Half-consistent spell effect crashes

[SlimyMarmot]

Every now and then I've been having quite specific crash problems with some of the spell effects. Simply put, when a spell is cast on the player (by self or NPC), the game crashes.

A few noteworthy details:

 

-Not all effects crash. Mysticism and Destruction effects are the main ones to blame.

-The crash only occurs when in first person. Third person seems fine.

-The crash seems to have "on" and "off" periods. Sometimes I can play for several hours smoothly, but when the crashing starts, it is consistent and repeatable.

 

As I said, I've had this problem every now and then, with different mod and load order configurations, so I can't think of anything specific that could cause this. Some help would be appreciated.

 

Load order:

 

Oblivion.esm
Francesco's Leveled Creatures-Items Mod.esm
Francesco's Optional New Items Add-On.esm
Inventory Tracker.esm
Cobl Main.esm
Oscuro's_Oblivion_Overhaul.esm
Mart's Monster Mod.esm
TamrielTravellers.esm
FCOM_Convergence.esm
DremoraCompanion.esm
Kvatch Rebuilt.esm
Toaster Says Share v3.esm
HorseCombatMaster.esm
Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp
Oblivion Citadel Door Fix.esp
Francesco's Optional Chance of Stronger Bosses.esp
Francesco's Optional Chance of Stronger Enemies.esp
FCOM_Francescos.esp
FCOM_FrancescosItemsAddOn.esp
FCOM_FrancescosNamedBosses.esp
Natural_Weather_HDR_by_Max_Tael.esp
Natural_Habitat_by_Max_Tael.esp
Natural_Water_by_Max_Tael.esp
OBSE-Storms & Sound.esp
IlluminationWithin.esp
Akatosh Mount By Saiden Storm.esp
Quick Wardrobe.esp
Xero's Fame Indicator.esp
HouseMapMarkersOnlyBought.esp
Expanded Hotkeys and Spell Delete v1.0.esp
MaleBodyReplacerV4.esp
Adonnays Elven Weaponry.esp
Dark-Stealth Gear.esp
Rope Ladders v1.esp
Slof's Horses Base.esp
CallSteed3.0a.esp
Cobl Glue.esp
OOO 1.32-Cobl.esp
FCOM_Cobl.esp
Bob's Armory Oblivion.esp
FCOM_BobsArmory.esp
Oblivion WarCry EV.esp
FCOM_WarCry.esp
Oscuro's_Oblivion_Overhaul.esp
OOO-Water_Weeds.esp
FCOM_Convergence.esp
FCOM_RealSwords.esp
TamrielTravellers4000.esp
FCOM_TamrielTravelers.esp
OOO-WaterFish.esp
ClocksOfCyrodiil.esp
Kvatch Rebuilt.esp
Kvatch Rebuilt - Leveled Guards - FCOM.esp
Malevolent.esp
Servant of the Dawn.esp
thievery.esp
The Lost Spires.esp
bartholm.esp
Natural_Vegetation_by_Max_Tael.esp
Harvest [Flora].esp
BuyLockpicks.esp
Cliff_BetterLetters.esp
P1DkeyChain.esp
Quest Award Leveller.esp
Alternative Start by Robert Evrae.esp
RealisticForceMedium.esp
RealisticMagicForceHigh.esp
MidasSpells.esp
Stealth Entrances v1.esp
RenGuardOverhaul.esp
Denock Arrows.esp
RealisticLeveling.esp
actors_in_charge.esp
MM_NoMoreAnnoyingMessages.esp
AznarsLifeDetect.esp
Toaster Says Share Faction Recruitment.esp
DremoraCompanion.esp
attack and hide harder v2.0.esp
IS_CaskOfSouls_1.1.esp
TTB.esp
TOTWcamp.esp
TOTWfurn.esp
TOTW.esp
MyMountainTower.esp
IC DB Hideout.esp
StealthArmor.esp
EnchantmentRemoval.esp
SnakeLightningSpeed.esp
ArgonianBeautification-RaceSettings.esp
ScriptedArgonianFeet.esp
Bashed Patch, 0.esp
DeadlyReflex 5 - Combat Moves.esp

[Qwaxalot]

Experimentally, in the ...\Documents\mygames\oblivion\Oblivion.ini file locate:

 

bMusicEnabled=1

bSoundEnabled=1

 

And change both 1's to 0

 

If you get a big improvement either buy a sound card or try to reset the codecs

 

CODEC RESETS:

 

K-lite

 

Nightmare

[SlimyMarmot]

Neither disabling audio or changing codecs had any effect. Shame.

[Qwaxalot]

Neither disabling audio or changing codecs had any effect. Shame.

 

Some users have reported that changing the line (in the oblivion.ini) "iMaxImpactSoundCount=32" to =16 has helped.

 

Although I don't remember anyone distinguishing between 1st person and 3rd person.

 

 

EDIT: SORRY, Ignore this, you already turned off sound effects and music, and it didn't help. Sometimes my brain doesn't work right :wacko:

 

 

Qwaxalot

[SlimyMarmot]

Regenerating oblivion.ini gave strange results. After I had set most of my former video and control settings, I tested out the game and didn't crash. However, after quitting and fine-tuning the settings, like adding FraNewItems.bsa to the .ini (after I deleted the .ini I had a mesh missing and I remembered this had to be set) the crashing was back. It might have been one of those on/off moments or the last few settings I made were somehow crucial. Going to test more...

 

EDIT

I took out FraNewItems.bsa from the archive list in the .ini and managed to avoid the crash again! Looks like there's some kind of conflict with the .bsa...

 

...any ideas how to fix or avoid the issue? I'm still not sure why exactly the crash occurs and I'm quite fond of Fran's extra items.

 

THE EDIT TO EDIT THEM ALL

 

Looks like I found a fix! By messing around with .bsa naming I managed to get Oblivion load FraNewItems.bsa without using the .ini archive list. So far, this seems to have fixed the crashing. As I said, the crashing was always a bit random so I need to test this further but so far so good.

[SlimyMarmot]

I knew it was too good to be true...

 

The crashes are back, out of the blue. And now it sometimes crashes in the middle of saving as well (=corrupted saves). Awesome. I haven't got a clue why the .bsa trick seemed to work for a period of time, and then fail completely.

[Vagrant0]

Try doing a conflict check between your mods to see which ones alter shaders or spell effects. These are likely the cause.

 

It could also be something with your load order and how OOO, Frans, and MMM are being loaded. I have nothing to base this on, but if possible, try not using MMM as I've experienced crashes caused by some MMM summon spells.

[SlimyMarmot]

Some new testing: If I load a pre-crashing save (which is fine) and then load the save where crashing is consistent, the spell crashing stops. However, there's still the all-new problem of the game crashing while saving. It seems I can save properly once, with the following save corrupting in a crash. There is nothing except playing the game that I've done to cause this, which is troubling.

 

I've tried removing Aznar's life detect effect earlier, but it has never done any good so far.

 

Update: Removing all "compromised" saves and using the pre-crash saves seems to solve both problems. However, it's still not a permanent solutions as I'm quite sure this isn't the last time I see this problem. The details of the crashing are so bizarre that maybe my current install isn't as stable as I thought, and every once in a while a save file gets half-corrupted. It would explain why this temporary fix works.

 

Update: Great, so now it about five minutes of playing for the saves to "semi-corrupt". I hope a reinstall will do something, it's the only thing I can think of right now.

UPDATE I reinstalled Oblivion and did a lot of clearing of my mod list at the same time... And had absolutely no improvement. Still stumped.

[Vagrant0]

You aren't running the game with only 500mb RAM, or something silly like that are you?

 

Please refer to my previous post. Some of these mods may also replace some of the files in your data folder, which would cause the problem to persist even after the mod is removed.

[SlimyMarmot]

I doubt this is a hardware issue, I'm running the game with 2gb Ram, a 8800 GTS (drivers up to date) and a 2,4 Ghz dual core, so no particular problems there. Messing around with visual settings didn't have an effect, so the mods are my best bet.

 

When I said "did a lot of clearing of my mod list", I meant that when reinstalling, I simply left some of the mods (minor mostly) uninstalled. As I deleted the whole Oblivion folder structure after the normal uninstall, there wouldn't be any leftover files in the data folder.

 

Also, the two mods that directly alter the crashing effects are SnakeLightningSpeed.esp and AznarsLifeDetect.esp. Whether or not these mods are active (or existant in any form) doesn't seem to change anything, and the former is a recent addition, ironically added to see if it stopped the crashes when hit by a shock effect...

 

I'll keep checking the mod list with tes4edit for any suspicious changes.

 

Update Another possible (and more likely) fix. I tried to perfect my load order by putting all my minor mods close to the start (giving the more stable FCOM package precedence), and this fixed all crashing at least for the few minutes was able to test it. We'll see...

 

Update #2 And that worked... not. It seems if I make a change in load order, .bsa load, or pretty much anything, I can fix the crashing for a whopping five minutes. The adventure continues...