is firing up Modblivion after a clean boot ( system restart ) supposed to make a difference?

I have noticed if I launch oblivion after restarting the pc, ( when task manager performance tab says about 6 gb of FREE ram ) I can play for hours.

OTOH, if I launch it and play a while, then quit and restart a couple times ( now task manager perfomance tab says about 1.5 gb of FREE ram ) , game will CTD after a while.

is this behaviour expected, or is my installation just unstable?

hopefully it's intended

The RAM should clear after you quit Oblivion - if not maybe something is leaking?

What about other games?

nope, Oblivion only no other games right now.

I don't think I have a memory leak, I'm only using well known mods and such an issue would have been noticed by now I think...

Well, I have 4 GB of RAM , Oblivion crashes at ~80% usage, after closing it in the task manager usage goes back down to ~25%, so my toddery old rig is obviously clearing the RAM out.

Oblivion will CTD without sufficient RAM, but you shouldn't be seeing RAM still taken up after you quit the game.

I used to have the same issue with 4 gb, but now with 8 gigs that's solved ( BC IC waterfront no longer crashes with water reflections on for example )

it's true the task manager green bar gets back down after you quit, however I have noticed the "Free Memory" value below is what seems to matter:

with 4 gb, oblivion would CTD whenever that value got below 50.

It's still not a noticable issue for me, with less RAM than you I should be seeing crashes after 10 minutes with the second game-load, but I'm not.

I'll have a look next time I load the game up, see what it does.

well quitting to main menu and loading a different savegame doesn't seem to affect it, but quitting to desktop and restarting does.


also, you're probably not stressing the system as much as I do... FCOM+WAC+BC is killer, Oblivion takes a good long while to load on startup


I might try disabling MMM additional NPC variants since CorePC says it might cause issues under stressed systems, and mine certainly falls under this definition

Well, this seems relevant.

from the CS wiki:

Upgrade your computer, especially RAM! Oblivion is a relatively demanding game and if your computer is not up to scratch, you will find that your game, under enough strain, will miss pieces of code or give up.
Also, Oblivion has a nasty habit of storing all the data it needs to load and never releasing it from memory. This causes crashes when your memory gets too full. Note that more RAM will only make this problem appear later though.


the underlined part seems exactly like the issue I'm mentioning.

Don't you mean, "more wilderness life?"

NPC varients just adds more potential NPC's to the leveled lists, but it shouldn't add more into the actual world, which is the real resource hog, the number of actors with AI running around.

Of course, MMM -more wilderness wildlife.esp is a big resource hog. but I'm not using that, since I already have WAC.esp adding spawns to the world.

I meant exactly MMM - additional NPC variants, check the online MMM readme to see the note I'm talking about

but I guess you're right and it doesn't cause issues after all, since it would have been clearly reported by now ( FCOM people told me the same )

it seems I was right after all, and Oblivion does not release the RAM it grabs for itself at gamestarts. at least the CS wiki agrees with that...

If you shut the game down, Windows releases the entire memory used by Oblivion, regardless of how bad Oblivion's memory management is.

Going back to the menu, and loading again from there has known problems, not just in wasted storage. OBSE GetGameLoaded and GetGameRestarted aren't always used correctly either, so mods can make things worse.

Other tasks running at the same time as Oblivion (e.g. anti-virus, the desktop, etc.) can leak/grow memory and take it away from the game.

I digress, but your running WAC with MMM/FCOM?
They certainly aren't compatible.......

wait, I thought going back to the main menu was good i.e. better than simply loading a game while playing.

do you need to quit to dekstop to avoid issues?

FCOM+WAC: there's a patch for it, and I'm using Wrye Bash. certainly not a purist setup, but I don't think it would cause CTDs.

There are patches that help - I'm not sure where they moved to - they originated on WAC forums then migrated to http://shy.jsphr.net/.

There has been many posts about them on the forums. They alos include patches to make WAC work with TIE and OWC ND - most have posted about combining with those mods.

I've already advised that FCOM+WAC overspawn is going to overburden most/all computers.


Yes quitting to desktop is considered the best route as that is the sure killer of scripts running even after character death.

WAC overspawn.esp is the WAC module that edits leveled lists, it doesn't add spawn points. WAC.esp does, and I'm not using MMM more wilderness wildlife. the amount of spawns is very similar to a FCOM setup.

I can grab a black horse and run like hell for an hour straight through the wilderness with stuff chasing me and it doesn't crash so I doubt that's the issue

re: quitting before loading: good to know, thanx. that could definitely make a difference.

OK - if you can make it work good for you.

For others though - where are the patches at now?

the one for WAC - Overspawn is publicly available on Waalx forums ( Waalx agreed to it ) , others are no longer publicly available but you may ask in the "getting WAC to work with other overhauls" topic there which is what I did. that topic is also where the patch for WAC - Overspawn is btw.