Oblivion - Crashes/LockUps -

[MrCooper2006]

LONG POST - BUT WORTH READING IF YOUR GAME CRASHES / LOCKS UP WITH MODS!!!

 

I have a preivous post similar to this, however the content of this differs. This is not a guide on stopping crashes/lockups. Its more of a request for people to post there advice / known fixes etc for crashes or offer advice on why they occur.

 

Im sure im not the only person with lots of mods but who also suffers from frequent crashes stopping the true immersion the mods provide.

 

Basicly, I have 255 mods all active and about 300 in total. My graphics are on maximum possible and average FPS in game is anywhere from 10-50fps. Playable. The game crashes very frequently, mainly CTD (Crash to desktop) on switching cells, mainly interior to exterior. And very frequent lockups outside. Hardly ever a CTD outside.

 

 

Now iv scoured the forums as to why this happens but to no positive end. I initially thought, must be all the mods, some are conflcting and causing the crashes. I have many including FCOM, Qarls, Better Cities, basicly every huge mod all running parrarel. However, after de-activating all mods except FCOM, the crases/lockups were still there just not as frequent. So it cant have JUST been conflicting mods. I also tried with FCOM disabled, but crashes did still occur as i sped through the landscape.

 

Now iv realized it isnt linked to the mods, althought they can cause occasional crashes they are not the cause of the frequent lockups. So what else can it be?

 

Now i also have an edited INI file with lots of tweaks for better/graphics/performance/loading times. So, in a last ditch attempt to fix the game before completely reinstalling 20gigs of mods. I backed up my INI file and let Oblivion create a new one. This obviously screwed up my inventory and texts etc from the mods.

 

But immediately loading times were better, performance was better overall, and after 30mins of fast gameplay (fast travelling everywhere, bombing thru landscape at super speeds and fighting everything i saw) I didnt have one crash, until i dived off a mountain about 100feet in the air and it eventually crashed). That one crash i put down to down to messing around to much.

 

Now this was only last night so i havent had time to test this properly as im now at work. But no crashes was better than crashing every 5mins before i switched the INI file.

 

The tweaks i had in the ini were: Ones made by MODS which i couldnt keep track off, texts/fonts etc. But the main ones that i changed were the preload size limits, shadows, background loading, harddrive caching. And many others, basicly every tweak off the TWEAKOBLIVION guide.

 

Now most importantly, the lockups outside, which are the most frequent annoyancies only seem to appear at certain times. I can be anywhere in the worldscape doing anything and they can occur, so they dont seem to be lnked to any specific thing in the game. They seem to occur only when im moving, so when the cell/grid im in has loaded, it doesnt crash.

 

When im moving around and it loads up things in the direction im moving, this seems to be when it crashes,

 

So i can only imagine that the crashes are caused by either bad INI tweaks (changing loading properties) OR its just when oblivion tries to load a certain thing in the game, it cant. SO it gives up and dies. But since the lockups occur at so many different times in the game. I cant imagine how it can be one object, or even just a few that are causing it.

 

If anyone has any experiance with this or knows of any INI options that would cause lockups on certain configs please share them,

 

I have also been informed that setting the NVIDIA control panel to defaults, and then performance options can stop lockups. I havent tried this yet, but all my optioins are set to max, except of course AA, which is unavailable.

 

 

Super long post I know but i hope this will keep going with lots of advice to help others, I cant be the only person suffering with this. And i cant go back to one or two or NO mods. Not now!

 

Thanks for reading and look forward to hearing the reponses.

 

 

My spec: AMD PHENOM 9500

NVIDIA GTX280 1GB RAM

4GB RAM

1900x1200 resolution

VISTA ULTIMATE 64 BIT

#

 

 

Mr Cooper

[tyreil829]

things like that can occur if something isn't right IE a Major Conflict or load order not set right what mods are you using?

 

ah i seen you have Vista it really doesn't work well with Oblivion it might explain why it crashes or locks up are you using old-oblivion? or just normal Oblivion?

 

 

Col John Sheppard

 

read this and try and answer

 

Col John Sheppard

[Vagrant0]

Try changing your preload settings back to default. Although I think it unlikely with 4gb, this sort of thing is usually the result of ram filling up and causing an overflow (or something). Every time a new cell is loaded, every rock, tree, and everything within that cell gets its position and properties loaded into ram, if these things are also scripted, those scripts are also loaded into ram. On a heavily modified game, this can cause excessive strain on system resources, if you were down to 2 or even 3gb, I would be willing to bet that you would experience this problem almost constantly with that many mods active. In addition, all of your .esp based mods are also stored into RAM, so if you have several large .esps installed, you have less space for the game to use. Naturally Vista itself requires .5-.7gb RAM just to operate. Add in any additional software, like anti-virus, anti-spyware, and the amount of RAM available to Oblivion is even smaller.

 

Beyond that, it could be some sort of Obscure problem with what is being created by leveled lists. One case I experienced personally was with MMM and skeletons. The skeletons had their skeleton.nifs replaced with custom ones which would crash the game any time that creature type was loaded. As goblin shaman, and a few others had a skeleton summon spell, this caused the game to frequently crash when exploring exterior areas. While this exact case may not apply to you, the general concept may. The issue may seem inconsistant because it is being caused by something random. Leveled lists are also determined by level and, in cases of places you've been to within that game, play time. It could be something as simple as a buff spell (that gets applied to certain creatures upon spawning), added by one of your many mods, which is not functioning right, or two creature resources which are at conflict. Resource conflicts afterall are hard to track down because they can only be identified when installing a mod. In the case of the skeleton issue, the skeleton.nif was added by one mod, and needed an adjusted skellie.nif to work properly. A mod added afterward added it's own variations of skellie.nif with different textures, and added some creatures who would use that .nif, along with changing the default skellie.nif back to default (case of packaging the whole folder instead of just what is needed for the mod). As those new meshes were based on the normal skeleton, they would crash the game whenever they were loaded. As both were using the .omod format, nothing was mentioned about files being overwritten or in conflict since they were seen as being the same file.

[MrCooper2006]

Thanks alot Vagrant,

 

Dont know if youve seen the other version of this post its in General Mod Talk.

 

Anyway i said id tried to mess around with graphics setting, INI file, removing mods etc.

 

 

I think it is some kind of a conflict, cos it only seems to occur when im moving somewhere and its loading things up in front of me (ie creatures levelled lists etc). So im guessing it will have been something to do with it trying to load something thats not there or something it cant load or SOMEThing to that extent.

 

 

Either way im completely reinstalling - FCOM by itself 1st, so ill see if that crashes it.

 

Can anyone confirm theyre using FCOM alone with no crashes? Or are SOME to be expected?