Striker879

What happens if you use both switches (as in "...\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion\obse_loader.exe" -editor -oldinject)?

Have you tried the old loader linked in this post by shadowslasher410?

Just a guess (not using version 0021 yet) but I'd say edit your Construction Set desktop short cut to read "...\Oblivion\obse_loader.exe" -oldinject (same way as the CS desktop path was edited to "...\Oblivion\obse_loader.exe" -editor with version 0020 and of course replacing the ... with your path, in my install full path to version 0020 CS desktop shortcut is "G:\Games\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion\obse_loader.exe" -editor).

You need to have at least started the quest Blood of the Daedra (8th quest in the main quest). See the Daedric Quests page for details.

The general rule of thumb I have found concerning laptops is the ones with a faster CPU alwys are paired with Intel integrated graphics (thus are graphics limited) or those with a decent graphics solution (e.g. nVidia dedicated GPU) are saddled with a slow CPU. Sounds like you are likely in category two. They do that to meet a price point. When I was looking for a laptop for my oldest granddaughter a couple of Christmases ago I had to spend about $500 more to get a reasonably balanced machine (fairly fast CPU and dedicated GPU). It probably only cost $100 more to build the balanced machine but they figure that if you know enough to recognize the difference they've got you over the barrel (most people wouldn't even consider the more capable machine even if it was only $100 more ... they'd just whine at the saleman saying why's this one more money). In general we are our own worst enemy.

Nor do I, at least since my SLI died (I think I may have had them enable way back in the SLI days ... so long ago now it seems like faded antiquity ... I need a new rig).

Wondering for my own info ... are you talking about these vanilla Oblivion.ini variables: bUseWaterReflectionsMisc=1bUseWaterReflectionsStatics=1bUseWaterReflectionsTrees=1bUseWaterReflectionsActors=1

Unless you are comfortable with extracting the manual install version and then going through all the options and corresponding folders to install, I'd say go with the EXE installer version.

I may have been a bit misleading on the patching method. I'd suggest installing the main mod with OBMM and then download and extract the patch to a temporary folder. Using Windows Explorer copy and paste to your Oblivion install, remembering that when copy/pasting folders you always paste in one level higher than you copy (so if you copy a Meshes folder from the extracted download you would paste into Oblivion\Data in your game install). You'll get a Windows warning about there is already a folder named Meshes (or whichever you're copying) ... just say Yes to All to overwrite with the new files. If the patch includes an ESP you'll paste it into Data (copy/pasting individual files the rule is paste into the folder you copied from).

Install the main file and then install the patch saying yes to any overwrites. Or extract the main file download to a temporary folder and then extract the patch to a different temporary folder. Compare the two to see what was updated and merge the two accordingly.

I have seen it reported that when using OBMM to start the game you need to put the file obse_loader.exe in your Oblivion folder, even though the Steam version of the game doesn't use it. I myself would never use OBMM to start the game ... I use it to install OMODs and to extract OMODs and BSAs so I can look for overwrites etc. (but I am a manual installing dinosaur).

Depending on the mods you had installed with your old saves they may or may not work with a vanilla unmodded Oblivion (for example you may just get the missing content warning with an armor or house mod, but will get a missing master crash with a mod that includes an ESM as well as an ESP). If you are determined to use your old saves you first need to start a new game on the completely unmodded vanilla Steam Oblivion and go through the tutorial dungeon as far as the point where you see the sewer exit in the distance (just before you get the character finalization menus). Make a save there ... this will be the save you will use in the future if you ever want to start a new character but don't want to go through the whole tutorial again. Exit the sewer and make another save, not overwriting your first save (overwriting saves is not recommended anyway). This will be your mod testing save. Next go to the Imperial City Market District during the daytime and make sure the game is running smoothly. This will give you a baseline to compare against once you start adding mods. You need to exit the sewer before testing because the game isn't using all of it's resources until you enter the wide world outside the tutorial. Now start adding mods, one at a time and testing using your just outside the sewer exit save. If you add a mod that taxes your system (something like Better Cities) because you have a baseline to compare against you will be able to make informed decisions about what mods to keep and which are not going to work. If you add one mod to a growing list and now the game starts crashing you have a simple task figuring out where to start troubleshooting (add thirty mods at once and then try figuring out where to start ... I see it all the time on here ... good luck). I use a utility called Multiple Oblivion Manager (MOM) to keep separate profiles for different characters (each with his own individual mods). I have a profile dedicated to testing mods, so I never need to risk one of my main characters profiles to an unknown mod. You could load up a profile with the mods required for your old saves and never risk your main game's stability. All it takes is a bit of hard drive space.

Are you saying that after following bben46's article and installing the game and absolutely nothing else you still can't get the game to run? First step is always confirm the completely vanilla game will run. If that won't run you'll need to contact Steam to find out how to run their product on Win 8.1. If that's the case then before you contact Steam there is one last thing you can try. Look down near the bottom of the first page of this thread and try the obse_loader.exe that shadowslasher410 linked. It's not likely to help (he's using the Anthology version), but desperate times ...

Hmm .. when I checked out the Anthology version in a local EB Games store it appeared to have a single key for all of the included games but the included "manual" was typically very vague and totally lacking any specific run requirements (it of course had the generic now-a-days "requires Steam client" ... they totally own the PC gaming world today). I was mostly interested in it as a way to get Morrowind, but as you may have guessed I'm kinda' an anti-Steam type myself. Thank you for the info. I'm sure it will help me down the road when helping troubleshoot Anthology version problems.

Depending on how you've handled your uninstalls and re-installs you could have a bit of a registry mess right now. The recommended place to install Steam and then Oblivion is C:\Games. Here's a link to bben46's wiki article Oblivion reinstall procedure. Don't miss the link near the top of the page about moving your Steam install ... and don't skip the registry cleaning step.

Some follow-up for my own understanding ... the obse_loader.exe your link has is from an older OBSE version (earlier than version 0019 the earliest I have downloaded myself), which makes sense as the Anthology version is a disk version of the game (obse_loader.exe is used with disk version of Oblivion). The Anthology version also requires Steam (hence the Steam Community requirement) so I assume you also need to have obse_steam_loader.dll in your Oblivion folder. With the Anthology version, when you start the game are you doing so through Steam or the same as a disk version (i.e. using the obse_loader.exe)?

Yes it should work right off the bat without OBSE. When troubleshooting it's always best to start from a known position, which for you would be just the base game installed and running without issues. I don't know what changes Microsoft made between Win 8 and Win 8.1 (I'm an old Win XP dinosaur, but I have a bit of Vista and Win 7 experience on the grandkid's machines) but they certainly still have UAC enforced on C:\Program Files and/or C:\Program Files (x86). Is your Steam installed in either of those?

Did you install OBSE using the Steam install and game start instructions (i.e. enabled Steam Community)?

For years Oblivion was the benchmark for bringing hardware to it's knees. It fell out of favour not because hardware came along that could eat the game for breakfast but because new games came into favour (hard to sell Far Cry if you don't have lots of people benchmarking it and publishing their results for example). So is Oblivion a hardware hog because it's poorly optimized? Maybe if you are thinking optimized in relation to modern hardware. Oblivion was optimized to run on a single core scarcely multi-threaded CPU back in the day when GHz was King. My vintage GotY disk edition has recommended specs of 3.0 GHz Pentium 4 and Geforce 6800 or higher. So you'd think your overclocked i5 should blow an ancient 3 GHz P4 away, and it would in this case except for one detail ... execution unit pipeline length. I remember even back in the days of the later versions of P4 that pipeline length in the last versions of P4 was trumped by the shorter piped early version even if they gave away a little in clock speed except when it came to multi-threaded tasks. The reason that Intel went with longer and longer execution unit pipelines was because they went with more and more execution units (when Moore's Law killed the GHz King), and it took the longer pipes and BIOS updates to keep the CPU from stalling on things like cache misses or code prediction misses. Oblivion was last updated just before the end of GHz is King and multi-threading took over the world. That all said there is still much you can do with some research on here, leveraging the hard won knowledge of others. Search for threads similar to yours ... scarcely a month goes by without at least one or two popping up. Some offer good advice, others no so good. A lot of where you wind up will depend on what your "must have" mods are, and how those mods hammer framerate.

BSA Alteration was an older and less successful method of archive invalidation. You will see it recommended in some older mods as well as in some more recent ones posted by modders who are either more familiar with it or unaware of BSA Redirection. As you've discovered, in all aspects BSA Redirection is the superior method ... you do it once and then forget about it. Wrye Bash's bashed patch will be of limited use for you when you're simply using mesh/texture replacers. If you used it's BAIN installer it could make reverting to previous configurations easier perhaps (it keeps track of overwrites), but with replacers it's just a matter of install order. I can't say much about whether or not NMM offers similar functionality to BAIN in that respect. What I will do when helping troubleshoot NMM installation woes is download and extract the mod in question. When the folder structure is non-Oblivion standard (usually the case when mods offer different options for install) is normally when people complain that NMM isn't working to install. You can get NMM to work ... it's just a matter of creating your own install folder with only the options you want, and then installing that version using NMM. Of course by the time you've done all that prep work you could just copy and paste to the same result. I guess because I've never even seen NMM, never mind used it, I won't understand the fascination with it.

When Bethesda updated the Construction Set to version 1.2 they broke the LIP generator. Here's links to a couple of resources for background info and solutions: Dialogue Tutorial - The Elder Scrolls Construction Set Wiki (look down at the My NPCs are mute! section) LIP Template If I'm not mistaken Contruction Set Extender is another solution. - Edit - Ninjaed by Alenet

Downloaded and extracted it just to see what's up. Though it makes absolutely no mention of it in the mod description (which is only focused on marketing the mod) the mod install is an EXE executable, something I'm sure NMM can't deal with (as neither OBMM nor Wrye Bash). When I read through the first couple of pages of mod comments looking for possible installation problems reported (of which I saw none) I did get the impression the mod may be more marketing than substance. The download extracts without issue using 7-Zip. You're on your own beyond that though, as I didn't see anything in my research that would tempt me to run an executable to install a mod that showed so little promise. - Edit - Forgot to mention ... even the PDF readme you get when you extract the download gives absolutely no install instructions (contains nothing more than more marketing drivel). - Edit2 - I've obviously been unfairly hash on the mod. While I defer to Harvald's first hand knowledge concerning it's quality I stand on my assertion that some sort of mention on install method could have been included in the description or readme PDF.

Is the mod an older mod, especially one that recommends in the mod description to use Oblivion Mod Manager (OBMM) to select options during install? Nexus Mod Manager will work fine downloading and installing many Oblivion mods that have simple file and folder structure or don't include options that need selecting during install, but isn't a "will work for all" solution for installing Oblivion mods. More details on which mod you are trying to install would help (name and a link to the mod).

Something else that could be happening is that the newest version of OBSE isn't being properly detectd. You could give OBSE Tester a try, but again I can't say for certain it will properly detect the latest version of OBSE (I know it works with OBSE ver 20). There was another post recently (perhaps even by you) regarding OBSE and the Anthology version of Oblivion and I'm very interested in learning how this disk plus Steam version interacts with OBSE. You could try downgrading to OBSE ver 20 to see if OBSE Tester detects it, and which OBSE install method is required to get it working.

This is a known problem with Oblivion. You can minimize the problem by carefully and gradually adjusting the sliders in CharGen but be aware that the lighting is different there than what you'll find in the game world (so what looks good in CharGen isn't so good once you're in the game). Unless you are willing to use the Construction Set to adjust values for NPCs you can either live with it or try one of the various mods that have attempted to fix the problem over the years (the latest being Oblivion Character Overhaul version 2). As you will note from the comments by even that mod's author, in it's current state there is no way to completely eliminate the problem.