Oblivion used to run fine - now it won't!

[Deadsun]

True story. I just got a new hard drive among other things, I install Oblivion, introduce reintroduced a few mods. I can run all the graphic enhancing stuff. Life is good. A few weeks go by. Oblivion starts crashing when I travel, sleep, etc. Huh oh well I guess I'll turn off autosave. Still does it. Must be a corrupt save file. Crashes on all files across the board. Must be that new omod. I'll disable it. Nope that ain't it either.

 

Oh well I'll just do a clean install I don't have that many mods anyway. I clear everything Oblivion related off my computer. Reinstall. Regular old vanilla Oblivion won't even run now. CTD at the Bethesda logo. BETH-- CRASH. Cleaned up my registry. Uninstalled, omm, face exchange, boss etc. Still nothing.

 

What do?

[bben46]

Here is a link to Bben's Crash Help

http://www.tesnexus.com/articles/article.php?id=298.

 

Just cleaning the registry may not remove all parts of the game. You must do it in a particular way.

If you do not remove Oblivion with the official oblivion remover, the registry entries are still associated with the game - even though it is no longer there. If you do not reboot after removing the game the registry entries are not flagged as orphans. If you do not reboot after cleaning, the registry does not get to clean itself and plug the holes left by cleaning.

 

Also, when reinstalling, you will need to reinstall OBSE, and any patches in the proper order.

 

All of that is covered in my complete uninstall/reinstall

 

Here is a link to my complete uninstall/reinstall procedure located in the articles section of the Nexus

http://www.tesnexus.com/articles/article.php?id=240

[Deadsun]

You're a gentleman and a scholar. I'll let you know how things turn out when I find the time to do all this.

[Deadsun]

Well I regret to inform you this article did not tell me anything I didn't already know and I still have no luck running my beloved game. This problem ventures beyond the edge of my knowledge.

 

As such I'm going to plan B which is to ignore it until it goes away.

[bben46]

In my experience, problems don't just go away. They persist until they are fixed. If vanilla Oblivion will not work, adding stuff can only make it worse. Don't even patch until you get the original running.

 

The Oblivion uninstaller (on the disk) needs the file Oblivion.exe to work. And it must be in the place it was originally installed. So if your original install was in the default C:\program files\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion. and you deleted Bethesda softworks folder along with the Oblivion folder. Then to use the Oblivion uninstaller you must now Create folders Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion\oblivion.exe Or wherever it was previously installed.

 

The Oblivion.exe does not even need anything in it. It just needs to be there. Make a dummy text file and rename it to Oblivion.exe

 

If you have anything left over in the folder you originally installed to - be sure to move it & if it is named Oblivion - rename it to something like OldOblivion... Do the same with the stuff in the My Documents\My Games folder -

 

Then when you do reinstall, make a new folder such as C:\Games\Oblivion and install there. Especially if you have Vista or Win7.

 

Also, you MUST have administrator privileges to uninstall to begin with.

 

Are you getting any particular error message?

 

The registry as used by Windows has outlived it's usefulness and need to go away. The original purpose was for a common repository for .ini type files so every program wouldn't have to have one and it would be protected from accidental changes. The reason was so programs would load faster. What it really does is make programs less portable (the game makers like that). Many open source programs no longer use the registry at all. Those programs can be run from a USB stick on any computer with no install.