Question about BSAs and such. I made another install of the game today, where I installed the DLCs via BAIN rather than the normal installers and so on. I installed a few mods to see if it worked, started up the game and crashed while it is doing it's initial loading after the first Bethesda logo etc. I then tried uninstalling mods on my other install to have the same exact mods installed, and that one worked fine.

So my question, once upon a time I'm quite sure I used BSA-alteration on quite a lot of BSAs, that I have since repackaged into BAIN. Could that be why it's working on the old install, where I initially used BSA-alteration, and not on the fresh install (since that one won't have BSA-alteration on vanilla and Shivering Isles BSAs)? If that's the case then I could sort it out by installing the original BSAs again and just repackage them again, which isn't a huge deal albeit slightly timeconsuming - but I would like to hear if people think it would work first.

I have had this happen once before on my 2nd install but time I didn't think more about it and simply used BSA-alteration again so those vanilla/SI files also used it, and it worked - so I think I am on to something, but I'm not 100% sure if BSA-alteration could do this.

BSA alteration is a bad method to use. It means literally what it says - that your BSAs have been altered. If you didn't reverse that process properly you're going to need to restore them from backups.

BSA redirection is the only reliable method to use.

Thanks, it's what I expected then. I used BSA alteration when I first got back to Oblivion and didn't think much about it - just knew I needed some form of BSA invalidation. Will just restore the originals and stick to BSA redirection (which is what I've used for awhile anyway, just that some bsas were already altered from before).