TheMastersSon Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 (edited) Due to a hardware upgrade we reinstalled Oblivion yesterday, and all is fine except for one glitch. The game refuses to load if our internet cable modem is turned off, or our network is disconnected. We never had this problem with our original installation (we routinely disconnect from the internet when gaming), and we're reinstalling from the same genuine DVD. so we're almost sure the problem is somewhere on our end not the game's, but I'd still like to know if anyone else has run into it. If it matters the OS is Win 7.1 64-bit. The instant our cable modem or network are disconnected, trying to start Oblivion directly (via oblivion.exe) results in absolutely nothing. No visual response or feedback at all. It leaves two processes running, oblivion.exe (obviously) and Nvidia's shim for its game profile. The same hang results even when Oblivion's profile is removed from Nvidia's driver, so it's not the cause. Starting the launcher works fine, but starting the game from there results in the exact same hang. It will remain hung forever until the instant we turn our network and modem back on, at which point the game finishes loading and works like nothing was ever wrong. Is it a registration thing? Is the game trying to phone home? The system has no game servers installed, including Steam and has been checked thoroughly for malware. Thanks in advance for any help/info! Edited February 22, 2018 by TheMastersSon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMastersSon Posted February 23, 2018 Author Share Posted February 23, 2018 (edited) We finally got it sorted. Apparently Oblivion doesn't know how to handle a relocated My Documents folder in Win 7. Either that or the folder wasn't moved entirely correctly in Windows. We also reinstalled the DX9 distribution included on the DVD and while I don't think it had anything to do with fixing the problem, it might have. But in any event, creating a new Windows user account (with a default My Documents folder) and reinstalling as the new user fixed it. We can log in as anyone and the game works great even with the network and modem disabled. Edited February 23, 2018 by TheMastersSon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Striker879 Posted February 23, 2018 Share Posted February 23, 2018 I'm curious ... when you say "a relocated My Documents folder" did you perchance move My Documents to a different drive? I'm still using an old style HD for my C drive, but now that I was finally forced to give up my beloved WinXP and move somewhat closer to the 21st century with Win 7, I of course have the option of changing over to SSDs. What I'm not crazy about with that scenario is that my good old HD has almost no limit to how many write/erase/rewrite cycles it can withstand. SSDs on the other hand have a limited number of write/erase/rewrite cycles before their individual memory cells become unusable. It would be nice to get all those Oblivion saves made somewhere other than C drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMastersSon Posted February 23, 2018 Author Share Posted February 23, 2018 (edited) I'm curious ... when you say "a relocated My Documents folder" did you perchance move My Documents to a different drive?It was moved to a different location on the same drive. I'm not the one who did it so I don't know exactly why or how it was moved. From the symptoms I think the folder was simply deleted and recreated elsewhere on the drive. I'm still using an old style HD for my C drive, but now that I was finally forced to give up my beloved WinXP and move somewhat closer to the 21st century with Win 7, I of course have the option of changing over to SSDs. What I'm not crazy about with that scenario is that my good old HD has almost no limit to how many write/erase/rewrite cycles it can withstand. SSDs on the other hand have a limited number of write/erase/rewrite cycles before their individual memory cells become unusable. It would be nice to get all those Oblivion saves made somewhere other than C drive.SSD firmware, drivers and operating systems starting with Win 7 support TRIM, wear leveling and other SSD features that mitigate this issue. Our Samsung SM951 is approaching its third birthday, has seen almost constant use and so far no cells have gone bad. Edited February 24, 2018 by TheMastersSon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Surilindur Posted February 23, 2018 Share Posted February 23, 2018 Oblivion does not work with symbolic links, so if you symlinked the folder then that might break something. Hardlinks apparently do work. I have not tested ntfs directory junctions. You can get more info with mklink /?using cmd at least, I think I have something missing somewhere because PowerShell does not recognise it. Hopefully that helps a bit. :thumbsup: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Striker879 Posted February 23, 2018 Share Posted February 23, 2018 (edited) Yes I know that there are things to lessen the impact ... I'm just way too old school in my thinking (I remember being ticked off when I found out that the PCI-E standard only had a limited number of insert/uninstall cycles ... can't recall what it was, 10 or 20 or something like that ... just ticked me off that you spend all that money on a high quality motherboard only to discover you're limited by an engineering standard). After posting I did a little Googling/reading ... How to Move Windows 7 Personal Folders Like My Documents to Another Drive. Sounds like the right way to make the change, just not sure how well Oblivion would like it. There is a setting in Oblivion.ini (bUseMyGamesDirectory) that I tried turning off to see if the game would prompt for a new location to make saves but it didn't seem to do anything (the game just continued to make saves in the same old location). Edited February 23, 2018 by Striker879 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Striker879 Posted February 23, 2018 Share Posted February 23, 2018 (edited) - Edit - Hmm ... forums seems to a bit wonky ... not showing that my post actually posted (so I naturally double posted). - Edit 2 - May as well use this one for something ... Now I see Contra's post, so that removes the stuff in that link I posted as a solution (symbolic links is what it was setting up). Probably will just have to bite the bullet and take the hit on C drive ... SSD or HD, neither is going to last forever anyway. Edited February 23, 2018 by Striker879 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMastersSon Posted February 23, 2018 Author Share Posted February 23, 2018 (edited) Hopefully that helps a bit. :thumbsup:It does and thanks to you and all. We looked up the how-to on fully repairing a damaged My Documents folder in Win 7, the alternative method (simply creating a new user) was much faster and easier. Nothing was in our My Documents folders anyway other than Oblivion's user files and saves. EDIT: Also discovered a component of the problem was Microsoft's "Game Explorer" in Win 7, that somehow got half installed or half uninstalled. Not sure which. :) The second stranded process that we thought was Nvidia's shim for its Oblivion profile was actually this Game Explorer. Online support sites claimed it can't be uninstalled in Win 7, only disabled for individual games, but after stripping it completely from the registry we've seen no ill effects so far. The system is also noticeably snappier since the change. Edited February 25, 2018 by TheMastersSon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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