Wrye Bash's BSA Redirection causes CRASH ON STARTUP

[SgtSandbags]

So, for the longest time, I was trying to figure out what has been crashing my Oblivion: I first deactivated all of my mods-- nothing. Then I deleted all of my plugins-- nothing. Then I did a complete wipe of the data and it still crashed. Then I read somewhere that deleting the Oblivion.ini would fix it, and it did! Well, temporarily. But then whenever I relaunched Wrye Bash it would recommence crashing. So, I compared the "broken" ini with the working one, and found the problem.

 

Here's what I found

[Archive]

SMasterMiscArchiveFileName=Oblivion - Misc.bsa

SMasterVoicesArchiveFileName2=Oblivion - Voices2.bsa

SMasterVoicesArchiveFileName1=Oblivion - Voices1.bsa

SMasterSoundsArchiveFileName=Oblivion - Sounds.bsa

SMasterTexturesArchiveFileName1=Oblivion - Textures - Compressed.bsa

SMasterMeshesArchiveFileName=Oblivion - Meshes.bsa

SInvalidationFile=ArchiveInvalidation.txt

iRetainFilenameOffsetTable=1

iRetainFilenameStringTable=1

iRetainDirectoryStringTable=1

bCheckRuntimeCollisions=0

bInvalidateOlderFiles=1

bUseArchives=1

sArchiveList=ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated!.bsa,

As SOON as I delete the "sArchiveList=ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated!.bsa,", it doesn't crash anymore, but here's my question: I've always used Wrye Bash, and I'm pretty sure BSA Redirection has been on by default, so why is it just now starting to crash my game? Isn't "ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated" vital? Any help will be appreciated. Thank you.

[Striker879]

Did you truncate your sArchiveList line or does it actually only have ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated!.bsa as it's only listed BSA?

[HadToRegister]

Check out that comma at the end of the line

 

 

 

sArchiveList=ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated!.bsa,

[Striker879]

Ya I noticed that, which made me wonder if the line's contents got cut off in the copy/paste operation or if it is just as shown. Even if the comma was not there I'm not certain what would happen if the only BSA listed is a dummy only meant to force the game to use loose files when available and newer than the BSAs.

[SgtSandbags]

Did you truncate your sArchiveList line or does it actually only have ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated!.bsa as it's only listed BSA?

 

 

I didn't touch anything, which is confusing me... from the forum posts I've read, people have all the BSA's listed, usually with the ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated!.BSA first. But all I did was delete the ini, let Oblivion regenerate a new one, then Wrye Bash adds in that line. Oh and my bad, I should've made it clear, that's exactly as shown. The entire archive section is just that.

[SgtSandbags]

Should I just turn off BSA Redirection? Or is it absolutely necessary?

[Striker879]

Just delete your current line at sArchiveList and paste in mine:

 

sArchiveList=ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated!.bsa, Oblivion - Meshes.bsa, Oblivion - Textures - Compressed.bsa, Oblivion - Sounds.bsa, Oblivion - Voices1.bsa, Oblivion - Voices2.bsa, Oblivion - Misc.bsa

Oblivion.ini is just a text file but I'm not certain if the order that the vanilla game BSAs are listed matters or not (I know that ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated!bsa needs to be first). Using mine you won't be any worse off than me.

- Edit - Without BSA Redirection many mods won't work ... kiss any body replacer goodbye for instance. I wouldn't play without it.

Edited March 11, 2019 by Striker879

[SgtSandbags]

 

Just delete your current line at sArchiveList and paste in mine:

 

sArchiveList=ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated!.bsa, Oblivion - Meshes.bsa, Oblivion - Textures - Compressed.bsa, Oblivion - Sounds.bsa, Oblivion - Voices1.bsa, Oblivion - Voices2.bsa, Oblivion - Misc.bsa

Oblivion.ini is just a text file but I'm not certain if the order that the vanilla game BSAs are listed matters or not (I know that ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated!bsa needs to be first). Using mine you won't be any worse off than me.

- Edit - Without BSA Redirection many mods won't work ... kiss any body replacer goodbye for instance. I wouldn't play without it.

 

 

Sweet, it seems to be working now. But what could've been the culprit? The fact that sArchiveList only included archiveinvalidation, or that I should've had the Meshes, textures, etc BSA's listed? Because to be completely honest this is the first time I've ever ran into an issue like this when modding Oblivion. Is the sArchiveList supposed to include those BSA's by default or do you have to do it manually? Also thank you both very much for helping.

Edited March 11, 2019 by SgtSandbags

[Striker879]

Can't say why they went missing, but you've just proved that the vanilla game BSAs need to be listed (if you read my reply after HadTo posted I pretty well figured that would be the case).

 

The first part of that Oblivion.ini section IDs where each type of game asset will be found (e.g. Misc items in Oblivion - Misc.bsa etc). When it can't find those same BSAs listed in the sArchiveList it doesn't know what to do.

[DrakeTheDragon]

This particular error case got me intrigued I admit. If there's only the BSA Redirection dummy BSA inside the list and ending with a ",", my suspicion would be Wrye Bash's mechanism simply prepends it at the beginning of the existing list found inside the INI and doesn't check the list for completeness, duplicates, errors or anything else. If that's the case, then my best guess would be you "might" have run Archive Invalidation through Wrye Bash "before" you first ran your game to "initialize" your Oblivion.ini correctly. In other words, in your Oblivion.ini the "sArchiveList" line was for some reason/still empty when Archive Invalidation got applied.

 

I'm going to check this out in my own game as soon as next possible to know for sure. It'd definitely make for yet another quite important, 'cause easily overlooked, error-source to look out for in future help requests. "Don't run INI-editing tools -before- the INI was initialized, i.e. the game was run for the first time."