Oblivion causing constant system errors... help!

[Bad^Hat]

So I decided I'd try to get to the bottom of the constant restarts caused by Oblivion. On the advice of another post somewhere, I went into control panel and turned off automatic restart on system failure so I'd just get the BSOD, so maybe I could try to decipher the STOP messages. Problem is it doesn't seem to be any one error causing it, but many many driver issues. So far I've had it reporting problems with my AC'97 audio driver, a Windows system video driver and a few others. Should I be scared?

Also, it seems to happen to very varying degrees depending on which save game I'm on and what I'm doing... besides that it still seems largely random. For example, I've never seen it once happen when I'm in town. When out in the wilderness, it happens every-so-often, but not on a very consistent basis. When I'm in a dungeon or something, even if I'm not near very many enemies or even in combat, it seems to get more nasty. My main character's current save is in the heart of an elven ruin, with no enemies around, and I can't take 3 steps without it going boom. Also how long I've been playing the particular save seems to be a major factor.

I'm thinking maybe the stored objects in the world might be overwhelming my system. I've noticed that if I go back to any place I've cleared out within a day or two, everything will still be in the exact position I left it, ragdolls and all. Could this be putting an unnecessary strain on my system resources?

Open to suggestions here, it's totally unplayable at this point...


Edit - Oh, wasn't sure whether to put this here or in Hardware/Software, but thought someone else may have encountered a similar error. Move it if neccesary.

 

[VirusType2]

First thing to do if you are experiencing crashing is trouble-shooting by going into the oblivion.ini file and turning off the game music. With the game music enabled, my computer crashes all the time. In one hour, it crashed 10 times with music enabled. Oblivion has NEVER crashed with the music off, and I have a level 22 character.

Turning down the music volume slider won't actually turn off the music, you need to go into Oblivion.ini and change bMusicEnabled=1 to bMusicEnabled=0. Oblivion.ini file is located in My Documents/My Games/Oblivion. While you are in there, you can reduce some lag by changing bUse Joystick=1 to bUse Joystick=0, that is - if you don't use a joystick. Some people report that the game is less laggy by doing this.

I don't know if turning off the music will fix your problem, but it fixed mine, so try it. Other than that I suggest hitting the Oblivion forums.

 

[Bad^Hat]

Okay... that seemed to fix it... for about a half hour. Managed to clear out the rest of that dungeon, then scouted around for a bit, found an Oblvion gate, killed a dear and BOOM as I went to loot it

 

[VirusType2]

Okay... that seemed to fix it... for about a half hour. Managed to clear out the rest of that dungeon, then scouted around for a bit, found an Oblvion gate, killed a dear and BOOM as I went to loot it

OK, then so we are onto something I believe.

This is going to be painful, but try turning off the sound in the ini and playing until it crashes. If it never crashes then you know its either the sound card or sound driver, right? If this is he case, you can try the on-board sound if your PC has it (thats what I had to use) At least so you can play the game with sound, even if you still can't use the music.

Don't forget you can use the Oblivion tech help forums, as they probably can be much more helpful, and you will find all the other people with the same problem.

Here is how to disable sound:
Change bSoundEnabled=1 to bSoundEnabled=0 in the Oblivion.ini file

You can also try this:
Change bDSoundHWAcceleration=1 to bDSoundHWAcceleration=0

Anyhow, try them, one at a time, and then both simultaneously, and see if it still crashes anymore. If so, then you will know what exactly is causing the problem.

 

[Bad^Hat]

As far as I'm aware, I am using onboard sound. Although I've just recently purchased a new motherboard which is waiting to be fitted, so that may remedy it if that's the problem.

In any case, I'm still mystified by the fact that this is only happening in Oblivion, all my other games/programs run fine as normal. And like I said, it gave me an error related to a video driver (and others) aswell. Mostly I'm just waiting for the patch and hoping to hell it actually fixes this... if not I'm gonna be one unhappy customer (that's right Bethesda, keep working on your crappy horse armor mods, we'll be fine).

Anyway, thanks for the tippage, I'll try the Oblivion boards although I've already done a quick search to no avail.

 

[CookieCuttah]

Oblivion is a good game with what seems to be incompetent developers. It seems the rest of the team is sophisticated members of the team while marketing and PR seems to be consisting of all greedy no goods.

It's kind of like Battlefield 2, a star game with idiots deciding what gets done after the game is released. So as you can see, they have no interest in releasing a patch (The patch is called a beta for goodness sake, what does that make the game , an alpha?) Rather they release what seems to be the stupidest marketing idea yet.

 

[Laivasse]

Don't hang around waiting for an official patch, since it seems you could be waiting for a long time. The one they're bringing out is a 'beta', with some warning that it could cause all your save games to stop working when the final patch comes out, or something like that.