Striker879

Nah ... that only works if you use a replacer, and then those female bandits can distract the heck out of the player. They don't give a rat's a$$ what the player looks like, or is or isn't wearing.

What??? Didn't you get the memo??? The less it covers the more it protects!!! I hear you and can't say I disagree.

Is the crash happening again when you get to the same point in a quest, or wear a particular armor, or go to a certain place? The 'coc center' trick is going to help when the trouble is caused by scripts getting screwed up but won't do anything to fix a faulty script or game resource that's been added by a mod. I don't have any experience using the mods I see in your load list but there are a couple that I have seen others recommend against (the two that jump out as reported problem causers are P1DkeyChain.esp and Natural_Weather_by_Max_Tael.esp). The mod I've seen recommended to replace Natural Weather is Weather - All Natural and I don't recall an alternate recommendation for the Key Chain mod. You have plenty of other mods in your list that could be part of the problem (I see problems reported with lots of mods that aren't related to installation woes, but that doesn't mean they could be game breaking problems). I see a bashed patch but you never did say whether or not you use BOSS to sort your load order. You also haven't mentioned whether or not you have been a habitual user of quicksave in the past. Once I learned about the problems caused by quicksave (mine were more related to CTD problems while playing) it took quite a while of using good save habits to finally get that character's saves stable (well as stable as Oblivion will ever be). I have well over 1200 hours on my old guy and the only thing I need to do beyond good save habits is exit the game to the desktop every few hours and run the A-Bomb fix when it starts to show up again. I very rarely get CTD anymore, unless I forget to exit the game every few hours (after an Esc menu save or named console save of course).

Have a look at Nitefox98's post Noob up and running ... it's an excellent guide on what you can do with the right hardware and mods.

I went through all those settings back when I was using Koroush Ghazi's Oblivion Tweak Guide to try and get my own game as smooth as possible (also back when my Geforce 8800 GTS SLI rig was still viable). Even using his recommendations for those setting and my RAM (2 GB) I couldn't get things perfect ... just a bit better.

No problem. Your English is far better than my German I'm sure. DrakeTheDragon did all the actual heavy lifting.

That's the pop-up I was talking about. There are certain areas that it seems to happen (I see it every time I pass Greenmead Cave on the way to Skingrad for instance ... the turn in the road down by Grayrock Cave pops into detailed view from a mushy distant texture). I could be wrong, but I thought that is what the Landscape LOD generator was for. Your setup is far and away beyond what I can run on my current hardware, so I can imagine that the difference between far and near is rather jarring compared to my vanilla setup. It looks like there are prerendered options for many UL areas along with the option to use the mod to generate your own. One of these days I mean to try out the vanilla replacement prerendered files.

Thank you DragonAviator. From what I've seen recently on the Claudia's thread I was sure you'd be one who could help.

As you get more hours on a character problems can accumulate. Another of the common problems is called the A-Bomb. It shows up as stuck or jerky animations, especially noticeable on torches and spell effects. I use Oblivion Animation Fixer, both on my old character (that has over 1200 hours) and my new guy.

I'm not sure if it would have this effect or not, but are your texture sizes set to large?

Like I said at the outset, maybe it will help, maybe not. At the very least you will have the game (and Steam) installed outside of UAC interference, and you will be able to cross one more thing off the possible causes list.

How you save your game can make a difference. Quicksave is known to lead to problems. I only use either the save option from the Esc menu (and always save to a new slot don't overwrite) or use named saves from the console. You can either delete old saves when your saves folder starts to get full or move your saves to a backup folder (a folder named OblivionSavesBackup won't be seen by the game). If you want to try to salvage your latest save you could try the 'coc center' console trick. Open the console and enter 'coc center' (without the quotes). You'll be transported to an open plain with a few trees visible in the distance. Using the wait menu wait for 72 hours plus a bit (3 full days and a bit). Open the console and 'coc weye' (or another location if you know the correct name). Try making a new save and see if it helps (no promises).

You'll need the game installed before the Construction Set will work. Don't skip the registry cleaning step ... left overs in your registry will just confuse the CS. Did you actually mean the double backslash there or is it really C:\Steam\Oblivion?

BOSS is the tool to use for sorting your load order and then you use Wyre Bash to build a bashed patch. That is a patch of the things that conflict between mods (example two mods trying to change the same thing). Some conflicts can be resolved just with load order (whichever mod loads last in the load order is what the game will use) and others require a bashed patch (usually specified in the mod description). When a game goes from working correctly to not working it is usually a result of something you've done. If you add a mod and then the game breaks it's kind of obvious, but other things such as installing a codec pak or updating video drivers can also play havoc. Another thing that can lead to problems is using quicksave. Quicksave is known to cause save file corruption. Always use either save from the Esc menu or a named save from the console. It's also recommended to never overwrite your saves (i.e. save in a new slot each time). When you start to get a lot of saves you can either delete the old ones or move them out of your saves folder (a folder named OblivionBackupSaves is sufficient ... the game won't see that folder). When you mention you've re-installed the game many times I wonder about whether or not you've done a good registry cleaning in between. Have a look through Bben46's wiki article Oblivion reinstall procedure and see if you notice anything recommended there that you neglected to do. When installing mods it's always best to only do one or two at a time (except where you are installing a group of related mods) and do a thorough test in between. That way when something goes wrong you'll have a really good idea where to start in your troubleshooting. It's a good idea to have an archived save from just before you exit the sewers (just before your final character generation choices) unless you don't mind redoing the whole tutorial each time you start a new character. I also like to have a save from just after exiting the sewers that can be used for mod testing. On your standard install you would still be testing with all your mods installed, but that early save wouldn't have any quest progress on any of the quests, giving you a 'modded vanilla' baseline. I use Multiple Oblivion Manager - MOM to manage two different characters with two different mod lists. It would also be trivial to setup a clean vanilla setup for testing purposes.

I don't have any hands-on experience with it yet, but I've been following the progress of Landscape LOD generator tes4ll-v3. My understanding of the mod is that one of the things it eliminates is that distant land pop-up you describe. Gruftikus is pretty active developing and servicing the mod, and I'm sure would be glad to answer any pre-install questions you might have. If you tried it and found it helpful your report in this thread would also probably go over well with Gruftikus.

Thanks Drake. I've been around here enough to know that nobody 'owns' a poster's problem (actually I find the team approach more satisfying and successful). My own observations of your 'work' here on the forums told me that what I was suggesting would be OK with you ... I just respect you too much to make that assumption. I've posted your translation of the original post on the Claudia's Secret thread with a bit of an explanation. Hopefully DragonAviator or Grumpf_be will see it and have some suggestions or questions.

Most everything you see in the game that is script driven can get balled up. Once tangled the game needs a chance to 'get a clean start'. When you wait the game has a chance to say "OK, the player is just doing nothing for X number of hours ... when they are done this will be the state of the cell they are in". It can just drop whatever it was calculating before you waited (your magic effect) and get busy with what will be happening when you 'come to' again. The fact that you didn't need to leave the cell is probably due to the balled up script being on the player, as opposed to a script running on something else in the cell the player occupied when things went south.

DragonAviator is pretty active supporting the mod. Perhaps if the English translation of the question was reposted on the Claudia s little secret Chapter I and II thread it may stand a better chance of being answered. I would have done so DrakeTheDragon but considering you have generously offered your services as a translator I didn't want to presume you were willing to continue.

OK ... that's what had me confused. I got the impression from what your OP says that the timer was running down (which doesn't make sense and now that I reread it I see I was messed up). Do you have a previous save you could revert to? The other possibility you could try is open the console before the timer times out and 'coc center' (without the quotes). After you hit enter you will be transported to an open plain with some trees visible in the distance. With the console closed open the wait menu and wait for 72 hours plus a bit (three full days and a bit). After you wait then 'coc weye' (or another place if you know the correct name). Another possibility to try (perhaps before you try the coc trick) is to open the wait menu before the timer runs out and wait for 72 hours plus a bit. It might not work as the coc & wait trick is mostly useful in allowing the games scripts to reset without the player character present (as I presented it above) where just waiting has your character still in the cell in the game world.

What happens after you've held at the inventory screen (i.e. when you try to resume play)?

I find that with my old character that has over 1200 hours game time I get fairly frequent exit crashes (maybe 60 or 70% of the time). With my new character that has 250 hours game time I seldom get crashes at exit (maybe 10% of the time). With both characters I've adopted using either save from the Esc menu (old character) or save from the console (new guy). I only load an autosave when I've neglected to save frequently enough and don't want to lose too much progress and I never use quicksave. When I say exit crashes I mean I get the black windowed screen with the Windows error message (I use Win XP).

Are you using any mods that alter/add spells?

Then my question is what have you changed since then (e.g. mods added/deleted, Windows/DirectX updates, audio codecs installed, etc.)?

Alt - Tab + Oblivion = Asking for trouble. The game doesn't do a very good job of relinquishing control back to the operating system, so Alt + Tab is generally not recommended. There are some mods that attempt to make it work more reliably by running the game windowed, but I don't know how successful they are. - Edit - As chance would have it I ran across one of those Alt + Tab mods while perusing the mod comments section ... Fake Fullscreen Mode Windowed. I would suggest reading through the mod comments before trying (well, that's how I do things anyway).

Careful how much weight you put on these old shoulders ... you could say I have some of the answers. This one I can handle. Here's the link to the Unofficial Shivering Isles patch. In case you don't already have it this is the link for the Unofficial Oblivion patch. The term 'Madgod' refers to Sheogorath, one of the Daedric Princes.