Oblivion Takes a long time to save

[sewerrat13]

Hi folks, long time lurker, first time post.

I am having certain technical difficulties with a heavily modded version of Oblivion. After updating certain mods and installing some new ones, I am now experiencing serious save time issues. Every time the game goes to save, whether it be a 'real' save, a quick save, or an autosave, the game stalls for a good 20 - 30 seconds before it can start up again. As you could imagine, this is incredibly flow breaking and overall a real nuisance. The only compromise available is to disable autosave, however this still means if I want to save or quicksave I will have to stop the game dead. Also, this means that I am more likely to lose gametime if the game crashes to desktop (which as we all know with Beth. pc games, is all to common). I would really appreciate any help I could get. I run a quad core PC with 6GB ram which should easily be able to run Oblivion. I use the latest version of OBSE with several plugins, including the latest version of NifSE, and OBGE. I use OBMM for most of my mods and use the latest version of BOSS to sort out the load order with only a couple mods needing to be manually ordered because boss does not recognize them. I honestly cannot figure out what I am doing wrong so any help would be greatly appreciated.

My load order is as follows:

 

 

Oblivion.esm

All Natural Base.esm

Cobl Main.esm

Kvatch Rebuilt.esm

Better Cities Resources.esm

bookplacing.esm

Easy_Companion_Share.esm

HorseCombatMaster.esm

Cobl Races TNR.esp

Cobl Races TNR SI.esp

Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp

DLCShiveringIsles.esp

Unofficial Shivering Isles Patch.esp

Better Cities .esp

LoadingScreens.esp

LoadingScreensAddOn.esp

oc_darker_nights.esp

Natural_Weather_by_Max_Tael.esp

Natural_Weather_HDR_by_Max_Tael.esp

All Natural.esp

All Natural - SI.esp

Natural_Water_by_Max_Tael.esp

All Natural - Real Lights.esp

AliveWaters.esp

AliveWaters - Koi Addon.esp

AliveWaters - Slaughterfish Addon.esp

Akatosh Mount By Saiden Storm.esp

Book Jackets Oblivion - BP.esp

ClocksOfCyrodiil.esp

P1DseeYouSleep.esp

PTFallingStars.esp

VA_BetterGold.esp

Living Economy - SI.esp

Living Economy - Items.esp

Cutthroat Merchants.esp

DropLitTorchOBSE.esp

Get Wet.esp

AlternativeLightArmors12.esp

BlackLuster.esp

Broadswords.esp

Broadswords_MOBS.esp

CapesandCloaks.esp

Crossbows of Cyrodiil.esp

CSR - Golden Saint.esp

Darkgreen Glass Armour.esp

FemaleArmorPack1.esp

RingwraithArmorGlass.esp

Sauron_Armor_Chest.esp

witchkingsword.esp

Cobl Glue.esp

Cobl Si.esp

Cobl Tweaks.esp

Bob's Armory Oblivion.esp

Alluring Potion Bottles v2.esp

CSR - Fine Iron.esp

Kvatch Rebuilt.esp

Kvatch Rebuilt Weather Patch.esp

LGD's Arena Enhanced.esp

Knights.esp

Knights - Unofficial Patch.esp

PTMudwater.esp

xuldarkforest.esp

xulStendarrValley.esp

xulTheHeath.esp

XulEntiusGorge.esp

xulFallenleafEverglade.esp

xulColovianHighlands_EV.esp

xulChorrolHinterland.esp

xulBeachesOfCyrodiilLostCoast.esp

xulBravilBarrowfields.esp

xulLushWoodlands.esp

xulAncientYews.esp

xulAncientRedwoods.esp

xulCloudtopMountains.esp

xulArriusCreek.esp

xulPatch_AY_AC.esp

xulRollingHills_EV.esp

xulPantherRiver.esp

xulRiverEthe.esp

xulBrenaRiverRavine.esp

xulImperialIsle.esp

xulBlackwoodForest.esp

xulCheydinhalFalls.esp

xulAspenWood.esp

xulSkingradOutskirts.esp

xulSnowdale.esp

Salmo the Baker, Cobl.esp

Natural_Vegetation_by_Max_Tael.esp

P1DkeyChain.esp

Enhanced Vegetation [100%].esp

Side's Backpacks.esp

ssjDawnDuskHotkey.esp

RealisticHealth.esp

MidasSpells.esp

RenGuardOverhaul.esp

Deadly Reflex 6 - Timed Block with no damage or durability changes.esp

Mounted_Spellcasting_Deadly_Reflex_Compatible.esp

DRSplatter.esp

Toaster's Legendary Skills.esp

Toaster's Legendary Mastery.esp

Idle Pose Replacer.esp

actors_in_charge.esp

DMC Stylish - Specialanims.esp

CuteElf11.esp

_Ren_BeautyPack_full.esp

ArianaTrudeaux.esp

Dremora Mortal.esp

Cobl Races.esp

bgMagicEV.esp

bgMagicSpellTomes_for_WryeBash.esp

bgMagicItemSigil.esp

bgMagicEVStartspells.esp

bgMagicBonus.esp

bgMagicEVAddEnVar.esp

bgMagicEVPaperChase.esp

bgMagicAlchemy.esp

bgMagicPotionNumberSoulGemValue.esp

Cobl Races - Balanced.esp

Better Cities Full.esp

top_tower_plank.esp

Better Cities - VWD of the IC.esp

Better Imperial City.esp

Better Cities Full FPS Patch.esp

Better Imperial City FPS Patch.esp

bgMagicEVShader.esp

bgMagicShaderLifeDetect.esp

bgMagicLightningbolt.esp

No Quest Items [v.1.0].esp

Cobl Silent Equip Misc.esp

UVII.esp

DeadlyReflex 6 - Combat Moves.esp

Deadly Reflex 6 - HeX NifSE Patch.esp

[HeyYou]

Where is your game installed to? What type of harddrive is it? How old is the drive? Is your antivirus running in the background?

[sewerrat13]

Where is your game installed to? What type of harddrive is it? How old is the drive? Is your antivirus running in the background?

It's installed to a Windows 7 based hard drive, to program files, on a computer bought in August, file system NTFS. Yes I do have some minor antivirus programs in the background, but I had them running before and I didn't have any trouble until now.

[HeyYou]

Where is your game installed to? What type of harddrive is it? How old is the drive? Is your antivirus running in the background?

It's installed to a Windows 7 based hard drive, to program files, on a computer bought in August, file system NTFS. Yes I do have some minor antivirus programs in the background, but I had them running before and I didn't have any trouble until now.

 

First thing I would do is uninstall the game, then reinstall somewhere outside the program files directory. (not that this will do anything about your problem.....)

 

Desktop, or Laptop? (curious about harddrive speed here.)

 

Try killing off the anti-virus. It's possible it is scanning the file before it will be allowed to be written to the disk, some setting may have changed during an update or some such. (I.E. something changed that you weren't aware of.)

[sewerrat13]

Where is your game installed to? What type of harddrive is it? How old is the drive? Is your antivirus running in the background?

It's installed to a Windows 7 based hard drive, to program files, on a computer bought in August, file system NTFS. Yes I do have some minor antivirus programs in the background, but I had them running before and I didn't have any trouble until now.

 

First thing I would do is uninstall the game, then reinstall somewhere outside the program files directory. (not that this will do anything about your problem.....)

 

Desktop, or Laptop? (curious about harddrive speed here.)

 

Try killing off the anti-virus. It's possible it is scanning the file before it will be allowed to be written to the disk, some setting may have changed during an update or some such. (I.E. something changed that you weren't aware of.)

I am running it on a laptop. Out of curiosity, what is your reason for saying I should reinstall it outside of Program File?

[HeyYou]

avoid the whole UAC issue. You can turn it 'off', but, under win 7, it doesn't really believe you... and is still sorta there in the background. Makes modding the game a lot easier, as the Program Files folders (including the x86 one) are "protected" by UAC. Installing outside of those two folders, like C:\Games\Oblivion, makes life a lot easier for mods that come with installers, and OBSE.... (obse directly modifies oblivion.exe, which, as far as UAC is concerned, is a MAJOR no-no.)

 

Being on a laptop, I am going to guess that the harddrive is one of the 5400 RPM fellers..... not really noticeable when you start a new game, but, the further you get, and the more the game has to track in your save, the longer it will take to write to the disk. (although, one would think that disk cache would nullify that little penalty......)

 

Another aspect of laptops is, LOTS of stuff running in the background. Anti-virus is just a very small part of it. All those little icons down by the clock are also running, while you are trying to play. They eat up resources the computer could be using to run the game, so, they DO have an impact on performance. (some more so than others. and still others, HAVE to be there for some things to work.) Might wanna look at a tweak guide, and see what you can safely kill off on a permanent basis. Blackviper has a great site for that.

[bben46]

Most Antivirus programs have a scan every read and every write setting as default. The AV will scan every time you read a file from the HD, and again every time it writes a file back to the Hard drive. And most also have an exception list that allows you to specify programs, folders or files to not scan on every read/write. Put the game folder, and all subfolders & the saves folder on that exceptions list.

 

You may also try defragging to see if that helps any

[Striker879]

I'm going to circle back to your original post:

After updating certain mods and installing some new ones, I am now experiencing serious save time issues.

Have you looked there for the culprit? I'd be uninstalling those new mods in reverse order until the problem resolved itself (not just deactivating, as Oblivion will still load the resources for mods even if they're deactivated).

[sewerrat13]

@ HeyYou

Thanks for the input, I actually have found out what was going on. Aparentally you are right in saying that the game takes longer to save the farther in it you are. I was using my level 50 character who completed the main quest and numerous side quests and guild quests in the game when making this thread, and after reading what you recommended, I attempted to try it again on my lvl 18 character who has more or less ignored the main quest and only done select side quests. Upon loading this old character and attempting to save, it finished in less than 3 seconds. To make sure this wasn't a fluke, I immediately switched over to my main again and of course, it took 20 seconds. Thanks a lot of your advice. I daresay there is probably no work around for this so likely just going to have to get used to it or switch characters.

[Lanceor]

By the way, what is the size of your save files? Have you tried removing bloat with Wrye Bash?

 

It's possible to reduce the size of the savegame by deactivating mods that you don't use and uncluttering your player homes.

 

If you've finished a quest mod, and are indifferent to the quest items and locations, consider deactivating the mod. All the items and locations in the save file should be removed next time you save (unless the mod was really dirty).

 

Likewise, if you've filled a room with 2000 skulls just for kicks, consider removing them as they get saved into your savegame as well.

 

Cells get reset after 3 days... but what that means that the reset flag is raised after 3 days. The cell's unneeded contents aren't deleted until next time you revisit that cell. It might be an excuse to revisit some areas to make sure any mid-quest-inventory-dumps you did in your travels are properly deleted. ;)