Save broken in Cheydinhal. Help needed please

[mamoru127]

Hi, my save file needs help. Long detailed post ahead, since this is the first time I've encountered an unfixable issue on my part. I've fixed persistent CTDs before by either hunting and deactivating the culprit mod, or by reinstalling Oblivion altogether. I hope I don't have to do the latter.

I was playing with my 8 hours saved game, and was in the process of buying the Cheydinhal house. After fast-travelling there (Cheydinhal castle iirc) my game started slowing down. I thought that it was nothing because I experienced the same amount of slowdown in the IC Market District, and I never experienced CTDs there. (I have Tamriel Travellers, Crowded Cities, NPCs Travel and moDem's City Life so I kinda understand why those locations slow down my game.) Anyway, after shopping for some spells and saving inside one of the inns, I went outside, only for the game to CTD. I figured it's one of those memory-related CTDs, so I reloaded my game. Upon going out of the inn, the slowdowns occur again. Here is where my save gets nuked - I installed the Gold Horse Courier mod for the first time, and the Cheydinhal branch caught my eye, so I went inside. Seeing that I can't do anything inside the office, I saved my game to ensure that if it CTDs again, I can just reload. Sure enough, it CTDs as I go out into the city. After getting tired of these memory-related CTDs, I decided to edit my Oblivion.ini to increase the usual memory-related settings like Exterior Cell Buffers, which were just at default previously. I increased the PreloadSizeLimit to 250MB from 25MB - basically I used the Oblivion tweaking guide, and posts/comments on Purger extended, ENBoost, etc. to set it up. Upon reloading the Gold Horse office save again, after 1-2 seconds, the game crashes. I tried everything:

Not moving - CTD

Walking - as soon as I take my frst step, CTD

Running towards the door to Cheydinhal - before reaching the door, CTD

Rotating the camera towards the office NPCs - they talk a bit, then CTD

Now for the weird:

coc testinghall/using another mod (Ancient Towers) teleport spell - goes to the loading screen and loads successfully. 1-2 seconds after arrival, CTD

Pressing TAB to go to the character menus - No CTD. I can do whatever I want in the menu for as long as I want. As soon as I exit the menu, however, CTD

Deactivating Gold Horse Courier mod - CTD, but not because I deactivated the mod - the interiors are still there, and it still crashes when doing the above methods - meaning, it's the same broken save CTD

Reverting my edits on Oblivion.ini, either by copying back my backup, or by letting Oblivion generate its own by deleting the ini - same CTD.

I have about 300 mods, all cleaned (well, those noted by BOSS as safe to clean), I use BOSS to sort my load order, I always delete inactive mods and their respective resources, I use Wrye Bash and a Bashed Patch, I use OSR with Heap set to 1 and size 450 (size not important as it resizes dynamically anyway), I use ENBoost, and I use Purger extended.

I have an okay rig, with an i5 dual-core Intel CPU (2.4 to 2.7 Ghz, can't remember at the moment), 8GB of RAM, and 2GB of VRAM.

I have a backup save, with game time clocked in at 3 hours, but it'd be kinda hard to go back to it - I'd be redoing lots of quests again. Plus, it's not really a serious save - it's a save I made to look for another persistent crash-causing mod, which I was successful in hunting (culprit - HUD status bars ALWAYS crashes my game inside Chorrol stables, but that's a story for another day...)

I'm going to post my load order when I get home. Can anyone help, please? What are your thoughts on this? What might be the issue? Thanks, and sorry if I've made you read a loooong post.

EDIT: I also use OBSE, MEnuQue, Pluggy, OBGE, MoreHeap set to to 1024.

Also, I tried loading the 3 hours backup save I have, using my edited Oblivion.ini - and it works, so it can't be my ini edits.

My extremely wild guess: I saved at the wrong place, at the wrong time, maybe at a time when my game's fully loaded with NPC AI and other data, to the point that whenever I load my game, the memory's already full so I get a guaranteed CTD. The game doesn't load resources when you're at a menu, by the looks of it. I don't experience CTDs at all whenever I press Tab and navigate through the menus. The game can also load other areas through coc/other teleport spells, but it crashes anyway after arrival.

Edited September 15, 2014 by mamoru127

[Elbethien]

I have a very similar issue. I can not save near Sanguine's shrine. When ever I do and reload, this save becomes unplayable. I also had this with the mod Birch Top (treehouse) I could not use a save game, made near that house. But when I disabled that mod, save game worked again. Even cleaning Birch Top did not solve that problem, so I will not use it anymore.

Maybe you can disable your mods one by one and see when (if) your save game will work again?

 

Edit: Is your char wearing a new piece of equipment? Something with a custom mesh and or texture? A crash like that can be related to something like that, if it is a bad texture (happened to me) or mesh.

Edited September 26, 2014 by Elbethien