Hi all, it's been ages since I last posted here!

I took the obligatory several month break from playing modded Oblivion and have now returned to once again punish my computer by bringing it to its knees, frustrate myself with random CTDs, and throughly enjoy the 30 minute sessions (before CTDs) of all these modders incredible work! You guys rule, btw. Honestly, I mean it, especially the big modders among this community - and you know who you are.

I've seen lots of posts on thread cleaning and lots of contrasting opinions - so I'm wondering what the accepted standard procedure is for cleaning mods - sorry if it's been asked before.

I've always used one of the mod cleaning lists (on one of the wikis, you know, the one saying which mods you shouldn't clean and such), and then just gone through my mod list, deleting identical to master references and undeleting + disabling references.

However I've heard from a lot of places that identical to master references can often be put there on purpose and deleting them shouldn't be done as it may be part of the mod? Is this true? Am I not really making the game more stable by deleting identical to master references, but instead just wrecking mods? Or is it fine? I know undeleting + disabling is safe but is deleting identical to masters?

Thanks!

If you haven't seen it, the info here is very helpful: http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/TES4Edit_Cleaning_Guide#Quick_List_of_What_.26_What_Not_to_Clean

Both are safe, there would be very few legitimate identical to master records that should be kept, usually from patch mods that are deliberately trying to restore a previous state. The CS Wiki has a good list of what generally shouldn't be touched. That's also by far the best guide to the entire process.