Constant CTDs

[MelThorn]

The title says it all. The game crashes very frequently.

 

Here's when the crashes occur:

- Commonly outside of Skingrad after fast traveling (though it can occur when traveling to other areas, this is where I've noticed it happens the most). I can arrive there just fine, but after running around for maybe five to ten seconds, it crashes to a black screen. The Windows error message tells me nothing other than "Oblivion has stopped working."

- Quitting the game. It will for some reason crash immediately after. I guess this isn't too big of a complaint, because I'm quitting the game, anyway.

- Randomly while running around outdoors, especially on horseback.

 

I bought this game a week ago, and I still cannot get it to run without crashing. I haven't even progressed past level 1 because of it.

 

First of all, I have modded my game, mostly with graphics enhancements and a few other things. I have followed install instructions for each mod carefully.

The list of things I've done to try to improve the game's stability:

- I use LOOT for my load order sorting. As for how accurate it is in its placement, I couldn't tell you.

- I've used OMM for a few of the really big installations, as well as used it for archive invalidation. I have updated the BSA redirection when installing new texture mods.

- I've used Wrye Bash to build a bashed patch.

- I have the unofficial patches installed for the main game and Shivering Isles. They haven't seemed to fix much.

- I do not overwrite save files. I only make new ones. The problem persists.

- I have completely uninstalled Oblivion and reinstalled it. Still happens.

- I have completely started over with a new character. Twice. Still happens.

- I go to coc center and wait for three days and test my fast traveling again after the scripts reset. Still happens.

- I disabled some of the bigger graphics mods that I felt might have been putting stress on the game, such as Grass Overhaul, Improved LOD and Improved Fires. No dice.

- I use OBSE, and it's up-to-date. I have the in-game overlay turned on.

- Verified integrity of game cache. Everything checks out.

- Checked ini file for the problems the tweaks page mentioned might be there. No issues.

 

My specs are as follows:

6 core AMD processor

16 gigs of RAM

2 GB GPU

A ton of HDD space.

 

I have never had so much trouble with a game in my life, and Skyrim gave me a little bit of hell when I modded it, too. I have twice as many mods for Skyrim as I do for Oblivion and it still runs better than this. It's infuriating and frustrating beyond belief, and I'm totally out of ideas on how to fix it. I wouldn't bother with this so much if I didn't like the way the game looked and felt from what I played of it. From what I experienced so far, it was fun. I'd hate that I wasted time and money on it and never got to play it.

 

All I can think now is that it's just the game is very poorly optimized, or there's a conflict with my mods and load order.

So here's my mods and load order:

 

 

0 0 Oblivion.esm

1 1 CM Partners.esm

2 2 All Natural Base.esm

3 3 Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp

4 4 Oblivion Citadel Door Fix.esp

5 5 UOP Vampire Aging & Face Fix.esp

6 6 DLCShiveringIsles.esp

7 7 Unofficial Shivering Isles Patch.esp

8 8 Knights.esp

9 9 HorsesTurnFaster.esp

qazSteerHorsesWithMouse.esp

10 a CompanionHorseSupport.esp

11 b Alluring Potion Bottles v3.esp

12 c Alluring Wine Bottles.esp

Weapon Improvement Project.esp

13 d RTFemaleReplacerV12.esp

14 e ANBRobertsCupSizes.esp

15 f MaleBodyReplacerV5.esp

16 10 Oblivion_Character_Overhaul.esp

17 11 ArgonianBeautification-RaceSettings.esp

18 12 All Natural - Real Lights.esp

19 13 Zira's Niben Bay Horse Ranch.esp

20 14 Zira's Demonic Mounts.esp

21 15 All Natural.esp

22 16 Zira's Battle Horse Shop.esp

23 17 ArgonianFeets.esp

24 18 DdeathCompanion.esp

25 19 CM Partners.esp

26 1a Slof's Horses Base.esp

27 1b Max and Flan boy cloth armour.esp

28 1c CM Partners More NPCs.esp

29 1d CompanionFergus.esp

30 1e CompanionHorseSupportFIX forCMPartners.esp

31 1f Flan - Natural Skins.esp

32 20 Command Mount.esp

33 21 All Natural - SI.esp

Improved Fires and Flames - Increased Sound.esp

34 22 WindowLightingSystem.esp

35 23 IHNW - Slof's Horses Original.esp

36 24 Zira's Horse Modpack - Heavy Legion Horses.esp

37 25 Zira's Horse Modpack - Extra Horses.esp

38 26 Slof's Extra Horses.esp

39 27 Zira's Horse Modpack - More Horses.esp

40 28 IHNW - Vanilla.esp

41 29 Zira's Horse Modpack - My Horses.esp

42 2a Zira's Horse Modpack - Friesian Horses.esp

43 2b Zira's Horse Modpack - Shadowmere.esp

44 2c ImprovedSigns.esp

45 2d Bashed Patch, 0.esp

I'm also using OCO, A Tweaked ENB, Qarl's Texture Pack III, and possibly one or two other texture mods I'm not remembering right now. But those are the major ones.

Thanks a million to anyone who can give me at least some insight into why this is happening. I'd like to play it, but I'm leaning more toward throwing it away forever.

Edited December 9, 2015 by MelThorn

[Striker879]

Unfortunately, that is one of the "features" of modded Oblivion ... at least to a certain extent.

 

You have obviously done some research on troubleshooting and have already tried anything I could suggest as a quick fix. Something I do see in your load order is that you are using both MaleBodyReplacerV5.esp and Oblivion_Character_Overhaul.esp ... the recommendation is to not use MaleBodyReplacerV5.esp if you use OCO v2. That said I don't think it has anything at all to do with your crashing problem.

 

Your load order is definitely different than a BOSS sorted load order. I don't have very many mods in common with your load order but in my opinion a BOSS sorted load order is better suited to Oblivion modding.

 

Not sure how you installed your mods, but my tried an true one mod at a time and then test thoroughly method has one advantage. If I add one mod to a working load order and then start having problems I know where to start troubleshooting. Granted you have some mods that must be installed together due to dependencies, but even then you'd have a shorter list to deal with when looking for culprits. My method takes much longer before you are "playing" the game. Some of my testing sessions would look a lot like gaming sessions to some folks, but I have a very good grasp of how each mod in my load order affects gameplay and performance/stability.

 

The UOP fixes much that you wouldn't necessarily see at first glance. Read through Unofficial Oblivion Patch Version History.html found in the Docs folder of the extracted download to get an idea of the scope of the UOP's fixes. It goes far beyond grounding a few floating rocks and trees.

 

The crash on exit can be mitigated ... read through the comments on the Oblivion Reloaded - OBGE v4 page to get some tips.

[MelThorn]

Thanks for the reply.

 

The first thing I'll try is using BOSS instead of LOOT. If the problem persists, I'll try playing with all mods deactivated and go down the list one by one, like you suggested.

 

Almost all of my mods were installed manually to the Data folder, unless the mod author strictly imposed otherwise. I was very careful with my installations, but I haven't done much research into them conflicting with one another. I did, however, enter the game and play around with it after installing a mod to "test" it, although I mostly just ran around the Imperial City and entered and exited buildings. There was never any problems in that case. It was only outside, and only after I'd been traveling extensively, though not necessarily for a very long time. A few minutes at the most. That's when I started noticing the problem, and it was especially after fast traveling.

 

I'll return once I know more.

[Striker879]

Most of the reason I'm a non-fast traveler has to do with my past transgressions ... I was a quick save junkie at one time. That got my game knotted up enough I couldn't fast travel, and eventually enough I couldn't go from one cell to the next without a crash/reload cycle. I got good saving habits (which you already have) and through perseverance I managed to save that character's saveline. By the time he could fast travel I was beyond wanting/needing to do so. I now use SPAWN to get around the one thing that bugs me the most about good old fashioned get from A to B ... the need to stop every ten feet to fight some other critter/badguy when I was just down that road a few days ago. Some probably play for the fighting ... obviously I play to do stuff.

 

For me testing sessions are tailored to the mod I'm testing. Mods that may impact performance take as long to test as it takes me to visit all the different places that mod may affect. Mods that impact gameplay can take much longer, especially if they are adjustable through INI edits. Probably took me two weeks to get Basic Physical Activities, Realistic Fatigue and Basic Primary Needs adjusted to my taste because of how their gameplay effects overlap/compliment one another. Mods that just add items/places only generally take a cursory visit.

 

Vanilla game quests, mod added quests and mod added items can all cause problems (I've never had it myself but I've heard that missing textures can crash you). Generally the "coc center + wait" trick will get you through any quest bunchup problems though.

 

A lot of your mods are about horses, and horses have hooves and in-game have sounds attached to traveling and idles. What sort of sound card are you using?

[MelThorn]

First, I'll share what I tried to do:

Loaded up BOSS and allowed it to sort the load order. I had to move the bashed patch down and move a couple things around, but didn't touch anything else. The game went longer without crashing/freezing, but in the end, it just locked up and froze, and though I could ctrl+alt+del to task manager and see my task bar, and even access my Start menu, I couldn't get rid of Oblivion's crashed black window. This has happened before in the past.

 

So I disabled all mods and jumped into the game. From what I could tell, there weren't as many problems. The game didn't crash after several fast travels and wandering around.

 

On the next startup I completely got rid of my ENB. I love the way it looks, but it slows my FPS down a little bit and sometimes it's way too dark to see anything, anyway. I also enabled All Natural and all of its components. The game did run smoother without the ENB, FPS-wise of course, and fast-traveling and wandering didn't cause any crashes. I stole a horse from someone (AKA Grand Theft Horse), and rode around on it to see if that would cause any crashes. Nothing happened for a little while. I got down an entire road without any issues.

 

But then I collided with a bandit who thought he'd rough me up, so I dismounted to deliver some punishment. Once he was thoroughly arrowed in the gut, I approached my horse and activated it to mount it. Game crashed immediately.

 

I'm starting to think these crashes have something to do with horses. The random crashes happen mostly when I'm on horseback, and it would also crash right next to the stables outside of Skingrad. This could be a coincidence, but it's really nagging at me. Heh. No pun intended.

 

So you may be onto something when you mention the horses, but I don't know if they relate to the mods themselves. I did install a mod that changes the sound of the horse's footsteps (since I thought the original was a little bland and not really immersive, in my personal opinion). Maybe that's causing it? I'll try deleting it to see, because that's installed regardless of activated mods. It's just in the Data and sound folder. It could just be a fluke, because I recall the game freezing and locking up on me in the past, but that could have happened after I installed it. I can't remember at all.

 

As for the other horse mods, they just improve the colors/textures of the horses, add more to the game, and give them custom armor (that isn't associated with the Horse Armor DLC, and the Armor DLC isn't required to run them). I really dig mounts, especially horses, so they seemed like an awesome option. On the last test, I didn't have any horse mods activated except for the hoof sounds.

 

Oh and I had the UOPs activated as well the entire time.

 

As for what sound card I'm using, I have no idea. I've never checked.

Edited December 10, 2015 by MelThorn

[MelThorn]

Ran around, on both foot and on horseback, for as long as I possibly could. I got around for a while, but it just eventually crashed to desktop again.

 

The only mod I had activated was All Natural, as well as the custom race I got that I totally forgot to mention. Would the custom race cause crashing problems? Should I try everything with just a default race?

 

Still have UOPs activated.

[Striker879]

My reason for asking about the sound card in relation to the horses is that often for people using weak sound solutions (aka on-board sound solutions like Realtek that are just a couple of chips on the motherboard that rely on the CPU for most of their processing) the footstep sounds of most four legged beasts seems to be the source of some of their crashes.

 

One way to troubleshoot if this could be affecting you is to disable sound effects in Oblivion.ini, or as an alternative try one of the footstep quieting mods (e.g. Quiet Feet). I don't personally have any experience at using the foot quieting type mods, so I can't say how effective they are. The INI change is simply modifying bSoundEnabled=1 to bSoundEnabled=0 while testing. Note that this will disble all sound except the game music so it's nothing more than a tool to help zero in on the problem.

 

Yes custom races could be a cause, but so could a number of other things. Funny you should mention that it's Skingrad that is one of your problem spots ... I always dismount and save at the top of the hill past Grayrock Cave (where you can just see the towers of the city but haven't rounded the bend that leads you down past Derelict Mine) as it's a common crash spot for me. I have made a number of choices in mod INI settings that don't always work towards less crashes, NPCs Yield Refined being at the top of that list (but the choices I've made are against the advice of the original mod author kuertee, so I know exactly who to blame). I think even vanilla Skingrad may be a bit taxing with so many NPCs out working the fields and vineyards (and in my case add in Children of Cyrodiil and RealSwords Breton which add to the "load" you encounter as you make your way to Grateful Pass Stables).

 

Like I said, my installing/testing regime makes me very intimate with what is going on with my game behind the scenes.

 

Another thing I can tell you ... the UOP is just a mod, actually a rather large mod, with plenty of AI changes and scripts running. I'm not suggesting trashing the UOP, but all that doesn't work towards making the game more stable. Like I said at the outset, crashing is a feature of the modded game. Heck even unmodded the game will crash. Even if I could play for an hour or more without crashing I still save every time I'm going to remount after a fight/doing something (the before mounting thing came about as a result of a shortcoming with an earlier version of Blockhead when saving while mounted, since corrected in the latest version). When my saves folder starts filling up I move a bunch to my big Data drive for archiving (I am a packrat).

[MelThorn]

Before I head back in for more testing, forgive me when I say that it sounds like you have to go through a whole lot of trouble just to play the game in the way that you want to. Even if I got the game semi-stable, I feel like I'd be worrying constantly while playing it. It's fun so far, so it seems worth it. But it also seems like a huge pain in the ass. I've already spent a week fixing this thing. I'm not about to give up yet, and I'll keep trying until I get it at least to some kind of playable state.

 

My biggest issue would be the frozen screens that I can't tab or exit out of. Having to sign out of Windows and go back into it every time that happens would not be ideal. So hopefully I don't have to dismiss the game altogether. I'd like to be able to get it working.

 

Thanks for the help so far. I'll let you know what happens after I edit that ini file.

 

Edit: Oh, by the way, this probably goes without saying, but I also have autosave and save on travel and wait disabled as well. It was one of the first things I did before playing the game, mostly because I was used to having them off in Skyrim, as well.

Edited December 10, 2015 by MelThorn

[Striker879]

Having those saves turned off is a good thing, though in my case I can only recall once or twice that I felt that the saving was what caused the crash (which is the point of turning them off).

 

I'm a tinkering, under-the-hood, grease up to the elbows type myself, so I guess the game wouldn't have the same allure for me if I couldn't/didn't have the chance to try things/see what I can break. But I'm also 5 years into this journey ... that's not where I started either. Until I became comfortable installing and modifying mods I was on the same part of the learning curve as anybody else starting out. You've cut your teeth on a perhaps more refined version of the game engine with Skyrim (I've never even laid a finger to a keyboard with that game, and likely never will). I also have no experience with Morrowind, so I can't give any opinions on how Oblivion's implementation of the Gamebryo engine compares to it's predecessor.

 

I found that turning off Windows wanting to phone home and report every crash of a program helped avoid the locked up situation, but I'm an old Win XP dinosaur, from a time when operating systems let you use your machine (as opposed to today's operating systems that act like your only part in the game is to provide a machine for them to use as they see fit ... /rant).

[MelThorn]

If you like the trouble, then I say have at it. I like to get my hands dirty quite a lot, myself, but I do have limits. I'm about to reach mine with Oblivion. My patience is, unfortunately, pretty threadbare as it is even before modding this game. But I don't like to say "I didn't do everything I could."

 

Let's get to the good stuff:

 

Come to find out, I do have onboard sound/Realtek. I disabled sound effects in the ini file. It actually seemed to work at first. I traveled for extremely long distances without any crashes. I rode a horse from one side of the map all the way to the other, and did this twice. It went without crashes for a good long while, but eventually, it did crash again while traveling. Yeah, it took longer, but it still happened. Sad face. In a way, I'm almost relieved, because if the sound effects had been the source of the issue, I probably would have said "that's a deal-breaker." I need sound in my game. I'm not one of those people who can just turn all the sound down and then pretend there's different sound.

 

It also crashed when fast traveling to the Cheydinhal (sp?) stables. Like, immediately crashed. I was able to fast travel to the gate and inside Cheydinhal just fine. But I couldn't fast travel to the stables outside. That was a mystery, because that only started happening after I bought a horse there and used it for the duration of my travels. Maybe a coincidence. Still annoying. It seems that any traveling to stables just straight up gives me nonsense problems that make no sense. Someone in Oblivion really does not want me to be on a horse.

 

Amazingly, Skingrad gave me no problems whatsoever during this quick testing playthrough. So the game traded one tooth-grinding frustration with a whole new one.

 

I don't know what to make any of this, other than:

https://youtu.be/aB_lljnqkDw?t=2m8s

 

I'm glad I waited for this game to be on sale before buying it. If I had paid the full twenty bucks for something this buggy, I don't know how much hair would be left on my head.

 

Either way, I'm done banging my head against the wall for tonight. Tomorrow is another day... of more head bruises.

Edited December 10, 2015 by MelThorn