reinstalling with a backup copy

[Kierria]

I had a harddrive bug recently and I needed to completely reinstall xp. I had saved the whole Bethesda folder as well as my saved games folder on a backup drive. How can I reinstall oblivion with all those mods by using this back up folder? I had tried to copy and paste it over a fresh copy of oblivion but i couldn't get it to work even when deselecting all the mods in the mod manager.

Thank you in advance.

[Hickory]

You can't reinstall Oblivion by simply copying over a backed up folder. First of all, you have to actually install the game, so that essential entries are placed into the registry and folders created for saves, etc. Once you have installed the game from the DVD and installed any DLC and official patches, you can then copy your mods from your backed up data folder. If you simply copy the backed up data folder and it doesn't contain the same version of key files, and your plugins.txt and DLCList.txt (kept in a different folder) don't match, the game will have problems, if it runs at all.

[Kierria]

Thank you. I guess i didn't install the other required mods first, instead of just copying them over. I tried it with a couple mods and the new game option works. However, it crashes when i bring up the old saved games. Am I copying them over wrong?

 

To be clear I installed the game from the dvd and then installed the official update and then the mod manager and the script extender.

I then copied over the saved data files to bring in the mods. I activated several of them in the mod manager and the new game option works. I copied over my pile of saved games and tried to play one of them. That's when the game crashes. None of the saved games will work.

[Hickory]

It sounds like there may be a missing master file that the saved games require. You can check which mods the saves rely on in Wrye Bash.

[Kierria]

Thank you. I'll give that a try.