A Guide to preventing bugs and crashes in Oblivion

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Hello everyone<br /><br />After searching through this wonderful forum, I could not find any advice of preventing crashes all in one place. It was all small pieces strewn around. You had your work cut out if you wanted to find a solution to your problems.<br /><br />I finally decided on this forum topic to provide a one-stop-place to find any advice on preventing crashes and bugs. Here is my current list of ways to prevent the crashes and bugs:<br /><br />

<b>1 ) Upgrade your computer, especially RAM</b> - Oblivion is a relatively demanding game and if your computer is not up to scratch, you will find that your game, under enough strain, will miss pieces of code or give up. Also, Oblivion has a nasty habit of storing all the data it needs to load and never releasing it from memory. This causes crashes when your memory gets too full. Note that more RAM will only make this problem appear later though (I provide a way of almost completely removing this problem below).<br />Did you know that you can find your PC's specifications by following these instructions:<br />Click on "Start button on your taskbar => Run". In the box that appears, type (without quotes) "dxdiag". In the system tab of the window that appears, write down the information you see next to "Processor" and "Memory" in the "System Information" box. Then click on the "Display" tab. In the "Device" box, write down information next to "Name" and "Approx. Total Memory". You have now got your PC's (game important) specifications.<br /><br /><b>2 ) Patch Oblivion to the latest version available</b> - This might seem an obvious thing to say but I am sure that there are still people out there who use a version of Oblivion that is less than the latest available. Currently, the latest patch is <b>1.2.0.416</b>. You may check what version you have by navigating to your Oblivion directory (by default, C:Program FilesBethesda SoftworksOblivion). Right-click on "Oblivion.exe" and click on "Properties". Click on the "Version" tab and you will see the version number next to "Version Number:". If this number is less than 1.2.0.416, you need to download this patch from <a href="http://www.elderscrolls.com/downloads/updates_patches.htm" target="_blank">here</a>. If your number is greater than 1.2.0.416, you are either very friendly with Bethesda or something is wrong with your game (maybe a crack). You need to download the latest patch because Bethesda provides numerous bug fixes and crash prevention measures and most mods are built around this patch, meaning that you might experience bugs or crashes if you use a mod requiring 1.2.0.416 and you use something less than this.<br /><br /><b>3 ) Visit <a href="http://www.tweakguides.com/Oblivion_1.html" target="_blank">TweakGuide.com's Oblivion Tweak Guide</a></b> - The owner of this site, Koroush Ghazi, provides some valuable information on how to tweak your game to perform much better and crash less often. I highly recommend you visit this site and read Koroush's valuable guide.<br /><br /><b>4 ) Check all your mods for corruption or incompatibility and bugginess</b> - If you are having a problem with your game, it might be caused by one of your mods. If the problems start occuring soon after you have installed a new mod, it is most likely the problem. There is no easy way of finding a bad mod unfortunately. You can try use various tools to try find the problem but ultimately, the most surefire way is deactivating all your mods and than re-activating them one-by-one until you find the problematic mod. The best way of preventing problems, however, is to make sure your mods are working properly and are compatible from the moment you acquire and install them.<br /><br /><b>5 ) Organise your load order</b> - There have been numerous bugs reported that are caused by an incorrect load order. There are easy ways to fix this problem. The easiest method is to use <a href="http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=20516" target="_blank">BOSS- Better Oblivion Sorting Software</a>. It will automatically sort most, if not all, of your mods into the correct order. For the rest that aren't sorted, you can use <a href="http://wrye.ufrealms.net/#WryeBash" target="_blank">Wrye Bash</a> or <a href="http://timeslip.chorrol.com/" target="_blank">OBMM - Oblivion Mod Manager</a>. Wrye Bash allows you to directly input a date to set on the mod (load order is controlled by the date placed on a plugin) while OBMM lets you move a plugin up or down your load order one slot per click. Take your pick (I recommend you get both).<br /><br /><b>6 ) Use Wrye Bash's various features</b> - The bashed patch allows some simple mods to be combined together into one plugin, meaning that less plugins are being loaded by Oblivion. It also provides numerous small features which can replace entire downloaded mods (some of which are bug fixes and crash preventers). It also allows certain features of mods to be combined together. Also, Wrye Bash provides a number of tools to repair specific problems in mods and save games. Overall, a very useful tool to have.<br /><br /><b>7 ) Download crash prevention mods</b> - I have put together a list of mods that either do or might prevent crashes and bugs from occuring in your game. I shall provide this list and an explanation below.<br /><br /><b>8 ) Disable autosave and don't use quicksave</b> - I have read stories of how using auto or quicksave causes the game to crash. I can't confirm whether this is correct or not as I have never tried this. However, I shall still list this until someone says something to the contrary. If you are wondering how you will be able to save without going into the save game menu while using these fixes, I provide a solution below.<br /><br /><b>9 ) Try to make your game less demanding on your PC</b> - The less the game demands from your PC, the less likely the game is to crash or miss some code. Or so that school of thought goes. This is probably the last step you should take due to the probable lack of importance and results. This step may be implemented by either reducing your graphic quality settings or downloading a mod or tool which reduces the quality of something. Even if you don't plan on reducing quality, it might be useful to download some of the performance enhancing mods which don't affect visual quality significantly so that you can crank up some of your graphics settings further. For methods and mods which improve performance, I point you to <a href="http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=881204&st=0" target="_blank">"The Oblivion Performance Project" thread</a>.

<br /><br />Whew that was quite a bit of work. Now I shall list the mods which might or will prevent crashes and bugs.<br /><br />

<a href="http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=5296" target="_blank">=The Unofficial Oblivion Patch v3.2.0 by QuarnAndKivan</a> - If you only ever download one mod for Oblivion, let it be this one. This mods fixes a HUGE number of bugs which Bethesda never fixed. The full list of fixes can be found <a href="http://baldurdash.org/TESOblivion/UOPFixList.htmll" target="_blank">here</a> (note that it is about 550KB of text). They report that they have fixed over 1800 bugs. If you have Shivering Isle or any of Bethesda's official plugins, you might also want their <a href="http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=10739" target="_blank">Unofficial Shivering Isles Patch</a> and their <a href="http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=9969" target="_blank">Unofficial Official Mods Patch</a>. The bug fixes are listed <a href="http://www.baldurdash.org/TESOblivion/USIPFixList.html" target="_blank">here (shivering)</a> and <a href="http://www.baldurdash.org/TESOblivion/UOMPFixList.html" target="_blank">here (other mods)</a>. Reported fixes are over 200 and around 220 respectively.<br />Please note however that these three patches all require the 1.2.0.416 patch to work properly.<br /><br />=<a href="http://obse.silverlock.org/download/mods/" target="_blank">Streamline v3.0 or 3.1 by Jagatelesin</a> - This mod does three things. <br />First, it clears your memory of unneeded files, hence improving performance and reducing or eliminating the overfilled memory crash I mentioned above.<br />Secondly, it dynamically changes various graphics options based on your framerate. If your PC is struggling, Streamline will lower your graphics settings and raise them when your PC can handle it. I personally don't use this feature because I don't like the graphics changes it makes but this is your choice.<br />Lastly, it provides an overhauled autosave feature for if your game does crash. This system of saving has the same effect as using the save game function in the pause menu so it bypasses the quick and autosave function. This is the best autosave system I have seen so far.<br />The link above takes you to the download link for versions 3 and 3.1, the reason for this being that I regard higher version numbers as being better. There are some people in this community who think that v3.1 actually causes more crashes compared to v3. I recommend you download and try both to see which performs better on your system. If you want more information on this mod, you will have to download it and read the readme. This mod requires <a href="http://obse.silverlock.org/" target="_blank">OBSE (Oblivion Script Extender) v0012 or later</a><br /><br />=<a href="http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=22282" target="_blank">Windom Earle_s Oblivion Crash Prevention System by Windom Earle</a> - This OBSE plugin tries to stop the game from crashing when something goes wrong with the code (Windom calls it a "crash offset"). I have not tried out this mod yet but it has received very good remarks so I must assume that this mod does what it is supposed to do. It makes Elys' Crashshield mod obsolete so if you use that mod, you might want to get weOCPS instead. Also, Elys' Crashshield and weOCPS can't be used at the same time. This mod requires <a href="http://obse.silverlock.org/" target="_blank">OBSE (Oblivion Script Extender) v0012 or later</a> though higher is recommended.<br /><br />=<a href="http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=22410" target="_blank">Fast Quit by Scanti and Skyranger-1</a> - this OBSE plugin lets you quit the game without the game crashing, giving the game a chance to save it's ini file and it makes the quitting process much faster. I have not tried this mod yet but again I have read lots of comments that compliment this mod. If you use Deathless Aphrodite's Clean Quit mod, I recommend that you switch to this mod instead. The reasons being that Fast Exit doesn't require Pluggy (which is rumoured to cause crashes) and it is also more reliable than Clean Quit. DA also mentions in Fast Quit's comments that it makes her mod obsolete. Since I spotted that comment, I have not been able to find Clean Quit on this site, leading me to the conclusion that it has been deleted by her. This OBSE plugin requires <a href="http://obse.silverlock.org/" target="_blank">OBSE (Oblivion Script Extender) v0016 or later</a>

<br /><br />Lastly, my list of mods which cause Oblivion to crash excessively or more often than necessary. Use at your own discretion.<br /><br />

No mods here yet. Try suggest some

<br /><br />As for everyone else, if you have a suggestion, comment or complaint for/about this topic, you can post a reply at the topic this guide was taken from. You may find this topic <a href="http://thenexusforums.com/index.php?showtopic=104041" target="_blank">here</a><br />If you have a piece of information that will contribute to this article's quality, please suggest it and I will add it into this article.<br /><br />I hope this article will be an excellent source of information for everyone who has a problematic game.