Striker879

Unmodded vanilla Oblivion or Oblivion plus mods?

What exactly is the problem? When you try to re-install what are the error messages, if any? Before you ran through Bben46's tutorial was the old install acting up and if so how? I can't see why deleting your Data folder would prevent re-installing if you were able to get the uninstall to run. Have a look in your Control Panel list of installed apps and see if Oblivion is still showing up there ... if it's not then uninstall must have worked. Having a ton of mods in your old install shouldn't affect whether or not you can re-install. I have no idea what your are referring to with this: What are no. 4, 3 and 5 referring to?

From the CS Wiki: De-Isolation Tutorial. If you are making your copy of Elsweyr the active esp (in other words you are editing the Elsweyr esp) then de-isolation isn't your problem. If you are loading Oblivion.esm and the Elsweyr esp and then making your own esp active de-isolation is your problem (well as far a getting your changes to show up in the game). Your problem seeing the new house could be related to having the correct world space loaded in the render window first. An option for working around the de-isolation issue not mentioned in the tutorial is using CS Extender ... eliminates the need to master the esp and then un-master it afterwards. As far as load order afterwards, you'd want to load your mod after Elsweyr, or have your esp merged with Elsweyr in your bashed patch.

Anyone who had their game installed in C:\Games would be able to see it just fine. Anyone who has their game installed anywhere else would not see the textures. Change the path to just start at textures (e.g. textures\creatures\scarycave-textures-dog\scarycave-laddie.dds ... note no backslash before textures) and it will be fine.

Doesn't matter where your game is installed ... what matters is that in NifSkope your meshes show texture paths that start at textures not C:\Games or Data\textures or anything else. Textures\Armor\MyCoolArmor\MyCoolCuirass.dds will work ... add anything before textures and you'll run into trouble.

Also make sure you haven't used absolute paths in your meshes ... if the path to the mesh is C:\Program Files(x86)\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion\Data\meshes\Armor\MyCoolArmor\MyCoolCuirass.nif then anyone who doesn't have the game installed in C:\Program Files(x86)\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion will not have your cuirass show up in-game. The paths must all start at meshes or textures for textures (e.g. 'meshes\Armor\MyCoolArmor\MyCoolCuirass.nif' will work for anyone, no matter what the path to their game folders is).

The only thing I can think of to suggest is to either delete the renamed 'Sky_Deactivated' and it's contents or better yet move it to a location outside of the game folders. As long as the folder is located inside the Data folder the game will 'see' it ... not so sure it will try to load it with a folder named like that but it's worth a try.

If you are talking about when you put an item in a container that already has a bunch of stuff but it doesn't show when you reopen the inventory screen ... that is a known issue caused by having items that are repaired to beyond 100% in the container. If you put another thing into the container your 'missing' item will appear but the last item 'disappears'. Not sure if it can be fixed ... I just stopped storing things that are repaired beyond 100%.

Not a lot to go on ... you'll need to supply more information. Is this an old save or a new character who has just left the tutorial sewers? Post a mod list (and in case you don't know how: How to post a load order for Oblivion). Does this happen just with a particular save or even if you use an old save? Did it start happening after you installed a new mod (or a bunch of mods)?

Have a look in your Oblivion.ini (found in Users\[username]\Documents\My Games\Oblivion for Vista and Win 7 or Documents and Settings\[username]\My Documents\My Games\Oblivion for WinXP) in the [Water Variables] section and compare to the default values. Here's a quote from Koroush Ghazi's Oblivion Tweak Guides with the default values:

Yes the game is known to have issues with codecs installed with codec paks and other programs. Here's an excerpt from Koroush Ghazi's Oblivion Tweak Guide: A simple way to test if audio is at the center of your problem is to disable sound temporarily in Oblivion.ini. Find the [Audio Variables] section of your Oblivion.ini file (which is found in Users\[username]\Documents\My Games\Oblivion for Vista and Win 7) and change bDSoundHWAcceleration=1, bMusicEnabled=1 and bSoundEnabled=1 to bDSoundHWAcceleration=0, bMusicEnabled=0 and bSoundEnabled=0 (change the ones to zeros). If the game starts with only that change then your problem is rooted in audio problems. Open you sound card or onboard sound's control panel and disable all audio effects (things like 'Concert Hall' etc.). Change your Oblivion.ini back to bDSoundHWAcceleration=1, bMusicEnabled=1 and bSoundEnabled=1 and test. You can also go to your sound system's web site and download the latest drivers (e.g. Realtek HD Audio Codecs ... tick 'Yes I accept' to go to the download page).

Better to have plenty of reference material and have trouble keeping track of it all than too little. If you have the UOP up and running without any issues I'd go with the "If it ain't broke, don't try fixing it!" school of thought.

Something that caught my eye in your screenshot is it's saying a feature you're trying to use is on a network resource that's no longer available. Is your game installed on a network?

What about stuff like DirectX updates (something that is done behind your back by Windows Update sometimes) or graphics driver updates? The game won't 'go bad' if just left sitting untouched on your hard drive. Since you've tried re-installing other problems could be happening (for example, did you do a registry cleaning after you uninstalled). Have a look through Bben46's wiki article Oblivion reinstall procedure and see if anything mentioned there jumps out as something you didn't do when you re-installed (or did differently). - Edit - Something else you could try is rename your Oblivion.ini file to Oblivionini.old (make sure you're renaming the file found in Users\[username]\Documents\My Games\Oblivion not the one in your game's Oblivion folder). Start the game as far as the menu and then exit to let it generate a new ini file (it will redetect your hardware ... sometimes new modern hardware doesn't get properly detected and you may need to go into the menus and reset your screen resolution etc.).

More info required ... where is the game installed (e.g. C:\Program Files\...), is it a new install or has the problem arisen after you added a mod to an already working game (and if so was it the first mod you've added), what version of the game (e.g. disk version GotY or Steam)?

Hopefully Nephenee13 or someone else more knowledgeable in WB will correct any errors I make here. From what I read in the WB Pictorial Guide Intro to Using Installers I suggest copy & paste from your download folder to the Bash Installers folder that was created when you first open the Installers tab in WB. Reading through the pictorial guide and using it while you get the hang of this is recommended. BSAs are compressed archives used by the game (not all that dissimilar to zip or 7z archives). These days a number of modders prefer to release their mods using simply an esp and BSA for ease of support. To install them you can simply copy the two files (ModA.esp and ModA.bsa for example) from your extracted download and paste them into your Oblivion\Data folder. It hides all the folder/file structure of the mod within the BSA (the meshes and textures folders for example). All that is left is activating the ModA.esp using the vanilla game's Data Files, OBMM or BAIN. Which method to use I'll answer in question 4. As far as I know WB will install mods that come as esp plus BSA. The various flavours of Unofficial Patches are a somewhat confusing mess of patches and updates to previous patches. Often a later patch supercedes previous patches plus updates. I would have to believe that if you installed the latest patch (highest number) it would include all the preceding patches, but if you installed the lower numbered patches and updates to patches in order I don't see where you would run into trouble. Normally if an older version of a mod (and the patches are just mods) needs to be uninstalled before a new version is installed it will give you instructions to that effect. Some mods come as a premade OMOD (i.e. the download is the file ModA.omod). Often (though not always) those OMODs come with an installation script that helps you through selecting the various options available in the mod. Mods that come as premade OMODs are best installed using OBMM. Mods that come as 'OMOD friendly format' have all the files and folders organized to make it easy for users to create their own OMOD, but I would suggest using BAIN for those due to it's more robust options (that same OMOD friendly format will be BAIN friendly in most cases). If you run into something that isn't packaged BAIN friendly then you'll need to decide whether to go with manual install or OMOD for that particular mod. I can't speak for the situation of having BAIN thrown into the mix, but I use a mixture of manual install and OMOD without problem. I believe you can activate mods in both OBMM and BAIN without problem, but BAIN will probably become your primary method of install and activating (I use both OBMM and Data Files together). You will most frequently find either 'manual install friendly' (those mods that tell you to extract to your Data folder ... not something I recommend, extract to your OblivionDownloads folder) or 'OMOD friendly' format. In the majority of cases either of those will also be BAIN friendly. As I said, if the download comes as a premade OMOD and doesn't offer any other way use OBMM ... if it comes as premade OMOD and premade BAIN use BAIN (you won't find many of those ... generally it's an either or situation). - Edit - Follow Nephenee's advice on anything that overlaps ... Nephenee has far more experience and knowledge on all things WB.

I agree the documentation around installing and using WB leaves a lot to be desired. When I first looked at WB (around version 2.85 or so) back before the standalone version days you only got the readme with the install instructions after you installed it!! Kept me away from it back then and now I've gotten used to working along without it. Someday a mod I decide to try will require WB and I'll need to hop onto the learning curve, but for now I hang onto my dinosaur ways.

Yes that is the one I'd suggest ... the top one under Main Files that says "Wrye Bash 296 - Installer - Automated installer/updater for both Python and Standalone versions". The installer should offer you the choice to install the standalone version.

What about 'locked, requires key' and give your character the only key?

LOL ... yes it is said that Hope springs eternal. Don't sweat the kudos ... thanks mean far more to me and you've paid in full.

I think the standalone version suits most people best considering it's ease of installation (fewer things to get wrong). I seldom see posts by people who had to downgrade to an earlier version of Python WB due to compatibility with some mod. According to the mod description page you allow the installer to find your Oblivion folder (or perhaps you need to direct it there): Your complaints about no 'take all' key are commonly heard. I believe there is a mod that offers that function but I'm afraid I can't point you to it. I suggest posting a question in the Mod detectives thread asking for it ... they're the experts on finding mods. I know the reason I mapped 'cast' to my mouse 'back' button as well as 'c' is how poorly placed the 'c' key is when you're trying to cast and move at the same time. Only advice I can give is find yourself a new mouse that has the 'forward' and 'back' side buttons (intended for web browser navigation) ... I'd go wireless, you won't regret it.

Without the esp I don't think there's any way to retrieve your missing NPC's refID or baseID. The only ways I can even think may be possible is with either TES4Edit or perhaps Wrye Bash (but I'm doubtful on both counts). We'll need to hope that someone with experience exchanging faces sees your post as I've never had any hands on with doing that (just know I've read that there are ways to do it).

The face can be rescued by Face Exchange Lite or Wrye Bash I think.

When you created the NPC the first time a hexadecimal ID was assigned (it's shown in a collapsed column beside the Name column). If you remade the NPC two seconds or two years later it will be assigned an ID ... and a unique ID at that. Best you could do is make a new NPC that looks the same and has all the same things in the starting inventory. If you had a backup of your original esp you'd be homefree.

At home I have two characters. I call them MyOldGuy and MyNewGuy. When I look in my game's install folder when I'm 'logged in' on my old guy I have a folder named MyNewGuy and inside it all the game's folders and files are there as if the folder MyNewGuy was my Oblivion folder. There is also an Oblivion folder (same as usual before using MOM) and of course inside it is all the usual games folders ... they would belong to my old guy at this point. When I switch to 'log in' to my new guy MOM renames all the appropriate folders. Now I have a folder named MyOldGuy, with all the usual game files and folders inside and I still have an Oblivion folder, but now it has all the game files and folders for my new guy's game. MOM does the same with your saves folders. When I started out I was using the same mod list with both guys so really all MOM was doing was keep the saves separate (I just cloned my old guy's setup and used a before the sewer exit save to create a new character and deleted all the old guy's saves, after backing up of course). Over time I've added mods to one or the other character's setup and uninstalled a couple from the new guy. The only thing that's a bit of a pain in the butt with MOM is if you are wanting a new mod installed in more than one character's 'profile'. I'm a manual installer so I can install to both characters using one 'Copy' and two 'Pastes' (one in the Oblivion folder and one in either the MyOldGuy or MyNewGuy folder depending on which is active at the time ... just use MyOldGuy or MyNewGuy the same as an Oblivion folder). You do however need to activate the new mod in Data Files for one character and then switch to the other character and activate the new mod in that character's Data Files. If you are an OBMM or BAIN type you'll need to do similar there. I'm surprised by the extra backslash ... can't say I've ever run into that before.