Program Files and UAC is "helping" you. The recommended location for Oblivion (and thus the CS) is C:\Games.

Those issues were answered in the Bethsoft [Rel] thread but shadeMe has started a new thread (I think Bethsoft forums have a size limit) and I don't see a link to the previous thread. Post a comment asking shadeMe for the link to the previous [Rel] thread.

ObjectIDs for Mehrunes Razor ... all you wanted to know about how to get it but were afraid to ask ... Unearthing Mehrunes Razor (look at the Nefarivigum section).

All I can think of is to use the UESP Wiki Spells page to find out who sells the specific spells with the effects you need for the spell making altar.

An alternative way to play with Companion Vilja, once she has learned her higher level healing spells, is to instruct her that you want her to stay out of the fights. If she's attacked she'll defend herself naturally, but in general with vanilla badguys they'll go after you and leave her alone. If things go downhill for your character she'll jump into the fray, healing you and defending you with a "Leave my friend alone!". Maybe not how you'd always play it out, but with Vilja you can at least avoid that maniac companion rush headlong into battle without any consideration of tactics problem. If you hotkey her Vilja Start Combat spell you can size up the enemy force, hit one of the outliers with the spell to have her work that one over and then dive in yourself on the main force. It at least gives you a chance to position yourself and pick your moment to attack, rather that letting the suicidal CMs dictate the battle (I use CMs for house dressing and giving the bars some patrons and not much else).

Depends on the type of sound card you have installed. Creative Sound Blaster cards will have an applet running in the task bar for instance, and one of the options panels will allow you to turn effects like opera hall and amphitheater on and off (or turn EAX effects off completely). What type of sound card/on-board sound are you running?

Something you could try is the "coc center" trick. Open the console using the tilde (~) key (on standard keyboards it's right below the Esc key). At the console prompt type "coc center" (without the quote marks) and hit Enter. You'll be transported to an open plain with some trees in the distance. Using the game wait menu wait for 72 hours plus a bit more (that's three full days and a bit more). Open the console again and "coc weye" (or another location if you know the correct location code). You'll be transported to inside the fisherman's shack at Weye. See if you can now continue. Sweetrolls not required ... I'm watching my waistline, but all it seems to do is get bigger.

Make sure you don't any effects set in your sound card's control panel (e.g. concert hall etc).

After you've used Oblivion Mod Manager to reset the BSA timestamps you can confirm that the dates are all year 2006 as they should be.

What change do you make to Oblivion.ini so that the game doesn't use BSA files? I'm thinking of maybe trying out a fully extracted BSA setup on my next vanilla install.

I use a similar setup (SoundBlaster X-Fi) but I'm running on WinXP so there may be some apples to oranges type stuff from operating system differences. I also don't use the latest for the Creative Console Launcher (version 2.61.09) ... I tend to leave things that work alone. That means that I need to stop Windows from upgrading things I don't want upgraded ... Windows Update does like to push new drivers etc on you. If your current hardware worked before and now doesn't I'd look into whether you have had a driver update. You can also try letting Oblivion recreate your Oblivion.ini file. Rename your existing Oblivion.ini (found in Users\[username]\Documents\My Games\Oblivion for Win 8, Win 7 or Vista or Documents and Settings\[username]\My Documents\My Games\Oblivion for WinXP NOT Oblivion_default.ini found in your game's Oblivion folder) to Oblivionini.old (Windows will squawk about the extension change but it's OK). Start the game and it will redetect your hardware and create a new Oblivion.ini. If this resolves the problem then you can safely delete your old renamed Oblivionini.old (or hang onto it for future reference). If you've made any tweaks to your old Oblivion.ini make sure to transfer them to the new Oblivion.ini before deleting it.

I've found that when I leave too many saves in the game's saves folder it slows down menu openings considerably. I've left the saves location at default (in my case Documents and Settings\[username]\My Documents\My Games\Oblivion as I'm a WinXP dinosaur) and my C drive is a RAID 0 of two WD Raptors (older ones that are only 74 GB each). I have an internal 1 TB Data drive that is less than 25% filled, and it's backed up on my external eSATA RAID 1 (I like to keep my "cloud" close to home). Whenever I think of it, or when I notice the menus getting sluggish I move all but my last 25 or so saves onto the Data drive and then on the next backup it gets RAIDed.

Was the graphic card upgrade before or after the last time you installed Oblivion? If it was after the last time Oblivion was installed you could try renaming your Oblivion.ini (found in Users\[username]\Documents\My Games\Oblivion for Win 8, Win 7 or Vista or in Documents and Settings\[username]\My Documents\My Games\Oblivion for WinXP ... NOT Oblivion_default.ini found in your game's Oblivion folder). Rename it Oblivionini.old (ignore the squawk from Windows about renaming a file extension) and then restart the game. It will build a new Oblivion.ini after redetecting your current hardware. If it works use the renamed Oblivionini.old to transfer any tweaks you may have made over to the new Oblivion.ini ... otherwise if it doesn't make any difference just delete the new Oblivion.ini and rename your Oblivionini.old back.

It may not answer all of your questions, but have a look through Noob up and running.

Are you testing on a new game? Doors are saved in the save file (at least their locations are) ... maybe you're seeing the old door superimposed on the new.

The tracks atmosphere_02.mp3 and atmoshere_05.mp3 aren't in my vanilla game Music folder either, so that's normal and not related to your problem.

Sure you could load a save from within the game (meaning you don't exit to the desktop and then restart the game and load the save). Most of the time it will not cause any grief. Your original post is concerning save corruption and best practices. If you want to do all that you can to prevent save corruption then always exit to the desktop, restart the game and then load your save. When you do that the game starts out with just the base game plus mods and the changes made by that save loaded in memory. This along with saving, exiting and restarting at least every few hours will be the best you can do on a prevention front against save corruption. I didn't invent this method ... read about it in my own research into save corruption. I do use these tips myself, and since using them I have very little problem with saves. When I do run into anything the method bben46 outlined is all it takes to resolve the issue. I have one character with well over 1800 hours and another close to 1200 hours, and the original one with 1800 hours was started out with bad saving practices (quicksaved almost to death). By following the methods I found in my research that character is still going strong today. My new guy has never suffered the abuse of quicksave. - Edit - Yes you can just move the saves to a backup folder outside of your game's save folder (by default Users\[username]\Documents\My Games\Oblivion\Saves for Win 8, Win 7 or Vista and Documents and Settings\[username]\My Documents\My Games\Oblivion\Saves for WinXP). I like to archive on a separate drive myself, and actually have a backup of the backup (tells you something about my personality eh?).

Post in the OCO v2 mod comments, perhaps Nuska or IkeCoast will have an idea of what's going on. Any particular reason you're using version 4 of Roberts male instead of version 5.2?

If by "the mod manager" you are talking about Nexus Mod Manager (NMM) you are headed down the road of infinite trouble. NMM isn't compatible with many (or perhaps I should say most) Oblivion mods. If a mod tells you to use NMM to install then by all means go ahead. The majority of mods here were last updated long before the first version of NMM was released and NMM does not know how to install any mods that come as OMODs (which are native to Oblivion Mod Manager (OBMM)) and even mods that are "OMOD compatible format" will just confuse NMM and it will fail and report errors. Get in the habit of reading a mod's install instructions, and if you run into trouble post a question in either the mod comments or start a topic here. Often if you read through a mod's comments you'll find your question answered many times over.

Read the mod's description, paying special attention to any install instructions. Do not use Nexus Mod Manager (NMM) to install any Oblivion mods unless the mod's install instructions explicitly say to use or it's OK to use NMM. If a mod causes problems you will usually find out by reading the mod comments (unless it's a brand new mod of course). Often the problems reported are installation problems or similar. If you aren't able to either understand the offered solutions or understand the problem if no solutions are offered give the mod a pass until such time as you are able to figure it out. Don't frustrate yourself over a "problem child" mod. Best advice for avoiding save corruption is NEVER use quicksave (it is a known corrupter of save files). Use the save from the Esc menu or named saves using the console. Don't overwrite saves ... when your save folder starts getting full either delete some of the older saves or move them to another drive (USB stick for instance). Always exit to the desktop and restart Oblivion to load a save (reloading from inside the game leaves previous memory contents to help work toward corrupting your saves). It's a good habit to exit to the desktop every few hours if you are into long gaming sessions ... you are more likely to get CTD or corruption problems when Oblivion is reaching max memory usage (it's not good at purging memory by default).

You likely have an incompletely uninstalled mod that affects the eyes ... just inactivating does not remove a mods assets.

What method of archive invalidation are you using? The recommended method is BSA Redirection, most easily implemented using Oblivion Mod Manager (found in the Utilities menu). I believe you can also implement BSA Redirection using Nexus Mod Manager but I have no idea about how it works.

I recall reading somewhere on here that normal maps are real beasts for the graphics to render ... and as discovery has pointed out Intel integrated graphics isn't much of a graphics solution for Oblivion. Does it happen if you uninstall the normal map mod?

Ha ha ... good news. Reminds me of once when I'd forgotten which house the Skull of Corruption was stashed in. Made for a sort of mini pilgrimage.