Invalid Directory Error in CS

[kingtitan]

Hello all!

I've spent a good bit of time trying to research this problem on my own, but have been unable (so far) to find a conclusive solution. Anyway, I've recently installed Oblivion on a different laptop with better hardware (with the intention of this new laptop replacing my 8+ year old laptop). I installed the retail copy of Oblivion onto my machine under a new folder on my C: drive, pathed as C:/Oblivion Game Data/ (this will be important later). I installed OBSE, the CS, and all my old mods onto this machine; I have no problems with running the game.

I tried to get into the Construction Set to edit a mod (specifically to change the model for a helmet from one mesh to another one). The CS loaded up the mod fine, but when I went into the armor entry that I was attempting to edit and selected the .nif I was wanting to use, I got the "Invalid Directory" error, with the only selectable option being "Ok". It then cleared out the old entry and reverted back to the default "Add NIF File" header.

So, my question is this: Is this happening because I installed the game to a custom folder other than the default Program Files folder? Is there a way to manually correct the directory paths that the CS should be looking for? It seems to me like the CS is not recognizing this custom folder as the correct housing for the oblivion data.

Since I have all my old mods installed and playing nicely together, I'd prefer not to reinstall the game, but I will if that is my only option.

Also, for the sake of more info being better than less, I own the Steam version and Retail version. I installed the Retail version originally, decided that I didn't want to always carry around the disk, uninstalled and installed the Steam version, read that the Steam version can be picky with mods, and then went back to the retail version. I made sure to clean my registry before the final install of the retail version, but I'm wondering if I accidentally might have created some sort of directory paths error by installing/uninstalling so many times.

Any and all thoughts (and definitely solutions!) are greatly appreciated!

[DrakeTheDragon]

Well, provided the installation went through correctly and the registry entries are also fine now, the custom game path should not be at fault here.

Where exactly does it start in, when you click the button to browse for a new NIF file?

 

The game/CS is quite picky when it comes to the file paths for the specific kinds of assets. It will not allow you to browse out of the meshes folder when searching for meshes, or the textures folder when searching for textures. Certain sub-types of assets will also have a parent-folder lock in place (clothes, armor, statics, etc.), and although I can't recall which ones those were in particular, I know of quite some cases where I got exactly this error, because I left the parent folder for the type of assets I was editing.

 

I could very well imagine, you're trying to select a new NIF file located somewhere completely else than where the game expects it to be, and thus you won't be allowed to select it without receiving this error as a result.

It's always best to leave assets inside their respective types' folder structures, i.e. clothes NIFs inside "meshes/clothes", armor NIFs inside "meshes/armor", building NIFs inside "meshes/architecture"(?), character/race models inside "meshes/characters", etc.

[kingtitan]

I took another look at it last night, and I have a hunch that I didn't cleanly uninstall the game like I originally thought. When I click on the button, it correctly starts in the meshes root folder where the game is installed (I'm assuming this is because the CS is installed to the game's install folder). Everything that I am using is inside of the "meshes" root folder, and there are no floating .nif files in any other folders inside of the data folder.

 

The reason I'm beginning to believe that the install is incorrect is two-fold, based off of your thoughts Drake. First, I imported everything in the "Data" folder from my old laptop (aka, copied the files onto a USB HD and then pasted them off). On my old laptop, the game is installed to the "Program Files (x86)" folder, and everything works as expected. I know I have clothes/armor meshes inside the "meshes" folder that are not in the "clothes" or "armor" folders that work fine, so I'm hesitant to call that the issue. Secondly, upon re-reading the guide I've linked at the bottom of this post, I realized that I didn't follow these instructions as closely as I thought, especially with regards to restarting the computer after uninstalling/cleaning the registry.

 

Is there a link for where Oblivion's registry entries can be found within regedit? I'd like to see if I can do the cleanup myself before resorting to the whole uninstall/reinstall procedure (especially since the game itself works fine!).


Link for uninstall procedure - http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/Oblivion_reinstall_procedure

 

 

EDIT: On second thought, could the fact that I installed the Steam version at one point (it is no longer installed) be the problem? I'm wondering if there might be any residual registry entries specifically from the old Steam install that might be messing with it. I'll have to take a look at that later tonight and see if I can uncover anything.

Edited January 30, 2018 by kingtitan

[DrakeTheDragon]

So it's NIF files located in places where before they were working completely fine? Yes, in that case my suspicion won't apply. It's just because I've also encountered folks in the past who were trying to make the game point to folders completely outside of the game, and also the clash with the few mandatory type folder restrictions, whichever those were. But yes, I think armor and clothes were not among them. As long as it's inside "meshes", those two types should be anywhere goes, also going by some very weirdly structured mods I encountered myself so far.

 

 

Hmm, well, these two links give some pointers as to where to find the Oblivion registry keys to verify them, some only further down inside the comments though:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/22330/discussions/0/343786195661004632/

https://www.techspot.com/community/topics/oblivion-registry-missing.52317/

 

I'm not using Steam, so I don't know if there aren't any other keys located somewhere else for the game when installed through Steam.

 

And of course needless to say, but be very careful when manually editing your Windows registry.