When you said detect graphics i remembered that when Oblivion attempts to detect my setup it always says *unknown - defaulting to medium*

Fallout 3 has always auto detected it to ultra high. Is this normal?

Funny thing is that this very game worked perfect on this computer when i was running XP (and a different processor with less RAM).

Yeah that's normal. Oblivion hasn't detected hardware properly since the 8 series Nvidia cards and I think the 4000 series ATi cards were released.
Probably because it hasn't had an official update patch since probably 2006-2007

ah ok. well basically what iv done is just added all mods back, and (above ground) because iv discovered no problems in combat and out im going to continue with the main quest and see if theres any crashes outside the sewers. iv also deleted the ini files, and reinstalled the Darn UI. ill keep you updated.

Ok. Since deleting the ini files i've added all my mods back, and started a new game. I've got from the start of the game to the killing of Raven Camoran (for that book) without a crash. Just shut it down after exiting the sewers.

Seems to be working so far, without a single crash =D

good to hear. I wonder what was changed in the .ini? Do you remember making changes to it?

I really should stop declaring victory. Began the arena, and I had got to Myrmidon level, and when i hit the killing blow on the bloke with Shimmerstrike, as soon as my sword connected with him the game froze. Note that everytime this happens I dont see the enemy killed, it freezes just before he dies.....

Seems that the only persisting crash (albeit becoming rarer) is the *killing blow* crash. Anyone ever had anything similar?

and just again there. god ?_? this time as i was waiting for the gates to open so i cud fight my opponent.

Could this be soundcard related - i know that fallout 3 experienced similar issues, and it does seem that only upon the beginning or end of battle music that it crashes. There is a pattern emerging, albeit a rare one.

I'm using a Trust 5.1 surround soundcard.

Do you have onboard sound you could switch to for testing??

haha oh god.my onboard sound didnt recognise my 5.1 speakers for some odd reason, and after doing BIOS updates and reseting the motherboard failed i had to buy a card, which works fine.

its my only option for sound =/

All I can say is maybe??? I mean it's hard to know if you have a bad sound card. If it were me, I would go buy a sound card to test and then return it. I know others might think that's kinda messed up, but it's really the only way you will know for sure without burning your cash in case it doesn't work.

Yes, it could be the problem "Arthmoor" has been plagued with. It's some sort of collission thing. I'm not sure if I can re-find the thread. I'll be editing this post.

http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1073368

Maybe copy-paste your problem over there. However it sounded as if Arthmoor was essentially clueless, which means a lot. Because he is one of the modding gods here. Or write him a friendly PM. Sorry, not much help I can provide. :shrug:

EDIT: Well maybe a little bit of help. You can find out if it is a sound problem by disabling sound and music alltogether in the Oblivion.ini file:

[Audio]...stuff...bMusicEnabled=1bSoundEnabled=1....more stuff...

Setting those two values to zero will disable all sound in the game. Try it. I kinda doubt though that this will stop these crashes, provided you have up-to-date drivers for the card installed.

Basically just restarted the whole arena event. Turned it off there as I became Grand Champion. So basically got from pit dog to grand champ (including crowhaven side quest) without a crash.

Im going to hunt for any codecs on my comp and remove the unessential ones. then ill re-enable the sound and see how tht goes.

Actually nevermind lads, ive given up on the whole thing. No way to pinpoint the crashing, and all my hardware is running fine. Bloody windows 7 i say ?_?

Anyways, im going back to fallout 3. Thank you all so much for your advice (especially far327 and tommy h) and assistance in this.

Wait!! Haha, was it already brought up that a sound or video codec could be screwing something up?
If not I will try to dig up some info on that known issue and post back.

EDIT - Ok, so I haven't tried this myself so be warned.

• Disable all third party codecs: Ctrl Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices > Hardware > Audio Codecs (alternately you can find the same options in your device manager if you are familiar with that.) Not sure off the top of my head how to get there with Windows 7 though.

• Remove all codec packs for Audio...

• Test the game.

• If that doesn't work, remove all video codec packs from the same location mentioned above...

• If it still doesn't work, you'll need to get your codecs back. Go to http://www.codecguide.com/download_kl.htmand install the basic package. You can download
  larger packages if you want, but I only do that when I find a file that doesn't play back for some reason.

I experienced the same kind of problem as Emperor Xenophon, crashes just after finishing an enemy/a group of enemy(basically when the music would switch).
I also had mad stuttering in Chorrol when the lass with the 2 dogs was going around.

Turns out it was because I had set my Audio Acceleration to "basic". But I don't know if there is such a setting in Windows 7(I'm new to windows 7 myself and I haven't yet seen any sound crash with it).

Too bad he gave up. I think we were closing in on the fix.Good suggestion Darkly

still here lads =P

funny thing is - its been happening on my fallout 3 too, but i didnt wanna admit it.

in fallout 3 (same frequency/occurence rate as oblivion) the game crashes when i shoot something (for example, i shot a dog in little lamplight earlier today after an hour of straight battling, when suddenly the game CTD' on me)

they must be related somehow, and im beginning to strongly suspect the sound, because i now recall the odd crashing only occurring after tampering with my audio codecs (long story, basically i wanted my own music for galaxy news radio in fallout 3, and because the songs were not working i added and removed codecs - they work now but at what cost.... soon after tampering with the radio, the enclave arrival event happened, and when the random fallout crashes began to happen, i assumed that it was caused by the enclave event.)

could it be that which has made a massive buggery of my oblivion and fallout 3 games?

EDIT - i now fully remember why i tampered with the audio codecs! fallout 3's radio music was stuttering, and when editing the ini file failed i resorted to codecs, eventually fixing the stutter problem!

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=844931


this is the link i took advice from in order to end the radio stutter in fallout 3 - and i followed it to the letter.

i remember deleting some codecs, possibly the fraunhofer ones mentioned. should i download them again and reinstall them?

Amusing fact, I set my audio acceleration to basic to fix the stuttering of fallout 3's radio music and that's what caused Oblivion to CTD so often(it fixed all crashes with fallout though).
Of course all I had to do for Oblivion was to set the slider back to full, but if you messed with codecs it's gonna be messier to clean up(I must say I have no idea how).

just reinstalled fraunhofer codec. now it crashes everytime i turn my radio off LOL

i think we have pinpointed the problem lads =P

maybe i shud wipe windows? full reinstall? considerin it cause my drives a bit full anyways =/

im using a program tht lets me see how many codecs i have installed and running btw - should i post the ones im using?

back =)

just reinstalled win 7 there. gonna test it out once my bloody soundcard recognises my subwoofer and center output ?_?

Crossing my fingers for you man!

kk. gonna try now (got conan the barbarian playing on my tv in the background - such inspiring and lifting music and ambience LOL)

fingers crossed indeed far327 =/

Playing Fallout 3. Game randomly crashed when searching a dead body, but when it crashed i noticed tht my memory (private working set was just over 1 million K)....

thats the only problem so far

kk moving onto oblivion now. testing it with only the alternative start (to get there quicker). then ill rampage through the sewers and arena and see if i crash.