Oblivion - Crashes/Lockups/Freezes

[MrCooper2006]

Thanks Giskard.

 

Yeah I am already in the process of completely reinstalling piece by piece. Im gonna add a mod, test it, test for crashes. If all works then ill add another, and so on. This is only way when your using 100+ mods. Hell maybe even 50+.

 

 

I see what you mean about OMODS/MODS taking bits from other mods and maybe overwriting existing ones that i couldnt possibly know about.

 

In all honesty i didnt want to do this 1st time so i installed FCOM over my 100+ mods that were already on (deactivated everything 1st of course). But i dont think was a wise idea but that was just my impatience.

 

Anyway once iv got it all back up and running (ie the minimum of FCOM, BETTER CITIES, ALL GRAPHICS and UNIQUE LANDSCAPES) I will post back with my load order etc and hopefully i can say it doesnt crash.

 

 

Also for the record mine usually ALWAYS crashes loading another savegame after im in another characters save. and ALWAYS going to main menu, it just cannot do it. oh and on EVERY quit, these 3 crashes are guaranteed.

[Michlo]

I just wanted to point out that

 

A) Vista works better than XP does for oblivion on my computer. 64 bit all the way, nice and fast.

B) He disabled all this mods and still had the problem. So its not load order

 

Disabling a mod does not turn that mod off completely unless they are only esps. There are usually files left behind that change the game that remain active even if the mod that uses them is not active. This is why my mods always change those resources to something unique so once my mods are disabled, those files become dead unused files that cannot effect the game because they are unique to my mod and no other. They only share files with each other so you only need to worry about my other mods and that just means reinstalling them if your unsure.

 

But many mods replace stuff in the game freely, its the nature of modding and they do effect other mods and can cause crashing even if they are disabled. The only fix is a clean install.

 

Omods help make sure you can add and remove entire mods and be fairly sure you got all the files and that helps stop those sort of crashes.

 

Giskard

 

As I said.

[MrCooper2006]

Right its now Monday, after spending the entire weekend reinstalling oblivion, and all 30gigs of MODS im finally back where i started, well near enough anyway.

 

 

 

HOW TO SOLVE YOUR CRASHES IN OBLIVION - Thats right, iv fixed them, all of them. No more freezed/lockups/crashes.

 

How? Was quite easy really.

 

I started by cleanly installing Oblivion, the patches, Shivering Isle, the DLC, the UOP, USIP, and the DLC Unofficial patches, and then FCOM. This all worked perfect, so that was a good stating point.

 

 

Then i started adding all my extra little mods and some big ones, ONE BY ONE.

 

A good way of seeing if theres a problem with a mod is to activate it, start oblivion, quit oblivion, if it crashes to desktop, theres a problem, if not, go into game and see if its working ok, if it is then on to the next mod.

 

Now i currently have around 200 mods all active from quests, to weapons to weather, to landscapes.

 

With no current crashes loading saves, exiting the game, or doing anything basicly.

 

 

KNOWN CRASHES - I have found 2 mods that do immediately crash my game exiting to desktop or loading a save, or occasionally just in game. The 1st one is "Real Lights" this inexplicably causes a CTD on Quit EVERY TIME. I havent found a work around for this yet,

 

 

And the other that im having problems with is - Unique Landscapes, some of these cause really bad tears in land around and in cities, and some of them cause CTDs at random points whereever you are in game, or at Quitting or loading saves.

 

I have succesffuly got Chorrol Hinterland working fine and Imperial Isle, though i havent tested them all individually yet.

 

 

SO if your having problems with crashes that you just cant fix, this is the way

 

Reintall, get a good working base setup 1st, then slowly install each 1, check it, and do the Start and Quit test.

 

Oh and yeah, DO NOT EDIT YOUR INI FILE - unless its for something really simple like "borderRegions"

 

 

The minimal FPS you get from the tweaks in the INI do NOT justify the unknown problems it can cause.

 

And i have gained a signiifcant 5fps in Better Cities (ie IC Market District) after reinstalling and using the default INI.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh and i havent tried Deadly Reflex yet as this says it can cause CTDs with FCOM.. .But i will be testing this tonight

 

 

Hope this helps some ppl with crashes etc

[maYuYang]

Heya Guys,

 

I had the same problem, Oblivion crashes sumwat randomly. And always when I'm loading a savegame. About 50% chance to crash and show you the beloved "Windows encountered a problem and has to close Oblivion" when quiting the game.

 

I'm running this game with about 150 Mods(activated) and was quite sure it's their fault. I uninstalled everything, DELETED THE OLD GAME FOLDER and reinstalled it again(took me a week to gather all Mods, about 25 GB...). It ran about 50% better, no kidding. BUT: I still had some weird problems and noticed that my savegame is causing them! I started a new game with only my custom race-mod activated(exchanged my face to my new character), saved and activated all other mods and voila, It worked wonderful^^. However, this overthrew my Clocks of Cyrodiil Mod... Now the clocks are there with violet textures except for the clock face and "WTF?!? for clock hands(it wos working before starting a new game...)

 

Ah yes, I'm also using Streamline now, did you try that already? It may help you out I think

 

 

EDIT: I forgot: for some reason the game always crashed when I changed the Video or Audio settings...

[MrCooper2006]

Yeah forgot to add i started new game no using old saves.

 

 

Also i dont use Streamline, seems to be running ok with graphics on full, and last time i used Streamline everyfight it put the view distance to 0. which really annoyed me!

[maYuYang]

Funny, that with the Distance to 0. Doesn't happen to me... It changes the Grass view distance as well as the Object distance all the time(literly in game!), but not in an annoying way.

 

@ all Newbies: Now that I think of, some of my crashes were caused by incompatibility. I remember installing Hammerfell and Thievery in the Imperial City. Both caused that insta crash when starting the game. I do not have a clue why Thievery caused that, but I definitely know that Hammerfell crashed because it requires COBL which I do not have.

What I want to point out is that when installing mods, always make sure to read the readme first! Some Mods require specific addons or patches in order to work, others don't!(Wonderful example: OBC, it's not working with some BBC patches and will cause our favourite "You won't play now!" Crash)

 

@MrCooper2006: The reason why I suggested Streamline is actually not to increase performance, but more because of the features it gives(to purge the memory). I suppose that not what you see is causing random crashes, but what you not see. Like a NPC dancing(not literly) in the background which is currently not visible or in your back or maybe in the end of your current cell. While running through the woods, more and more things need to be calculated and in the end, this will be too much for the CPU(I'm not that good with computers, it's just what it feels to me. Usually those crashes do not happen immediately after starting to play, but after some hours or worse: after some minutes)

 

Luckily you solved your problem now^^. No worries atm.

 

 

EDIT: I forgot again:

 

This causes a crash:

Wig from Apachii Goddess Store Equiped + Seph's Dual Wield Mod

(Note, both need to be active, if you equip a wig(Wig will be displaced, not on head, but somewhere else) and save, exit and load your game again. Once you open your menu(not the game menu, but the menu you access via TAB by default) and exit again, the game will crash)

 

Hammerfell

(will crash if you do not have COBL installed)

 

Thievery

(dunno which mod this is conflicting with, but propably OBC, CoC and Extended Imperial City)

 

Deadly Reflex

(It always crashes when I'm using the Shield Bash[equiped: 1Hand Sword, NO shield])

 

Idle Pose Replacer

(Crashes random, chance for crash increases by about 10%)

 

Dual Wield Complete

(Dunno why, but activating this increases my random crash chance by 20%)

 

Human Race(included in Sakura savegame, not sure bout the name)

(Will crash when selecting a male character, didn't test this though)

 

Armamentarium

(Will crash when activating wrong .ESPs. Read the Readme!!!)

 

Apachii Goddess Store

(Might crash 'cause of lag. Be sure to install EVERY version, starting with 1.2[not sure, but has to be the earliest], THEN version 1.3 and finally 1.4)

 

FFX Magic Update

(Crashed for me when starting fight with Ifrit in Market District or when just entering and exiting "A fighting Chance")

 

 

May be updated later..

[MrCooper2006]

Yes Mayu. Exactly.

 

I have no way to prove this cos im not a techie. But this was my initial thought, it seemed to crash everytime it was loading things, (ie everytime i was moving). So... i figured with all the mods maybe the cpu is struggling to keep up and then just thinks "F*** it" and gives up. Which causes a freeze, not a crash.

 

 

I mean performace has now increased since reinstall, so its hard to tell really. And as i said theres no way of proving this.

 

The weird thing is on my old computer when i 1st got vanilla oblivion, it ran slow as HELL, even on minimum distance, to be honest i couldnt even have distand land etc on.... but it still chugged its way thru the game. Even at 1fps sometimes, and my CPU was obivously alot worse than it is now.

 

 

So im guessing performance does have an impact, but isnt the sole cause of the freezes.

[maYuYang]

Hmm, I once read that Oblivion is eating resources like Toot Brownstein eats chicken, but won't purge it's own memory. Lol, I remember an attempt to increase performance by setting my rez to 1kx750 instead of my 1200x1000. I relized that I ran more slowly than before(about 5fps more slowly to be precisely).

 

I guess that the best solution is to just dl the mods you want(keep a backup of all of them!), activate them, test if Oblivion works, uninstall everything and install everything PROPERLY.

[That's how I did it, downloaded all mods and installed them into a Data folder(not into the oblivion game file, but on the desktop), uninstalled Oblivion and deleted the old game file folder. Then I reinstalled it, applied SI and the 1.20416(not sure 'bout the number) and afterwards the DLCs, UOP and UOMP. Then finally, I copy/pasted the desktop data folder with all my mods into the game file folder(yes, i kept the mod folder as backup, you never know...) and voila, everything running smooth and nice as never before(only the 50% crash chance when quiting remained, but it doesn't corrupt my save file nor does it do something at all, so it's ok). Also activating them ESP for ESP is a good idea(with more than 100 mods, you also can activate Mod type for Mod type)]

[BossDweebe]

I have most of the unique landscape in as well as natural environments on a new install

and things seem O.K., but when I was compiling mods over time and adding them to a

game I was playing over the past 18 months or so things started slowly, but surely going

south.

I think clean is the word here. As has been said if you Oblivion folder is full of needless data

you won't have a smooth running game. Anything that has to be read by the machine that

the is not used in the game is wasting resources.

[Michlo]

Thank you both very much for following up with your experiences after hanging in there and sorting it all out. :)

 

One tip I shall add (a bit late for you two now, sorry) is to always keep a backup copy of your data folder from before you start adding unofficial mods. That way you'll have a quick starting point should everything go wrong and you won't be forced to uninstall and reinstall Oblivion, just replace your data folder with the "clean" one.

 

Cheers and kudos to both of you.