Striker879

The C:\Program Files (x86) thing may or may not be at the root of the problem. I seem to recall something about some people having trouble with editing AI packages where most don't as being some random unluckiness (i.e. unexplainable problem). When I'm troubleshooting problems here at the Striker mansion I try to eliminate all the possible causes that are correctable before I throw in the towel and say "Act of God". It's a well documented thing that having the game installed in C:\Program Files (x86) does not lead to the simplest, least bumpy road you can travel. Your mileage may differ.

So will you be the Madgod someday?

Reading between the lines I'm going to assume your Steam install is in C:\Program Files (x86). If you want to get Steam and Oblivion out from under all the problems that stem from being located there have a look at Bben46's Oblivion reinstall procedure. Take note of the link near the top of the page regarding moving your Steam installation, and don't skip the step on cleaning your registry.

The way to tell what version your game is patched to is look in the lower left corner of your screen when the menu is displayed. If it says 1.2.0416 then you are at the latest version, either with or without the Shivering Isles installed. I know with my old original disk version if you patched to version 1.2.0416 before you installed the Shivering Isles you had to uninstall the game if you later wanted to install SI. I'm not sure how the 5th Anniversary edition handles that situation. You'll know you have the Shivering Isles installed when you look in your quests journal and it says "I have heard a rumor that a strange doorway has appeared on a small island in the Niben Bay. I should investigate.".

I'm not suggesting every good looking screenshot is Photoshopped, but if it looks too good to be true, well maybe it is. If you read through some of the comments on the Uploaded Images thread they'll sometimes admit to Photoshopping an image. I've also seen it mentioned on the Mod Detectives thread when someone is asking how come the armor/face/body that they downloaded doesn't look like the screenshots. If you find an image you think may be just mods then ask the image uploader what they used.

Take your screenshot and then edit it in Photoshop (or similar). I'm sure a lot of the screenshots you love are done this way.

The only thing I can think to suggest is disable your mods and then make a clean save. Load the clean save and try casting the scroll in the middle of the garden. If it works you'll know it's a mod related problem ... if it doesn't we've eliminated that possibility. If it does work then you could try your old save from before making the clean save with just half your mods disabled. If it works you'll know the bad mod was in that half, if it doesn't the re-enable the first half and disable half of the remaining half. Keep working it down until you find the offending mod.

The only caveat I can add is one that David already mentioned ... no matter which solution you use to fix the A-Bomb you will need to rerun that fix every now and then. I can usually tell by how the flames look on the Legion riders torches well before it starts causing major problems. In Wyre Bash you can get a percent reading on how close you are to needing to rerun the fix. In OAF it gives you an actual value of the problem byte. I generally start seeing trailing effects from the torches at about 48 on the byte value (49 is the value for when it requires fixing).

Are you using any browser add-ons (pop-up blockers etc.)?

Are you using any mods that would change Aleswell? What you describe should have put you into the correct place.

If you are playing a save game with a lot of hours on it try running the Oblivion Animation Fixer.

Make sure you download and install the correct official patch. There is a different official patch for the game when you have Shivering Isles installed than if you don't have SI installed. Here's a link to the Bethesda Softworks official patches page. Click the little plus sign beside The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles if you have SI installed and select the correct language for your game install.

In this game it's only cheating if you consider it cheating. If having very high health or a really powerful sword would take away from your enjoyment of the game then don't use those mods. Not all mods do a good job of telling you what changes they make to gameplay or lists the stats for weapons or armor. I usually read through the mod comments for a mod before I download and install it (even if it has a good complete mod description ... I also want to know beforehand what kinds of problems other people have had with it). There are plenty of people who do want stuff to make the game really easy, and you'll usually get a good idea about what the mod is all about by reading the comments. I myself am a pretty vanilla old fart. I have some skimpy armors and BBB (along with animations etc. to take advantage of BBB). I have some nice homes to go along with the vanilla homes you can buy. And I have Companion Vilja and Packdonkeys, two great additions to the game. With my new low level character the packdonkey was my second major purchase in the game, right after the Imperial City waterfront shack. I'll wait until I'm done the main quest and Dark Brotherhood quests before I go and pick up Vilja. My favourite home is Aleswell Cottage (you need to do the Zero Visibilty quest before you can buy the cottage). Companion Vilja, Packdonkeys and Aleswell Cottage are all done by the same modder (Emma) so there are special interactions you can have when they are used together (well at least for the Aleswell Cottage and Vilja ... the packdonkeys have the same fun habit with everyone ... stealing carrots). Emma and her team make quality mods and their support for them is second to none. I don't use any of the big overhaul mods (FCOM, OOO etc.) because I find playing the game in it's vanilla form enjoyable. Sure there are limitations, like with the leveling system for example. That's part of what makes the game enjoyable for me ... learning ways to work with those limitations or work around them. The other thing that keeps me away from them is I want the Oblivion game to be like Oblivion, not some other game I played in the past (or didn't play in the past). But then again, I'm not like a lot of people, so there's a place for those mods. It takes a bit more work, but do your research and be true to yourself. Oh ... and learn from your mistakes. They are your most valuable resource.

The other quest that Kud-Ei can give you isn't a Mages Guild quest, it's more a personal favour you do for her. The quest is called Through a Nightmare Darkly. If you haven't already started it don't start it now (check your journal to see if it's listed as one of your active quests). It has conflicts with the Bravil Recommendation quest when you try to do both at the same time. If it is active in your journal already try to finish Through a Nightmare Darkly before you try to finish the Mages Guild recommendation quest.

I'm a little foggy, because it was so long ago I did that quest, but I do know I was having similar trouble getting him to give the right answers. If your disposition with him is above 65 try waiting until he's either actually in the chapel or Silverhome on the Water before speaking to him. It was either that or the problem that they mention in the Wiki when you're doing the Through a Nightmare Darkly quest at the same time. It could be I had to complete Through a Nightmare first, and then complete this quest. The other problem that can arise with Kud-Ei (as well as some other quest givers) is that there are more dialogue subjects than can fit between the arrows in the dialogue menu, so you need to scroll down to see the one you're after.

My first time I didn't know about having enchanted weapons or silver. I was pretty low level and didn't have much magicka so even with the weak fire spell I started the game with it took forever (and more than a few saves) to whittle them down to size. I lead them outside so I could stay alive while I worked.

Aww, shucks. Actually your post means more than a dozen kudos ... thanks and I've been glad to be of service.

Here's another of my UESP Wiki quotes ...

If I recall correctly I was standing in the middle of the farmer's garden when I cast the spell. That may not be the same spot as the fast travel marker (on the UESP Wiki map it looks like the fast travel marker is close to the road behind Sakeepa's house).

Another thing to consider is whether or not you thoroughly cleaned all traces of your previous install from your registry (when it was located in C:\Program Files). The Oblivion uninstall won't clean up after itself ... you'll need something like CCleaner. Have a look through Bben46's Oblivion reinstall procedure and see if you can find anything you skipped that may help.

Simply copy the four .nif files from either the Long Nipples folder or the base folder you extracted to into your game install Oblivion\Data\meshes\characters\_male folder. If you already have had a body replacer installed previously you'll be prompted about those files already existing ... chose 'Overwrite All'. If you have not already done so in the past, you'll need to turn on some form of archive invalidation. The preferred method is BSA Redirection, which can be activated either through Oblivion Mod Manager (OBMM) or Wyre Bash.

I suspect you are using the BBB Ragdoll skeleton. I have the same flying on death situation (along with a weird floating blunts when paralyzed anomaly). My own research into the problem leads me to believe it was something that was introduced to the Growlf's Universal skeleton in one of the later versions. It must not affect everyone though, as it's not widely reported. Your Khajiit and Argonian problems are related to the situation that DrakeTheDragon outlined on this thread recently. Because they are handled differently from other races, they are more difficult to get right when you're installing a texture replacer.

Umbra is camped out inside Vindasel.

Ya, their drop down boxes cater to those people with more recent cards. When you click the arrow beside where it says 'Geforce 500 Series' it will open a drop down selection box. At the bottom of the selection drop down list, right below where it says 'Geforce 100M Series (Notebooks)' you'll see a little wee arrow ... when you hit that it will scroll the list down and you'll be able to see 'Geforce 7 Series'. Select that and it will load the appropriate selections in the next drop down box (after you open it) where you'll find your card 7800 GTX after you've scrolled down with the same wee tiny arrow a couple of times (or hit the double tiny arrow to the right side and it will scroll to the bottom with one click). Next select your operating system and then language and I'd suggest change the bottom box from 'All' to 'Recommended/Certified', but the only difference is that 'All' will also list the Beta drivers ... not a problem if you don't pick one as a download. Click the 'Find' button and you'll get a list of drivers (after it churns for a few seconds or more). Woohoo ... when I did this earlier I was selecting according to my graphics card (the 9800 GT I think) and it only listed back as far as version 275.33. When I did it just now as I was making sure I had all the steps right for you in my description it goes all the way back to version 197 WHQL. It's not listing anything in the 240 version range ... it could be that those weren't considered as good as the later versions (for example 256 WHQL ... either 257.21 or 258.96 driver version from that series). Must be that the earliest version that would support my earlier selection for my 9800 GT card was the 275.33 driver. I'd suggest the 258.96 ... it rings a bell for me that it was considered a good driver at the time, but that was more than a year ago, and my memory could be a bit faulty (gee ... talk about disclaimers eh?).

Unfortunately the NVIDIA Beta and Legacy Drivers page only seems to go back as far as the 275.33 WHQL driver. You could try a Google search for a site hosting the 240 driver ... I tend to only download from NVIDIA myself though. Unless they've gone through another of their Control Panel applet 'improvements' (in other words change the driver interface and make everything useful harder to find) you should still be able to select Oblivion on the Program Settings tab of the NVIDIA Control Panel applet and tweak settings there. If it's a latest and greatest beta version he installed I'd get him to uninstall that and then install one of the available WHQL versions ... they're considered the latest stable versions. You just uninstall from the Add/Remove Programs (in WinXP ... you'll need the equivalent in Vista's or Win 7's Control Panel) and then reboot. When Windows displays the found new hardware cancel out of them finding and installing drivers. The screen will come up butt ugly and super low resolution but don't worry. You run the driver installer you previously downloaded from NVIDIA and all will be fine after it's installed and you go through the mandatory reboot. Even though it's possible to update the drivers without uninstalling the old one and rebooting to butt ugly no driver Windows default, doing the full nine yard way is the preferred method.