Constant Crashing?

[i fling poo]

I have been expiriencing constant crashing while playing Oblivion. This did not occur at first, and I am about 5 hours in every time it crashes... my PC is pretty nice, and I dont thinn its a hardware issue, because it worked earlier. I am running n Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz with 4 GB ram and windows 64bit Ultimate and a GeForce 9500 GT with 1024 MB dedicated video mem. I can run the game at the highest settings, and almost never expirience any frame rate drops. It most frequently crashes when I fast-travel, load a new area or save... but it also occurs at other random times. I have tried all the compatability options vista offers, reinstalled the game, disabled and renabled my DLCs and fiddled with all the graphics options. nothing I have tried seems to work.

[iavor55]

Is it computer crash or game crash!?

[i fling poo]

Only the game crashes.

[Dattu]

My first thought is that your computer may be overheating. Demanding games tend to crash unexpectedly when components get too hot. I would also try memtest86 to see if there is a problem with RAM since it seems to crash more often when loading new areas (tons of information is being routed into RAM during these times).

[BossDweebe]

If I read you correctly you usually get about 5 hrs without crashing you are doing well.

Oblivion will crash at seemingly odd times for no apparent

reason. Especially when modded.

Crashes are something we have to live with. As long as they don't occur too frequently.

In that case it may be mod related, especially if it always happens in a specific cell, or cells,

that are changed in some way by a mod. This is generally an instillation issue.

Sometimes it can be load order related

The potential for crashes is magnified if you do a lot of riding around or fast travels

as you are constantly loading new cells, but sometimes the game will crash, well, just because.

 

Crashing on save is unusual though. If you are using auto save - don't.

Auto save has a habit of corrupting saves, and may contribute to crashes.

 

If it is always right around 5 hrs it is possible be something is overheating. Check you case fiters,

and have a look inside to see if it's too dusty.

[bben46]

Oblivion has a problem with memory management - Partly due to the way Microsoft has set up memory management in Windows. Oblivion doesn't get rid of excess junk and it tends to build up and eventually fills the available ram. Then something that needs more memory than is currently available tries to load. This leads to a crash.

 

The more ram you have the longer you can play without this type of crash. 5 hours is really good. There are some mods that can help with this, but the best idea is to make a save every once in a while to cut down on the frustration of playing several hours and crashing without a recent save. Then after a couple of hours, exit the game and take a short break, then restart with clean ram.

 

Cleaning out the dust bunnies as BossDweebe recommended can help with overheating. You will be amazed at how much dust is inside of a 6 month old computer case. And all of that dust is impeding the air flow that cools your computer. Be sure to power down and UNPLUG the computer before opening the case.

 

Here is a link to my recommendations for cleaning a computer: http://s1.zetaboards.com/TheStormRavenLibr...opic/1769054/1/

[i fling poo]

Its not five hours of straight play that causes the game to crash, it is after the game timer reaches about five hours of play. continuous or not... My big issue right now is when I try to get to the north to mid-west side of the map. I didnt have any noticable issues until I installed some mods, which i think may be the cause. Currently I have the horse armor, orrery, frostcrag, theives den, mehrunes razor, vile lair, sit anywhere mod, backpack mod, battlehorn castle, bedroll/tent mod and the keychain mod. I leave the keychain disabled because it doesnt really work for me. I already have used a compressed air can to dust off my pc. It probably is a cell problem because it seems mostly area specific.

 

*edit*

 

Okay. Right now I am running through and making sure all the DLCs are properly installled... I hope this fixes it... because maybe a file or two is missing from one of the expansions and when they come into visibilty, it trys calling an object that doesnt exist. *fingers crossed*

My case has like three fans on it and air flows great... I can run crysis for hours straight and never overheat anything. Also, none of my components are overclocked.

 

*another edit*

I think its fixed! The mods probably were not initializing correctly when the game was located in program files...

[Germandeathkittiez]

My first thought is that your computer may be overheating. Demanding games tend to crash unexpectedly when components get too hot. I would also try memtest86 to see if there is a problem with RAM since it seems to crash more often when loading new areas (tons of information is being routed into RAM during these times).

 

I keep mine by an open window so it doesn't overheat, I still get crashes at least every half hour or so. Also I get this thing where the whole screen goes black, but the game is still running and I have to exit and restart the game to bring it to normal again. It runs pretty well though, with the 5,000,000,000,000,000 plus mods I've installed on it, and the crashes are lately the only real downside to it; so to I fling poo, 5 hours before a crash is victory to me.