so ya, i had to reformat my drive and beforehand i copied my oblivion folder to an external hard drive. Since i still use vista, i do not plan on reinstalling oblivion to the "program files" folder. figure i will just install it directly to the C:\ drive to avoid all the UAC nonsense.

my question is how will installing oblivion in a different location affect my mods? could i just copy/paste them to the new location? or should i reinstall all the mods as well? i assume the latter; however, copy/paste is much faster and i am an optimist

I would feel more inclined toward the former... though it is entirely possible I am a masochist. :blush:

But really, I've found it's generally better to start from a clean slate, where appropriate. Unless things go drastically wrong*, however, the use of BAIN for installation means that I never need do so.


* As they have for you, it would seem.

My hunch is that simple copy/paste should work. However, the safe procedure is to start from clean of course. This also gives you a chance to get all the lastest versions in case you missed some updates.

Why not copy/ paste a few minor mods and see if those work alright? If they do, the others should be the same as the working scheme of all mods is the same (.esm/.esp's looking for resources, all is happening in the /data/ folder). I'd be inclined to be optimistic here.

I would in any case install the tools afresh, not sure if WB and OBMM will work when you just copy/ paste their files and directories (because of registry entries and so on)...

I wouldn't recommend to any copy / paste method with a fresh installed Windows especially not on Vista.

Instead I suggest that you should read every guide there is on http://tesivpositive.animolious.com/ and maybe you can learn something while you're doing it. :read:

It won't. The only location info that mods require is that they're placed within the game's Data folder. Where that folder happens to be located is completely irrelevant. That said, though, it would probably be a good idea to start from scratch putting your mods back in. As mentioned, it's a good opportunity to do some updating, and if you're anything like me you'll probably have all sorts of junk you're not actually using on your various sub-folders. This would be a good time to do some house cleaning, rather than simply copying everything over from your old install.

ty for all replies! seems a fresh install of mods is the way to go, just for safety's sake. i was going to copy/paste just to continue playing my old toons; however, now that i think about it a fresh install is the perfect time to finally try FCOM!!! old toons be damned!