Mods risen from their graves

[HuggetSukker]

An unusually moronic noob has learned the hard way how he shouldn't delete stuff hastilly, and mess around with mods until he's read the readmes. Now he's looking for a way to redeem himself, and make that which haunts him stay dead. What's happening is that old mods affect my game after uninstalling + deleting data.

When my Oblivion would no longer work without crashing or representing certain items with a giant colored box, I decided it was time to clean up the mess I'd made by not setting Wrye Bash up properly and deleting a few mods that I think (in retrospect) needed to be uninstalled in a different way. (But that's too late now!)

 

So I uninstalled Oblivion through the launcher in the install directory. After that, I simply deleted the Oblivion directory that was left behind (with Data and Mod Manager and a dysfunctional Wrye Bash). However, even though I didn't want to backup my saves (had no important saves), I forgot to delete the (my user name)/My Documents/My Games/Oblivion dir.

 

After that I remembered that I should probably go to Control Panels and look at programs installed. I "uninstalled" some mods there (Francesco's, FCOM, and such) and Mod Manager and Wrye Bash to be sure there'd be no problems. I have the setup exes and zips on my comp so I don't have to download them again. I should probably have uninstalled them before I deleted them, so I was still on my error-streak then.

I reinstalled, and when I started a game, it soon displayed an eerie game message saying "Prices set", which derived from the Living Economy mod, which I thought should have stopped living since I had deleted the data folder. Furthermore, many container meshes were missing in the game. I was flabberghasted.

 

Now after the same procedure of uninstallation and deletion, though this time I deleted the My Games/Oblivion directory and uninstalled via Control Panel, then reinstalling, my oblivion launcher still displays all the old plugins that I'd have thought would be long gone by now.

 

I can tell I'm doing it wrong *Constant facepalm 100 on self*. What is the easiest way for me to get rid of it all and be back to vanilla?

I am asking because I can't find anyone with a problem that exactly matches mine, and I want to feel fairly certain that the sollution I pick will work in first try to save myself from too much additional trouble.

 

To clarify, I have no mods properly installed at this point, and I have no idea what parts are still on my computer that can somehow affect a reinstalled Oblivion where all data and saves have been recycled several times. I want to get back to playing it without traces of mods once installed.

 

I hope this bewilderment goes in this forum. Ask for any additional info.

[Herculine]

An excellent article by Bben46 can be found here.

[HuggetSukker]

It works =D

Thanks a ton, and thanks to Bben46!

 

I gotta be extra careful in the future with handling mods. Even if they have a good reputation doesn't mean they're idiot-proof. I still don't get what was going on, except it should probably be allright if I just use the mods according to their documentation, and test one at a time as the other article Bben46 links to says. Solved!

Edited March 6, 2011 by HuggetSukker

[bben46]

Another satisfied customer. :thumbsup: