Striker879

Lucky you ... I'm starting to get too tall for mine. The real thanks should go to DarkRider at TES Alliance. I'm just Sir Links-a-Lot.

Might be the quad is already full of textures. Here's a TES Alliance link to some more info on it and the solution ... CS Basics: General Questions

Putting your game in C:\Program Files (x86) will just open up a whole different world of problems for you (User Account Control (UAC) guards that and other system folders and UAC and Oblivion do not get along well). Crashing on exit is a common thing with modded Oblivion. Crashing on saving isn't a good thing ... tells me you probably don't have 'good saving habits'. Do you use quicksave (by default F5)? Quicksave is a known corrupter of save files. Only use save from the Esc menu or the 'save <YourSaveNameHere>' command from the Oblivion console. Also never overwrite saves, always save to a new slot (or incremented number for named saves e.g. YourSaveName1 ... YourSaveName2 etc.). You say you use very few mods but use the NMM for Oblivion mods. Know that NMM is only compatible with installing the simplest Oblivion mods ... you will be much farther ahead reading the mod's install instructions and following them. That said, did your trouble saving begin soon after installing a mod?

Spec wise that Asus card is comparable to the Auzentechs I picked up with the exception of the Creative X-Fi chipset (the page I looked at on it says 'ASUS AV200 High-Performance Sound Processor' but that will just be someone else's chipset rebranded by Asus ... no telling whose). About the only suggestion I can make regarding DirectX is to run the Microsoft DirectX Diagnostic Tool (dxdiag.exe on WinXP ... not sure what it would be on Win 7/8, if it still exists).

Seconded. I never build a machine without a dedicated sound card even though almost every motherboard I've bought in the last 15 years or more has included on-board sound. The reason on-board sound is included is it cost the motherboard manufacturer almost nothing and gives the marketing guys something to crow about. Even a relatively inexpensive sound card outperforms on-board sound (and here I'm not talking about something for $10 that is nothing more than the on-board sound chip on a discrete card ... that junk is out there too). If you're spending $30 or more you'll be fine.

Depends on whether you have a PCI slot available or a PCI-E slot. That card I mentioned is on sale at Canada Computers for $27.99 ($5 discount). The least expensive PCI-E card is an Asus Xonar DGX - 5.1 Channel + Headphone Amp for $44.99. I have no experience with Asus sound cards (that particular one uses a C-Media CMI8786 High-Definition Sound Processor). I tend to stick with Creative Labs myself ... even the Auzentech cards I have for my next machine use a Creative Creative 20K2 PCI Express audio processor for the PCI-E version and an X-Fi for the PCI version (bought two for less than half price because I don't know whether I'll have a PCI or PCI-E slot available after I get the SLI video cards plus chipset cooler installed). The cheapest Creative PCI-E card Canada Computers has is a Creative Sound Blaster Recon3D - PCI-E for $89.99.

Unless Microsoft has changed it since Vista/Win 7 it will be 'Users\[username]\Documents\My Games\Oblivion\Saves'.

Hence my advice to never overwrite saves (which isn't recommended anyway). If you're really worried install Multiple Oblivion Manager - MOM and create a clone of your current install (which is MOM's default action). Make the clone active and use it to troubleshoot. If it breaks delete the clone and start over.

As I have a 2 GB system and run Win XP Pro 32 bit I have no experience using the patcher. Like I said, even though the readme says it automatically makes a backup, I'd backup my Oblivion.exe to a safe location (outside all the game folders). You won't know until you try it ... part of troubleshooting is discovering what doesn't work.

Start a new character (most easily done if you have a save from just before the sewer exit prior to the character finalization menu). If you save, don't overwrite your older saves (never a good idea ... always save in a new slot). Never use quicksave (F5 by default), it's a known corrupter of save files. Use saves from the Esc menu or named saves using the console (again, never overwriting).

I can't say for certain whether a 4 GB patcher would help. Your onboard sound uses your CPU and memory for most of it's processing (using CPU cycles and memory that the game could use otherwise). You could try something like that to see if it helps (won't do anything for the CPU cycles but could open up more memory for use by the game). Make backups of everything beforehand. As Hickory suggests, the best solution is a dedicated sound card (if you have an available slot). Even a relatively inexpensive one like a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy SE 7.1 PCI will be light years ahead of your onboard Realtek (i.e. will do it's own sound processing).

Only things that come to mind for me are: 1) Are you using any effects such as Concert Hall or the like in the Realtek control panel applet? 2) Even though you have 8 GB RAM the vanilla game will only use something like 2 GB or less (unless you set up one of the 4 GB patchers). Does this only happen after you've been playing for a while? Also are you only using the two unofficial patches and no other mods?

Hmm ... you've got me on the removing BSA Redirection question. I've never run across anything on that, nor any reason to want to. The other methods of archive invalidation (BSA Invalidation, BSA Alteration and BSA Extraction) all have downside consequences and disadvantages compared to BSA Redirection. It really is a do once and forget about it solution. - Edit - Check your private messages.

Have a look at Guild Advancement to add a bit more meat to advancing in the Mage's Guild. Take note of the mod requirements (specifically the Brasher mods requirement for Shivering isles). Doesn't make learning spells any more complicated, but the requirements for advancement in the guild are tougher.

That mod is an example of what I call a 'pure replacer' mod. What it does is replace something that the vanilla game has without adding anything extra. The other kind of replacer replaces some of the vanilla assets but also adds more (usually a female version of something that only comes as male in the vanilla game). The Female Steel Cuirass mod I linked earlier is a perfect example of the second type. Before you add that mod all females in the game wear a male version of the steel cuirass. To get women to wear the female version of the steel cuirass that it adds the mod needs an esp to over-ride that vanilla game behavior. The pure replacer on the other hand only needs to put files with the right name in the correct folder path, plus one other little trick. Because the game looks for it's vanilla assets (like the female Mythic Dawn robe) in it's compressed BSA files (in this case Oblivion - Meshes.bsa and Oblivion - Textures - Compressed.bsa) we need some way to tell the game to stop looking for that particular item in the BSAs and look for it in 'Oblivion\Data\meshes\mythicdawnrobe\f'. To do that we use something called archive invalidation. The recommended way to take care of archive invalidation is a method called 'BSA Redirection'. The simplest way to do that is with OBMM. Open OBMM and on the right side click the 'Utilities' button. From the menu select 'Archive Invalidation' and in the dialogue that opens click on 'BSA Redirection' (near the top of the dialogue). If you use the Steam version of the game click on the 'Reset BSA timestamps' button (if not just go to the next step). Click on the 'Update now' button at the bottom and then close the Archive Invalidation dialogue (click the 'x') and close OBMM (same way). OBMM doesn't commit it changes until you close the program. BSA Redirection is a do once and forget about it solution. Now if you have already got the BSA Redirection done and the Mythic Dawn robe isn't changing to the new style it could also be an installation error. In your game folders the file 'mythicdawnrobef.nif must be in the exact path 'Oblivion\Data\meshes\mythicdawnrobe\f'. When you copy from the extracted archive you need to pay attention to where you are pasting (I always use the right mouse click and select 'Copy' and then right click on the destination and select 'Paste' method). The rule of thumb is you alweays paste into one level higher than you copy. That means if you copy 'meshes' you paste into 'Data'. If you get it wrong it's usually pasting into 'meshes', which is easy to spot because you'll have 'Oblivion\Data\meshes\meshes\mythicdawnrobe\f\mythicdawnrobef.nif' (notice the extra 'meshes'). Just right click the second meshes folder and select 'Cut' from the right click menu and then right click on 'Data' and select 'Paste' from the right click menu. You'll know you've got it right when you get the warning about there already is a folder named 'meshes'. Just say 'Yes to all' and it will merge the new files into the correct folders. I guess you already figured this out, but I'm not much good at short answers am I?

NPCs Yield works well with bandits etc. spawned from leveled lists, but your quest and named NPCs are excluded (they won't yield).

1. The meshes are what give the item it's shape (think of it as the place the textures get painted on). Everything you see in the game has at the very least a mesh and textures. If the item is also going to move and be animated it will have a skeleton (stick figure) that is attached to different points on the mesh. Animations (like NoMaaM) move the skeleton's 'bones' (picture a stickman's arm) which because it's attached to part of the mesh move that. What you see in-game is the texture (surface bumps, colour, glow or shininess) move as the mesh moves. 2. That's exactly what you'll see in-game. Your C-cup character or NPC will suddenly get H-cup when she puts on armor or clothing in that size, and when you take it off will go back to C-cup. Other than being visually a bit unrealistic it doesn't cause any difficulties in the game. Pick the size your prefer to see when women are nude (or in the default underwear if that's the option you chose) and then whichever sizes you decide on for different clothing and armor. I use a mod that gives me a spell to change women to various sizes: BBB Designer body spell. When used alongside another mod (NPCs Yield) I can leave defeated bandits etc. without weapons, armor or clothing (I've made some tweaks to the ini file for NPCs Yield plus a tweak in one of my own mods to allow for more than 3 days for cells to reset ... gives me a chance to drop around for a visit with those defeated bandits). A lot of what I'm talking about is stuff that you need to learn some of the basics before it will start to make sense. Learn where the different types of game resources (meshes, textures, animation files) are located in the game folders. That's most easily done after you install a couple of mods using OBMM, because the vanilla game stores it's resources in compressed archives called BSA files (you'll find those in your Oblivion\Data folder), so without mods a lot of those folders aren't seen. Follow along in some of the discussions on here (past or future) where different problems are worked on (sometimes caused by resources put in the wrong spot in the game folders for example). As more of how things need to be to work makes sense to you, you'll start to understand some of the possibilities like what I mentioned with the clear glass armor. Sky is the limit.

Oh boy ... now you're making me work (just kidding). For armor replacers I have a variety that includes some vanilla armors (if they don't show skin the vanilla armors are just fine as long as you don't want BBB or I guess if you found a BBBed version of the vanilla armor). Others I've mixed and matched (example for glass armor I've used parts of Clear Glass Armor, BBB Clear Sexy Glass H-Cup and HGEC BBB Clear Glass Armor Replacer E-Cup M-Body ... texture from this one, meshes from this other one ... whatever I can get to work together and look how I like). In general I try to keeps notes of what I've used for what, but that one's an example of where my experiments exceeded my record keeping. At the other end of the spectrum I have Female Steel Cuirass (which isn't HGEC but as no skin shows it works just fine). My past character used some of FLY_femalearmors_remodel_replacer_for_HGEC_with_BBB along with some from VerySkimpyStockClothingArmorHGEC and BBB HGEC and Naughty Armours - Stock Replacer HGEC Std BBB ECup Lbot PPN. Every character gets Saaya's BBBed version of HGEC - Yet Another Armor Replacer Mod - Fur Armor (one of the different options available). Dark Brotherhood on my current character is the one's that come with A Better Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary (again picking one of the many options). For clothing replacers the list is a bit shorter. There are some from BBB H-cup Stock, some from a different replacer in C-cup that is no longer available and a smattering of vanilla clothes (again ones that don't show skin). In the past I've used More revealing Stock Clothes- UC Green Silk and Countess Silks HGEC (and some of the clothing from the FLY series). Enough to get you started. For console commands you can look through Oblivion: Console. Be careful with most of them ... you can mess up your quests pretty easy by trying the wrong ones for example. The one you're looking for is 'tfc' (toggle free camera). One that goes handily with that is 'tm' (toggle menus ... I imagine you're looking for screenshot commands).

That is the same HGEC BBBed body I use. When you install it using Oblivion Mod Manager (OBMM) select the option for installing without animations. On the first time through it won't really matter, as when you install NoMaaM next it will overwrite any animations that were installed by the HGEC body mod. If you decide to change the body using the OMOD and OBMM at a later date you'll lose many of the NoMaaM animations if you don't select the 'no animations' option (if you read through the mod descriptions of both the body mod and NoMaaM you'll see they both make that recommendation). Rivelle's compilation doesn't come with any replacement clothing or armor for the default vanilla stuff. If you install just it and then NoMaaM you'll see no bouncing of clothed/armored women and any armor/clothing that exposes skin (like chainmail armor for example) will show weird coloured arms. That's because HGEC isn't compatible with the vanilla texture mapping (something called UV mapping, though I can't pretend to understand much about it). After you get Rivelle's mod and NoMaaM installed you need to download and install either a complete armor/clothing replacer (which usually results in all women being the same size) or a mixture of different sized and styled HGEC compatible clothing and armor replacers (which is what I have done). More work but you get more variety and you get to decide what ones will be BBBed and what ones won't (I don't think steel armor would bounce myself ... you may think differently). As far as skeleton.nifs go, if you install Rivelle's compilation it includes an older BBBed skeleton that will work just fine for most BBBed mods. You can install Universal Skeleton Nif if you want later, if you find a mod that needs some of the extras that come with the more recent skeleton (or you can install the latest skeleton after installing Rivelle's mod).

Have a look through Bben46's wiki article Oblivion reinstall procedure. Maybe you'll see something mentioned there that you know you did differently or not at all (e.g. registry cleaning). When you say you deleted your Oblivion folder and then uninstalled the game you don't mean in that order I hope.

As far as races go I'm pretty well in the same boat as you. Read the mod description, paying attention to the requirements (and I know that many mod descriptions and requirements leave a lot to be desired, especially in the races category ... more 'my first mods' there than you can shake a stick at). HGEC is the most popular body, that's why you see so many mods for it. The thing to keep in mind once you go HGEC is that then you can't use other types of armor unless they explicitly say they are HGEC compatible. For example if an armor says it's for Roberts female don't even think about it ... click the back button and move on to the next armor in the list. Even the stock vanilla armor doesn't work with HGEC (unless you don't mind weird skin tones on exposed arms etc.). BBB (Better Bouncing Boobs) is implemented at three levels in the game. You need a BBB enabled skeleton.nif, a BBB enabled body and clothing/armor and BBB enabled animations. Clothing and armor 'become' the body part they cover and all meshes (body and armor/clothing) in the game need to be 'rigged' to the skeleton. By using a skeleton.nif that's BBBed (example Universal Skeleton Nif ControlableSkeleton version) the BBBed body, clothing and armor will bounce if you also have BBB enabled animations installed. Best choice there is NoMaaM BBB Animation Replacer. Without all three elements you'll get no joy.

Can't give any tips on races, but EVE HGEC Eyecandy Variants Expansion followed by BBB for EVE HGEC stock replacer (in that order) should take care of your bouncy HGEC needs.

This request belongs in the Account Closure Requests thread.

Those mods are all incompatible with installing using NMM. A lot of Oblivion mods (perhaps I should say most) were developed long before NMM and the way the files and folders are organized within the archive isn't done in a way NMM can understand. You could download the archive, extract it to a folder and reorganize the various option into a folder structure that NMM can understand (example is fallpwnsall's instructions found here) or you can learn to read mod install instructions in the mod description and follow them.

Is your game installed in C:\Program Files or C:\Program Files (x86)?