Hello,

The HDD my Oblivion-install was located on decided it was time to cash in earlier today, and thus I'm now forced to reinstall the game. Luckily I had a backup of my omods atleast, though some mods and utils I'll still need to re-download. Anyway, with this reinstall I figured I'd check with the experts here on the forum for some tips on a proper installation order (or if one is even needed, I'm considering switching from using omods to BAIN, would that mean I can install mods in any order I so choose and then sort it via the packages interface? Have only used Wrye Bash for the other obvious benefits earlier).

So, load order and so on isn't an issue, I use OBMM/BOSS/Wrye Bash - but I'm not quite sure in what order I should actually install the mods for maximum compatibility. Since I lost my load order I can't show everything I plan to use, but major things include in no particular order:




On top of that some other minor things like OSR, some armor/weapons I really like that aren't included in beforementioned packs and the Hidden Elves/Aos Si races.

I'm sorry for the bad formatting but like I said, I don't have access to any load order right now. If there's anything specific you can tell me I'd be very thankful, even if it's just to say I'm stupid for using mod X with mod Y since they don't play well together.

Oh and while I'm at it, if anyone could recommend the driver they find best for an XFX 5770 that'd be swell. I downgraded to 10.5 when I went back to Oblivion after playing FO3/FNV, but if there's a different preferred driver I don't know I'd be happy to hear about it!

If you need to update the XFX 5770 drivers it's recommend that you download the latest drivers on the vendor's site (not on Microsoft).

Since you're gonna to have a complete reinstallation I suggest that you read every guide there is on http://tesivpositive.animolious.com/. :read:

I'd definitely recommend going the BAIN (Wrye Bash Installer) route.

Like Leonardo above, I am a big fan of Tomlong's wesbite he linked earlier. More specific to your question, the installation order should be as follows: http://tesivpositive.animolious.com/?page=my_bain_package_list

THis is the order of packages installed in BAIN by Tomlong. It is not really limited to BAIN - you can instlal your OMODs in this order as well, but later, if you plan to uninstall some or troubleshoot, BAIN would help tremendously in replacing files that were previously overwrittem, but OBMM willl not.

Indeed, I did read up on TESPositive - lots of good info there. This post was from a few days ago, have uninstalled again since though just to sort BAIN
As for drivers, I always download from guru3d.com which to my knowledge is the best place to find drivers. I'm just asking if there's ATI Catalyst version that is recommended for Oblivion, as it seems the newer drivers don't work too well with it.



Thanks you too, am using that list as a guideline for the BAIN install I started converting to yesterday, along with info from Psymon's excellent post.

I use the latest Catalyst drivers and they work fine with my game. I have an HD 4870. I download from ATI (now AMD).

Okay, I haven't actually tried 10.10 or 10.11 as I rolled back to 10.5 + 10.5caps when 10.9 didn't work as I wanted it to in another game, as from what I've been told drivers newer than 10.5 lower performance in DX9 games but improve it in DX10/11. I'll try out the latest drivers though and see if I notice any difference, it will help with another game I play anyway.

I'd suggest avoiding 10.10 and probably 10.9 as well. I don't know how universal the issue is, but for me I get a nasty line of color on the left and top of the screen that will not go away when playing Oblivion and it only showed up after updating the ATI drivers when Gothic 4 kept crashing on 10.6.

This thread is for an OBMM install of mods but it helped me out in understanding mod installation order: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1119325-50steps-to-stable-fcom/ .The only thing I did different is instead of installing them all and unchecking them,then one by one rechecking as he suggested(I tried it and it still killed my game and had to reinstall)I installed one mod ata time went in game,created a labrat character,opened console and typed coc testinghall,went there after each mod instaaled waited three days saved exit game,new mod load game,wait three days,save,exit game,etc,etc.doing this took time,but i got a stable game now where the only crashes i run into are from the memory caps mentioned in the link.Get the 4Gb patch it helps there.alot.