I have uninstalled, reinstalled, etc, limited the mods I have, etc, no textures, medium quality on what should be a high quality computer, iCore, good nVidia 3d vid card, etc, and still I have constant crash to desktop. Why didn't Bethesda fix this. I hope it's fixed with Skyrim. I've spent 78 hrs in the game with crash to desktop at least once or twice an hour. It was worse on my sandybridge computer. Crazy. It's the only game I have that does it. I have tons of mods for Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age 2 and they never CTD. Why oh why? I was so loving this game.

You can ask for help in the Hardware and Software Problems section with the CTD's on an unmodded install, You can ask for help in the Oblivion Mods section for help with mods.
Use the links in my signature for starters, TESCOSI is very helpfull.

I had CTD unmodded, Doesn't matter. It is an issue with the game. There are many, many posts about CTD with people who have the unmodded game just downloaded. Boss doesn't do it, all unofficial patches don't do it, etc. The game is ugly without mods. My big issue is that I purchased the game for my best friend and I'm sure she's going to have CTD and she has an alienware.

One CTD an hour is about normal for modded Oblivion in my experience. Or a crash every five minutes on bad days.

Had you modified the exe to use 4GB of RAM? Timed crashes usually are a sign of it running out of memory.

And if Skyrim isn't an improvement over Oblivion stability and performance wise, they should just quit trying

No how do you do that. I have 8 gigs of ram in my pc.

See this thread: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1176244-oblivion-and-memory-usage/, it has a link to the file and more info on the matter.

After applying that my Oblivion has sometimes run so long that i had to shut it down myself

On higher-end computers I have much better luck using the highest-quality settings. I know that sounds counter-intuitive, but it works on the three comps I've played Oblivion on.

I agree with ToJKa: one CTD an hour is not unusual. But I have to admit, this gets to me too. Earlier this year I quit Oblivion for a month or two because I was getting too many CTDs too frequently. My Oblivion does a disappearing act: no hang-up, no error message, nothing. I'll be playing one second and the next second - poof! - the game has disappeared and I'm looking at my desktop wallpaper, blinking, wondering what just happened.

I haven't been able to put my finger on any one factor that causes mine. My game is a little more stable now than it was when I rage-quit earlier this year. For what it's worth there are three main differences between my current mod list and the earlier one: this time around I'm not using Better Cities, Enhanced Economy and Travelling Merchants. I don't think these mods caused my CTDs but I'm beginning to suspect they may have interacted badly with other mods that I was using. I still get CTDs, but not as frequently. They're totally random. I can get one within a minute or two, immediately load the same save and experience no CTD at all, doing the exact same thing in the exact same spot with the exact same character. Or I can go for two hours or more with no CTD. There's just no predicting.

My own feeling is this this instability is something that comes with the territory. It's part of modding such an open-world game. Dragon Age (and nearly every moddable game) are much simpler games. They are linear games with tiny "maps" instead of an open world. DA:O only has to keep track of small chunks of game data at a time. Oblivion, on the other hand, has to be prepared for anything. The player can go anywhere, do anything, at any time. The game engine has to keep up with all that, it has to keep track of all that data in case it might be needed later. That's simply something that the Dragon Age engine does not have to do.

You all must have your games really modded out, I hardly ever CTD.

Seriously this should be in the Hardware and Software section. There are people there that know a lot about the game and how to get it going.

Oh, just 231 plugins (though only 153 activated thanks to Wrye Bash) But no texture replacers, OBGE, or stuff like that. I'd be shocked if it ran without issues

And actually in interiors it rarely crashes, it's the overworld that is crashy. Sometimes. Other times i can ride from Bruma to Leyawiin with Shadowmere without crashes. Which leads me to belive that there is nothing really wrong in my game, the excessive mod use just sometimes is too much for it to handle.

I have 100-120 plugins running. I use Qarl's 3, and OBGE. So far it only crashes when I summon Vilja while she is in combat, so I don't do that. lol.

Actually, I don't have too many mods. I have one for hair and eyes, Underdark, The Vampire Hunter and a couple that add armor and weapons. So not many at all. I don't have any that change the vanilla textures etc. I probably have 7 mods altogether. They have been through Boss and Wrye Bash. Shouldn't be happening.

A while ago I had a similar problem along with blue screen errors. Eventually I tried checking for solutions online, through Windows 7's Action Center. It recommended that I install the Asus Cool & Quiet driver for my mainboard. So I did and to my surprise, I haven't had anywhere near as many CTDs and blue screen errors.

Underdark is a pretty big mod.

I suggest you post your entire load-order, and your system specs.

sevalaricgirl, you speak right out of my heart. Endless hours of dumbarsing in front of my deluxe flat screen with high-end technology running ever beyond my lame modder capabilities at 3 - 5 Ghz,
fiddling with amazing shiny bling bling mods in my pyjama, all my education and manners, my whole life and the virtual as well in front of me, and then. a CTD, just because some 2006 state-of-the-art boilerplate code isnt able.

The only realm of what I could think of that would ever be more beneath contempt, is gamesas itself. The Creators of this amazing promise called Oblivion. Now you know, what the true gates of Oblivion are.