Striker879

Best bet is get a vanilla install working, patched to 1.2.0.416 and then get through the tutorial. Make a save before the final chance to change race etc. (unless you enjoy going through the whole tutorial every time you want to start over or need to re-install the game). Exit the sewers and make another save after having a little jog and looking around enough to confirm everything is working correctly. Then start adding mods one at a time and test in between (while you're doing that you can proceed on the main quest or whichever way you want to play). On a side note, don't use quicksave at all. Get into the habit of using a manual save off the menu and only load from an autosave when you've forgotten to save recently and don't want to lose too much progress. Quicksave and autosave are known to lead to more frequent crashes via save file corruption.

Sorry no experience there (I'm a conservative old fart where mods are concerned ... armor, clothes, BBB and animation replacers are all the eyecandy I need). If DarN UI doesn't fix the menu problem you can uninstall it (either just it or as an uninstall/re-install method of resolving your issues).

I'm with you on Vista and Win 7. The laptop I'm currently using came with Vista, and I've set up a number of netbooks and laptops for the grandkids with various Win 7 flavours. Give me XP any day. I actually have three uninstalled OEM copies of XP Pro waiting for machines. I swear if this Vista laptop ever so much as has a hiccup and I'll turn it into an XP machine (with the subsequent increase in performance ... unbelievable how long the HD trashes after bootup with Vista, and I use a 4Gb SD card as ready boost). To access the original Oblivion launcher I use the Oblivion shortcut on the start menu (I have edited my desktop shortcut to start via obse_launcher.exe). Considering I'm primarily a manual mod installer I use that as opposed to having two desktop shortcuts, one for OblivionLauncher.exe and one for obse_launcher.exe (less chance of starting the game to play using the wrong shortcut). On the original Oblivion launcher you'll have an Options and then you can set vsync to enabled. You could force it in your NVIDIA control panel for Oblivion, but it's probably best to use the game for it. As a side note, if you ever want to use HDR lighting and antialiasing at the same time you'll need to force AA in the NVIDIA control panel (it's not available as an option in the game graphics settings with HDR selected). If you're only dropping below 60 fps occasionally you may want to give the full meal deal version of Quarls a try. Something you could do while just experimenting is use bben46's Revert to Vanilla guide to create a 'sacrificial lamb' copy of your Data folder. I'd create a vanilla one first, like his guide outlines and test Quarls full meal version on that initially (with any required tools such as OBSE installed but no other mods). If it runs good then add your mods etc. to the trial installation until you're satisfied it's a workable deal. You then have the choice of using the test version of your Data folder as your new working version or uninstalling Quarls Redim on your original Data folder version and install Quarls full meal (not the way I'd go however ... the trial Data version started out clean, is modded to your perfection and works, what could be better than that??).

I love it when someone earns those special perks (betcha' ya even get a couple of blueberries in yer yogurt). You probably were even able to find some of those 'missing' variables. As far as I know you won't be able to completely eliminate all stuttering in Oblivion. It's an old game, that pushed the envelope back in the day, but it just can't take advantage of today's modern hardware. You should run the game at your screens native resolution unless you're using a CRT monitor. The re-scaling that must be done in the background when you run an LCD at non-native resolution is just chewing up CPU cycles. Your hardware can handle it. Any 32 bit Windows version will be able to utilize just shy of 4 Gb of memory. I believe you'll need 3gb enabler to take advantage of more than 2 Gb in the game (although a quad core should be able to use any memory above 2 Gb for background tasks while the game is running, mind you with a small impact on the game for multitasking overhead). It's good to run into another XP dinosaur. How much longer before we fall victim to the end-of-life no more security updates 'asteroid strike'.

There must have been a recent update to OBGE ... been a rash of problems with it of late. I'm not very familiar with OBGE myself, but have a look at branfordcole's post #2 on this thread and see if any of it makes sense to you.

Your saves and oblivion.ini aren't located in the game install folder so they aren't uninstalled along with the game. Have a look through bben46's uninstall/re-install guide to get a better understanding of what to do for a complete re-install of Oblivion.

Your keepers must have a mean streak ... or was that "Stupid hobbitsez!". Hard to tell if I'm in the movie or the movie is just playing and I'm watching (is there a difference??). Not sure how you'd go about restoring you oblivion_default.ini back to default values (you didn't save a backup of the unaltered original by any chance). A fresh re-install would probably do it, but I wouldn't blame you for not wanting to go there. The oblivion_default.ini isn't used at all unless something happens to your oblivion.ini. If you haven't edited your oblivion.ini yet make a backup and store it in a different folder. It will be the values from the oblivion_default.ini plus the changes that setup made when detecting your hardware. It's always good to have a way to roll things back (well besides the red shoes and "There's no place like home" naturally).

I'm afraid I have no experience working with textures etc. but your problem has been discussed in threads on here before. It may have been related to the alpha channel or something similar.

The one you edit is called oblivion.ini and will be located in the same location (My Documents\My Games\Oblivion) as your save files. The one located in your game install Oblivion folder is called oblivion_default.ini and is the file that the game uses to recreate an ini with default values (useful as a troubleshooting tool). Teasing me with the luxuries available in your institution will only get me drooling.

The update download is only for people who had older versions of OBMM installed (versions prior to version 1.1.12). If you downloaded and installed obmm 1_1_12 full installer you have the latest version. Actually uninstalling from the disk is the most thorough way to uninstall. Oblivion Mod Manager should not affect your sound files. Have you installed or activated some mods with it since installing OBMM?

As long as they're not in the Oblivion folder the game won't see them.

I forgot to mention about the horse related stuttering. I believe this is an artifact of the horse skeleton. On my own machine I don't recall seeing it before I installed fore's NoMaaM Animation Replacer with the BBBed horseback animation, but I do recall fore commenting on a post long long ago something about it. Perhaps he'll see this post and jump in with an explanation. If you put the missing entries in the same section as Koroush has them in his tweak guide you should be good. I just find it strange that you'd have some missing ... I don't recall having any MIA entries.

Here's a link to bben46's uninstall/re-install guide and to his revert to vanilla data.

I think your RAM has more effect than GPU memory size (with modern day video cards anyway). I only have 2Gb of RAM myself so I have uInterior Cell Buffer=16,uExterior Cell Buffer=102 and iPreloadSizeLimit=104857600. I find the easiest way to find anything in oblivion.ini is use Notepads 'Find' from the Edit menu (just make sure you relocate the cursor to the beginning of the file before each search). To the best of my knowledge you should already have all the settings that Koroush suggests tweaking.

When you got it to work and then it stops working you have me wondering if you could either have a virus or malware that's infecting your obse_loader.exe or maybe your antivirus has taken a dislike to obse_loader.exe. To test the antivirus theory, uninstall all OBSE files again, re-install OBSE and then before you run it go into your antivirus software and make sure that obse_loader.exe is excluded from all scanning. You could also scan the currently installed obse_loader.exe with an updated antivirus (or online scanner) to confirm it's not infected. When you say 'deleted all the mods' are you just deactivating them in the launcher or deactivating them in the launcher and then deleting all the associated files and folders (or moving them outside your Oblivion folder)?

I don't know of many performance tweaks that were made with the GotY edition other than thiose that Koroush outlines in his guide (that guide has been updated to reflect the GotY). The meat of the stuttering tweaks are outlined on page 9 of the guide (second page of the advanced tweaks). Back when my SLI rig was still functional I all but eliminated stuttering with the Memory, Loading and Multithreading tweaks and Cell Visibility/Loading variables sections (my single 8800GTS 640Mb isn't up to the task alone). I tweaked the grass and tree variables some, but still would have the grass growing before me as I moved. I stuck with the setting Koroush recommended for the most part, as I didn't really notice much improvement when going further than his recommendations.

For Mankar Camoran I used an bow enchanted with damage fatigue (poison the arrows the same, or if you have Thieves Den get some damage fatigue arrows from Melliwin). Mankar has reflect spell and reflect damage so you'll be killing yourself if you try to get him conventionally. Arrows don't reflect damage or spells. Once you have him down you can finish him with regular bows and arrows or however you choose (as you can pause and heal yourself if the reflect effects start getting you down). I used a custom damage fatigue spell on his two kids first so I didn't have them sniping at me while I worked over their old man (paralyse for 1 second and damage fatigue for as many seconds as you can manage). Don't forget to kill and loot the kids before you dispatch dear old Dad (but give him a little nappy time before you finish the kids).

Emma's houses Red Rose Manor, Aleswell Cottage, Lakeside Home, Fisherman's Cottage and Bravil Bridge Cottage are all companion friendly, and the first two have extra perks if you also use her Companion Vilja.

Don't forget to test between mod installs and only do one at a time. Makes shortening down the list easy.

Cool ... thanks for posting the solution.

Have you tried re-installing your Roberts v4. Install order is the most important consideration with replacer mods, particularly when they conflict and each tries to replace the same files. Whichever is installed last will be what the game tries to display. That may cause problems for the one that were installed previously. Also when you uninstall the problem causing replacer it won't put back the files it overwrote upon installation (unless you use BAIN for installation). Try re-installing your Roberts body. The reason you see feet when you have sandals on, for example, is because the sandals become the feet when you put them on (which is why you need to use compatible clothes and armor for your body type). In the case of your collared shirt and dark green shirt, have you installed a mod that replaces those items? If so make sure your meshes and textures for that mod are located in the correct folders (extract the download to a temporary folder and examine the folder structure ... it needs to be exactly the same in your game folders).

Hmm ... that's the reason I prefer to manually update everything, so I know what changes I did if I run into trouble. At this point for you I wouldn't suggest rolling back drivers or anything as you don't know when or if they've been updated. If it's only vanilla resources that cause the crash and you haven't recently added any mods it makes it more of a puzzler. Vanilla resources are loaded from the bsa, so missing meshes/textures shouldn't be an issue. I'd keep a log of exactly what pieces are causing the problem (if it's only happening occasionally you may not be realizing it's always a certain piece doing the crash). Perhaps that may lead to some way of narrowing down the possibilities. The only other thing that springs to mind is possibly problems stemming from quicksaves and autosaves. Get into the habit of only doing manual saves and only load an autosave if necessary to avoid losing too much progress when you've not manual saved often enough. I used to have fairly frequent crashes, even after I stopped bringing my CM Partners along (mine were usually at cell transitions). I seldom get any crashes now that I exclusively use manual save (except for those rare occasions I've not saved recently and don't want to lose my progress). It will take awhile for the save file info to accumulate enough 'good data' over top the bad, but if that's the cause you should eventually see a difference.

Have you installed the mod correctly? If you extract the downloaded archive to a temporary folder and examine the folder structure you can then compare that to what you have installed in your Oblivion folder. You should not see a Data folder inside the game's Data folder, a meshes folder inside your meshes folder (or textures inside the game's textures folder). The esp file should be located in your Data folder, the subfolders for the mod will be inside the same named subfolder structure in the game folders. Example ... if your extracted archive in the temporary folder has Data\textures\XYZMod\... (and then the files) but in your game folder you see Data\textures\textures\XYZMod\... the game will not be able to find the texture files (both must be Data\textures\XYZMod\...). The rule of thumb when copying and pasting folders from an extracted archive into your game to install it is always paste into one level higher than you copy from. If you right click Data in the extracted archive and select copy you would right click the Oblivion folder in your game install and select paste ... if you copy meshes you would paste into Data. If your install folders are misplaced and you have the extracted archive just delete the misplaced folders and their contents and copy and paste from the extracted archive to the correct locations. You could also move the misplaced folders to their correct locations.

Since the incident is everything else on the machine back to normal (i.e. other games and programs working normally, machine booting without errors)?

Have a look at the textures used in Frostfire Glade (part of the Tears of the Savior quest). The ice block at the center of the glade is close to what you're describing (but in-game you need to be on the quest to get access to the glade).