Just before I start, as the topic gives away. I know all the oblivion modding quirks. I bash my patch, pyffi my meshes, and know pretty well what exactly each mod does. And troubleshoot accordingly. I read all the readme's and study the boss log.

I am having an issue unrelated to my load order.

I have a "Great backup.rar" That has a fcom+better cities+ul+90 more install, which has yet to crash. I use this as my base for other mods. Kind of like doing a fresh install, except removing 5 hours of non-stop mod installing to get to that point.

However, this backup has randomly just stopped working. I installed liquid water (latest, the older revision worked perfectly except for a new known bugs) loaded up a new game (as usual) and the moment i left the sewer, instacrash.

So I said, fine, I was quite happy with the old liquid water. Removed the entire directory. Reverted my old oblivion.ini files, and removed the obge ini files in the my games folder. Everything was entirely my old slate. Yet nomatter what I do, with exactly the same older configuration that absolutely always worked. It crashes in the same way. Small interiors work, but the moment I go to the overworld crash.

There are no extraction errors from my hard drive either. So it's not randomly gotten corrupted.

The only possible thing I can think of, is that my hard drive has aged. And it might be corrupting my files. However after 10 restores of that backup, you would think that the error would be different every time. Because that's how hard drive file corruption works. Yet always the overworld, always in that way.

Anyone ever had something like this? I know this hdd does occasionally get an io error. However my 60gb ssd is currently clogged to the max with other files. Moving oblivion across would take 5 hours of folder-by-folder cleaning.

Are you using BAIN or OBMM? I keep a duplicate of my stable and crash free UFCOM/LAME/RBP/Integration install on a remote hard drive, but I do not compress it, I can just take the Oblivion Mods from the backup and overwrite the Oblivion Mods on either of my current installs on both of my PC's and get an identical game.
I always make a copy of my Bash settings before I do add mods to my laptop to make the job of "removing" the new mods a simple two mouse click operation. EDIT I still need to run BOSS to update the Load Order and rebuild my patch, but it is faster than a reinstall.

Well, the good news is that it had nothing to do with liquid water. Which I keep blaming unfairly. It's a fantastic mod.

It was my bashed patch, i had M's animation overhaul selected when my backup did not have it installed. I forgot to wipe the bash patch information and when it asked me to rebuild, i just did so with the settings that I messed up (when i must have accidentally pressed, select all while merging the mods) in the previous install.

Also, finally got my oblivion crash free with all the level lists mods installed, like. Every single one. It's rarely a scripting issue. It's pretty much always the ram limit being hit, regardless of me using a 4gb patch or not. It seems to completely not care if its laa enabled or not. Soon as it hits 2gb, boom.

It's rare that I get 220 mods working together, at 30-60fps. I think I better back this one up and make it the new backup. Victory!!

The worst part is this is an easy mistake to make and a miserable one to troubleshoot. :banghead: Glad you found it!

How?

Basically keeping in mind what each mods requirement and how heavy it taxes performance. For instance, you get a basic fcom setup install QTP3, install raevwd, let the ugrids and tree distance to 8ish, that will all cost you a hanful of fps. Which means if you want 40-60 fps, you better start off with about 70 or 80. However, a lot of mods add to vram costs. And when you combine heavily scripted mods, and lots of them, with insane levels of vram, plus obge shaders. You need to be very careful that you are not going to walk around the gameworld at 10fps.

• SNIP SNIP SNIP SNIP (10k words)

Less ranty version of above: (actually, i deleted it because it took up about 10k words)

Less mods with overly active scripts, then mesh optimizing by hand, or via installers, then by hand (saves 20 hours), then texture reducing things that won't make the game look worse. (some recommendations would be QTP3 reduced, tri low poly grass, an optimized and reduced distant lod (mesh related), setting ugrids to 7-8-9 if using raevwd, enhanced vegetation low resolution textures (very little difference visually) Quietfeet max, fps patches for better cities, lowering grass density and disabling tall grass effect in the oblivion ini, Getting a good compromise set with streamline, . And some things to avoid, would be LOD heads (crashes, looks worse). Deparralaxer (looks worse), the max level of QTP3 reduced (starts to become noticeable), streamline at default (it reduces too much, you want at least 60% vlod while in even the most intense places).

And also, wyre bash, merging correctly, and making sure that mods that only need to be active are active, if you can have a dot and you know the values are something that can be merged, keep it a dot. Don't tick it as well.

I have posted screenshots in quite a few threads, mostly oblivion graphics extender. They look far better than people with a full QTP3 (non reduced) etc etc etc (also having some tweaked settings with obge helps improve the general look by 80-200%) . So what I am saying is, certain reductions won't affect the way the game looks at all. Just gotta make sure you pick the right ones.

Yeah, qtp3 and UL/bettercities is not to good on the ram. last time I CTD I started Task Manager to see how much memory Oblivion was using. 1.8 GB on the dot. I'm going for all performance increasers I can find.
But for now I have to go to work. I will not be able to read or reply until 10pm.