So, with Skyrimm just out I imagine only one or two people (if I'm lucky) will ever read this. Oh well.

I've had a copy of Oblivion for 4 years now, and never been able to play it on my computer for various reasons. My last computer got infected and forced me to build a new one. So this summer I made a pretty decent rig to play my games, and oh boy!!, now I can finally play Oblivion. Yeah!!!!

I install the game, put in the patches and a quick start mod. Then start the game and trek around outside. Damn, look at that frame rate! 125 to 230!!! Whoo hoo, my computer rocks!!!

(I built a Intel core i5 2500, 8 GB memory, GTX580 video card with Windows 7 64 bit OS)

I started installing mods last week, after taking about 2 weeks looking at mods and refreshing my memory on installing and managing the load order and other such necessities. By last Friday I had OOO, MMM, and roughly 10 other mods installed. I wandered around a little in the game just to be sure the game didn't quit after I installed a mod that may conflict so bad as to shut down everything. Everything was working fine, or the game was still running at least, so I shutdown my computer and retired. Saturday morning I started Oblivion, and almost instant lock-up. Black screen, with Windows error message, I had to start task manager to kill the game. What the hell happened?. It was running fine last night. Grinding my teeth, I started to uninstall the mods one by one to find the offending culprit.

The problem was, the game never started again. I deactivated each mod in OBMM one by one, and every time I tried to restart the game, it crashed immediately. I got down to no mods installed, and still the game crashed! WTF!!!!

I uninstalled the game, cleared out all orphan files, ran CC Cleaner, cleared root system. I had a really bad feeling though. Why would the game just fail like that. My instincts were yelling that I did not have a mod conflict problem, but a game/OS problem. But I know that plenty of people run Oblivion on Windows 7 64 bit, so why did my game behave like that? I had no clue, but I....

reinstalled the game (Not in C:/Program files. I have a separate game drive). This week I have been reinstalling the mods, plus a few more. Everything seems to be fine, everything running, and the frame rate was still smoking! So why did I still feel ill? Because I am a freaking psychic, because THIS happened: (weird @$$ery starts now)

The game crashed. Now I am ill, because I just know what is going to happen next (I'm psychic, remember?). Sure enough. As I take mods out, I try to run the game, and it crashes every single time. And just as before, the game never runs again. Down to no mods and the game still CTD's. I am so disappointed I could cry. (That would be soo embarrassing as I am 52 years old)

Now the weird part. I went into My Documents/My Games. The Oblivion fold was gone. Not there. Vamosed. (My Fallout 3 folder was still there, thank god). OK. Where is my Oblivion folder? Can't run the game without the Oblivion folder. Where are you? And why are you not where you belong? And most important, How are you not where you belong?

I run a search; there you are--- in MY MUSIC??!! #@$##@%&!!!

Gee, I bet if I put Oblivion folder back where it belongs, the game will start aga---, damn! CTD again! Guess I'm not as psychic as I thought I was. Hmm, I wonder if the Oblivion Launcher would um, launch the game? (Had been using OBSE to start). Here's another weird thing:

I start the launcher. Screen goes black (never did that before). Now the launcher menu box appears. But it looks different. There is red streaks around the border of the box. The overall tan color is off. I left a windows explorer open, its peppered in black dots. And my desktop icons look grainy, like the resolution suddenly went to 400x200. I get a bad feeling again, and sure enough, the game crashes. (Psychic powers back, yaaa!). So, now I think something has happened between my game and graphics card, because it sure did not render the menu right.

If you are still reading this, anybody got any ideas at all as to what may be causing something like this? I sure as hell have no clue as to how the Oblivion folder was moved into My Music folder. Nor why my graphics would suddenly get messed up. As it stands now, I don't see how I can play the game if it is going to constantly act like this. And i really, really, REALLY want to play this game.

P>S>

I was thinking, (yes, I know, very dangerous, but you should be out of the blast radius) if I can't get my copy of the game to play, (and I have little hope of doing so as this situation is so strange) I was wondering about possibly buying the Steam version of the game. Being a download, would it be different enough to change things to eliminate this problem. And how is it with mods?

If you are still reading, then thank you for your time. I have to go now, there is a brick wall needing knocked down with my head.

Well I'm not sure what happened but the easiest solution by far is to reinstall. Before you do that, use a registry cleaner/uninstallation tool to get rid of all traces of your old Oblivion installation. I suggest http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner as it is free, easy to use and not a terrible piece of spyware like half the "free" registry cleaners out there.

When you reinstall, do not install in the program files directory. Windows 7's UAC can cause a lot of problems with OBMM and other utilities. Instead install it to the C: drive in a new folder.

If you get the steam version, it will work just fine with mods. Once again, if Steam's default installation directory is outside program files, it will be a lot easier.

I don't have a solution, because Oblivion is like a wild bronco that doesn't want to be broken, but I can surely sympathize with you after playing solely nothing but it for the last few years. I bought Skyrim and a new updated puter, but I don't care for it, so I went back to playing Oblivion, installing it on my newly made computer. Now, I get a lot of problems on the same saves and setups that ran perfectly on my old computer and I can hardly play it. Still haven't found the problem, but that is the nature of Oblivion.
Some thoughts:
Maybe keep a backup of your Saves folder in case that happens again, you won't have to go searching for it. Maybe your video card is faulty..have you tried other games? Tried lowering settings despite quality of your graphic card? Try actually installing it on your C: drive?
I had my picture do that before on my laptop. I couldn't even read a Word doc. Thought my screen was going out but it seemed to fix itself after a short while (thank goodness!).
IMHO Steam is horrible. That's one reason why I stopped playing Skyrim. I wouldn't usually recommend it, but if it'll fix your game, it may be worth it.