Oblivion(I have the Game of The Year edition) always crashes on character creation. It always crashes in about 5-10 seconds after I press "New" and skip the demos. When I start oblivion(after installing Oblivion or deleting the .ini file from C\Users\Username\My Files\My games\Oblivion\Oblivion.ini) I get the message "Oblivion will now detect your hardware and set video options accordingly." and after that instantly "Video hardware unrecognized. Video quality settings defaulting to Medium Quality."

I have Packard Bell EasyNote SL81.

Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit SP2
Processor: AMD Athlon X2 Dual-Core QL-60
3Gb ram
Graphic card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 and yes, I have downloaded the latest drivers.

I would be glad to get some help from someone here.

I'm also having the exactly the same problem as you have, but I've an instant CTD instead of 5-10 seconds. :brokencomputer:

Let us have our fingers crossed just in case if someone has a solution for this annoying issue.

And do both of you realize that three softwares are involved in rendering the graphics in the game? Direct3D is part of Windows that enables the 3D effects, and since Dx10 is not adequately backward compatible to suit the Gamebryo game engine, Dx9 must also be installed. Graphics Drivers are the second part, and the game itself is third. You can have conflicts with any of the three, but most commonly, it's Microsoft's meddling when gamers allow the company free rein to update whatever it want to whenever it wants to, automatically, instead of when you are in control, and have set a restore point in case of this exact situation occurring.

Microsoft will ignore the Dx9 installation, and end up corrupting it, requiring a fresh reinstall. It is also a fairly frequent situation when upgrading video cards to end up with conflicting leftovers from older drivers, so that not only do you need to uninstall the old software, no also need to run a program such as Driver Clean to be certain all the old bits are definitely gone.

Last, never assume that Microsoft knows which driver is actually the latest. Go to the source for drivers, not to Microsoft.


Gorath

I reinstalled DX9 and used Driver Cleaner, it still doesn't work.

Is there something else i could try?

Think about it. You already tried video drivers, that didn't work to end the problem, now you reinstalled Dx9, and that didn't do it so what is left? Reinstall the game.

Haha, I went through alot of trouble, but you know what? I finally got it working.

First time when I used Driver Cleaner it messed up my computer somehow(I couldn't install new drivers for some reason) and i thought it was my own fault.
Then I reinstalled Vista(Yes, I know I could have fixed it somehow, but i'm lazy + I have time so why not just reinstall? There was anyway lot of junk I loved to get rid of.) Ok, then after I got it installed and installed updates etc. I deleted the old drivers, followed the instructions in readme.txt(of Driver Cleaner) carefully, didn't want to get troubles again. Well it still happened... I got annoyed and installed Windows XP Professional well... again, but this time I had troubles finding any working drivers to my graphic card, because there isn't many of those for XP. But anyway I finally found one, it isn't the latest but my computer runs fine and I reaaaalllyyy was surprised when I tried Oblivion, it worked!
I don't know if I will get more troubles later but this is fine for now.

Thanks for the help anyway!

(Moderators delete this topic, if you want)