I have been getting crash to desktops (black screen with an error message) while attempting to install new mods and expansions.

Previously, I had Oblivion by itself, unpatched I believe, along with Alternative Start and the Unofficial Oblivion Patch. I also had Darnified UI and Operation Optimization. These were the only mods I had. I experienced no crashes with this.

Today I tried installing Shivering Isles. I followed the instructions given on the Nexus wiki about the correct order of installation for Oblivion with patches, including uninstalling my existing Oblivion and reinstalling. I also proceeded to download Natural Environments, Streamline and OBSE v0020, along with all the mods I had mentioned above. Firstly, I had a crash to desktop without even reaching the main menu. Upon trying to load my existing save files, I experienced a crash to desktop before any progress had even been made with the load bar. Starting a new game, I still had the HUD but the screen turned grey. I tried taking out the files from My Games in Documents, and ran Oblivion again using the OBSE loader. This time, the game fully loaded, but then almost instantly crashed to desktop once the ship's hull came into view. I then disabled Alternative Start and then tried once more. This time, I was sent to the character selection screen in the dungeon, but then I could not interact with the buttons at all. Again, I checked Alternative Start in the data files and tried again. Now I started out in the dungeon, but the dungeon's doors were wide open, and a Blade came running in. I then walked out of the cell and up the stairs to the point where the Emperor and his guards had just entered the dungeon. Baurus talked to me as if I was a fellow Blade, but I could not respond, and when I tried to exit the game, I could not. Sensing something had seriously screwed up, I exited and concluded with a final attempt. I disabled the Natural Environments, but then that still did not work. I used the conflict detector in OBMM to determine whether there were any real problems, and it was only Alternative Start which seemed to be causing problems, but now I know that is not the case. I am running Oblivion in compatibility mode (Win XP SP3).

Loading my old save games, it crashes just before the fully loaded point.

I am playing on a Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium Samsung RV511, i3-380 2.53 GHz, 3 GB RAM, Intel HD Graphics. I also downloaded the newest DirectX End-User Runtime, to no effect. I have also installed Oblivion in C:\My Games instead of Program Files

I had the same kind of problem, what i did was move (or you could delete) a file called ASAudio.ax, for some reason it was making my game crash all the time. The file was located here c:\program files\common files\arc soft\mpeg engine\.

Hope it helps

I don't appear to have this folder or file. Thanks anyway.