Oblivion Crashing Often Outside, (Load Order Help)

gohan2091 · Post by **gohan2091** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 7:24 pm

Hi, I have a powerful computer and recently installed Oblivion. I added many mods to the game as well as many improved textures and texture packs such as Qarls Texture Pack 3, then I started my savegame from fresh (the start) The game runs fine at 1920x1200 resolution with only a few hitches outside. The problem I am having is Oblivion keeps crashing to desktop at least once every 10 minutes or so. This is becoming increasingly annoying and I have to save my game every 30 seconds or so to ensure I don't lose much progress. When the game crashes to desktop, an error dialogue box comes up saying Oblivion.exe has caused an error and needs to close. Also everytime I quit the game, I get that same oblivion.exe error dialogue. I have only experienced the crashing outside, inside a building/fort/cave it has never happened (even inside a city it hasn't happened)

I'm sure it's something to do with my mod order, so could someone take a look at my load order and suggest improvements? I have done much research on the load order and below is the best I can make it. I know people said I should place the unofficial Oblivion patch right under oblivion.esm but the Unique Landscapes website says it's recommend I place UL mods before the unofficial patch.

I have my processor and graphics card overclocked, now I know people say this could be the cause, so I turned off the graphics card overclock and it didn't help, I have yet to disable the processor overclock though.

Thanks for any help.

Fljotsdale · Post by **Fljotsdale** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 4:24 am

I don't supose this will be very helpful, but I didn't like to see your post looking lonely:

I'm not a techie, so I can't answer your specific questions; however, it seems to be a 'normal' fault for Bethesda games to crash frequently. Every 10 mins seems a little excessive, however.

I have only official expansions installed myself, and the game crashes sometimes every 20 mins or so, and sometimes I can play for several hours before it crashes. I doubt if my machine is as good as yours, either.
One thing I have noticed is that the more things going at the same time, the more likely it is to crash. I personally, in my ignorance, would suggest reducing the added texturing.
Mine crashes indoors sometimes, too - quite rarely - if too much is going on at the same time.

I save every time I am about to enter a door to a new area, and often anyway, just to be on the safe side. It is one of the most annoying aspects of the game.

dragon wench · Post by **dragon wench** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 8:53 am

Hi gohan2091 and welcome to Game Banshee.
I have a very similar setup to your own, and while I experience crashing, in addition to that error when exiting the game, I can generally run the game for a long time without it CTDing. I'm wondering if maybe your installation of the Unique Landscape series is causing the problem? I had considered installing them but started to read that they could be quite buggy.
Maybe try uncheking them and see what happens?

Other than that, I'm not sure what to suggest, you might also try posting on the official forums though..

In any case, good luck

gohan2091 · Post by **gohan2091** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 5:50 pm

Hi, when I made this thread, I also posted here: Oblivion Crashing Often Outside - Bethesda Game Studios Forums

I am working with that forum to help me with my problems, but I am also grateful for you guys here.

About Unique Landscapes... yes, this could be the reason why it's crashing, but I really love UL, I would hate to disable it. If I had a choice between UL and the crashing, I would have the crashing lol.

The amount of texture mods I have install may also be the reason why it's crashing... I am looking into this. I have use FCOM Helper to sort out my load order, now my game doesn't give me the oblivion.exe error when I exit it.

Thanks for the welcome btw

Xaine · Post by **Xaine** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 10:18 pm

I had this problem as well, and scoured the internet for a solution as this was unacceptable.

Below is a link to a solution that I tried that solved it for me. Apparently there's some issue with codecs (especially those that are installed with Nero), so renaming the folder specified in the posted link fixed that for me.

Tech Support Guy Forums - View Single Post - Oblivion Crashes!

BTW, I only applied point 4 of that post, not everything else, as that's what solved my problem.

Magelord648 · Post by **Magelord648** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 11:59 am

@ DW

I have most of them installed and as long as you load them last they work okay. The lost coast is the only one that doesn't work.

gohan2091 · Post by **gohan2091** » Wed Oct 01, 2008 2:53 pm

Xaine, I did point 4, as well as all other points, and the crashes still happen unfortunely.

I have a problem which I've experienced since I first installed Oblivion. When you're near an enemy who is about to turn aggressive and attack you, the background music changes from EXPLORE to BATTLE. When this happens, my game pauses for approx 1 second, then it's smooth again. When the enemy is killed and no more enemies are near by, the background music changes back from BATTLE to EXPLORE. Again, the game pauses for 1 second whenever this change takes place.

Obviously I can solve this by disabling the background music, but I don't want to do that. I have added custom music in the Oblivion music folders and I thought maybe this was the cause, so I removed them but the game still pauses with the default music. I had an idea that maybe it's to do with an audio codec I have installed, so I uninstalled both AC3 Filter and Radium MP3 codec but this does not help. FFDSHOW does not run when Oblivion is running, I've added it to it's blacklist.

What is the cause of this? I'm sure it's nothing to do with the footstep sounds, as during battle, the game doesn't pause, it only does this when the music changes from one folder to another.

Magelord648 · Post by **Magelord648** » Thu Oct 02, 2008 9:09 am

Music is in MP3s. Oblivion has to uncompress these before it can play them. Maybe you're being a bit over ambitious with your settings.

I'm not that sure but I think I also read somewhere that Oblivion doesn't like overclocked processors.

Fljotsdale · Post by **Fljotsdale** » Thu Oct 02, 2008 1:30 pm

And the game likes a nice clean install - it is recommended that you defrag before you install the game.

gohan2091 · Post by **gohan2091** » Fri Oct 03, 2008 9:39 am

Hi, thanks for the replies.

As I said in my original post, I installed Oblivion fresh and added the mods straight after. My computer should be able to handle Oblivion fine, as it handles Crysis fine on max detail (A far superior game in graphics) The actual gameplay is very smooth, it's just these odd hitches.

About the mp3, Oblivion has to uncompress these first? Even so, the oblivion default music files are all mp3, and when I had Oblivion installed 2 years ago, the game did not freeze for a second before battle. Should I convert these to wav? would Oblivion be able to read them?

I defrag my drive daily using O&O.