Game freezing on reload in exterior cells

[zymurgy65]

I've only noticed this issue since I started using the Steam version of Oblivion. I just saved the game while at Meridia's shrine. On restarting the animation stutters then freezes, the controls lock and all I'm left with is the soundtrack. Not only that, the last auto save (made as I left the Grateful Pass Stables) does exactly the same thing. This is at least the third time it's happened and I've lost 85 minutes playing time. I checked OAF and the figure was 47. I tried a fix anyway but it made no difference. I've already cleaned all my mods with TES4Edit so I'm at a loss.

 

EDIT: Deleting the manual save freed up the auto save, but I'd still like to know what's causing the problem.

Edited May 16, 2020 by zymurgy65

[Striker879]

Can't say it is in any way related but I have two locations that do something like that as I approach (one as I near Leyawiin and the other almost to the top of the hill headed to Chorrol from Fort Nikel). At both the game just freezes and continues to play the current track normally but I need to Ctrl Alt Del to Task Manager.

 

I can get to both Chorrol and Leyawiin by taking a longer roundabout route but yesterday I got miffed about it and tried out MessageLogger to look for clues about the root cause. Did three runs to each troublespot and used a different route the third time. In each case the MessageLogger log ends with exactly the same warning:

 

For the Leyawiin runs ... 2020/05/15 11:16:57 [00463B54] [WARNING] Form 000C468E is unloading, but it already has a buffer.

 

For the Chorrol runs ... 2020/05/15 11:43:02 [00463B54] [WARNING] Form 000614D0 is unloading, but it already has a buffer.

 

For Leyawiin the problem area includes a map marker to Emma's Leyawiin House so I tried a fast travel to there from Water's Edge but in that case MessageLogger doesn't show the warning and the game just freezes at the start of the loading bar.

 

I'm on the GotY disk version and this is a very high hours character so not a lot of similarities but maybe give MessageLogger a whirl and see if it reports anything similar to what I got.

[zymurgy65]

Thanks for the info - if it happens again I'll follow your advice. :thumbsup:

[leonardo2]

Sounds like you guys are dealing with bloated gamesaves.

 

I know one can repair gamesaves in Wrye Bash and I think using the Abomb command in Wrye Bash might help. Try it, what have you got to lose.

[Striker879]

I'm using EngineBugFixes for A-Bomb these days but I'll give a look at the current % toward A-Bomb with Wrye Bash.

 

Didn't think to look at possible bloating. Looking at the current file size for my more recent saves it looks to have been runing about 7700KB to 7800KB for the latest 2000 saves (encompassing 260 playing hours). but it's still worth a look.

[bobbyskel78]

not sure if it's of any relevance, but may help. i've been downloading quiet a bit of quest mods, some old or foreign. messagelogger save my boo-hiney a couple of times, as it was logging small discrepancies that the game wasn't ignoring. the only ones of relevance of course didn't start w/ 00 " ... xx, which gives no clue to what's the culprit, but something more like 4f .... xx. using LOOT, it was easy to evaluate the mod and the prob. in many cases it was just an easy delete to a non-essential ref, sometimes it was just correcting a ref or bad loop scripts. i'm not re-building the wheel and know when just to say ... DELETE that mod.

i hate the reference errors that start with 00, which is the root game and give no hint of a solution. a tes4edit yields nothing and it seems back-tracking is the only method of solving.