I currently have an aging system with windows vista installed and I want to build/buy a completely new system with windows 7 64 bit as the operating system. I plan to use a 1TB hard drive as the main hard drive and add my current 500GB to the system as a secondary drive with all my current games and files/mods etc on it.

At the moment alot of my mods and some programs are all on my desktop on my current PC. I don't know if that is relevant or not.

If I get a new PC with a clean install of Windows 7 and add my current hard drive in will I be able to load up oblivion and carry on my game like nothing has changed or will something be lost in translation and prevent that from happening?

I don't know if I have the energy to start again (a hard drive death cost me my game before) so I really hope this won't be a problem.

Using your old install may be tricky as the drive will be mapped differently and, as a result, the directories and all. However, the saves will work just fine being transferred. It's no different than loading up an old save. You just need to make sure you at least use the same mods you had before, new ones added in would be fine, or you may have issues.

If you don't use at least the same mods, you'd need to make a clean save.

There's nothing to worry about at all. You can make a clean save at any time. You can also back up your mods and basically plop your old data folder back in place.

Moving Oblivion: http://tescosi.com/wiki/Uninstalling_Oblivion#Moving_Oblivion
Installing Oblivion: http://tescosi.com/wiki/Installing_Oblivion


Happy gaming!
--Tomlong75210


Edit: Just backup your Data folder as well, and drop it on top of the fresh one you get after reinstalling the game. You need that, your Saves folder, and your Oblivion.ini and any other INI files that are not installed to the data folder, if you had any.

Thanks for the advice, sounds promising. Would I really need to reinstall the game? as the game is already installed on the hard drive which I am going to connect straight on. I figured that it would all stay as it was with even my current bash patch remaining.

That's the best option, as things change with a new system configuration. You can just copy the mods over, however.

Oh, if you're keeping your HDD, just make sure to regenerate renderinfo.txt and Oblivion.ini. Backup the latter so that you can do a diff with Notepad++ or some other text editor and redo the tweaks you'd like.

Just in case something happens when you try to refresh your Oblivion ini: http://tescosi.com/wiki/Oblivion.ini


Sounds like your games'll be just fine.
--Tomlong75210


Edit: If your old drive is going to be your secondary drive, then the paths for which the registry is aware will need to change. You should reinstall Oblivion. The page I linked with the reinstallation instructions has instructions for both moving Oblivion and reinstalling to the same location. Either way, you're going to need to rerun setup.exe this time. :L Same advice as before, backup Data, Oblivion.ini and Saves. Read Wrye Bash's readme for instructions on backing up BAIN, if you use it. You'll have to reinstall BOSS, Bash and OBMM for the same reason, registry needs to be aware of their locations.

Thanks for your advice, I will bear all this in mind when I do it and read carefully. It took me a week to install oblivion with all the mods before, hopefully this will be a less painful affair.

What I would do in a case or total reinstall, is:
-backup saves (located in My Documents\My Games\Oblivion)
-bakcup whole game folder (not only Data, so things like OBSE, Wrye Bash, BOSS or OBMM get transferred to)
-install the game on a new system
-paste the bacups on the new install.
-regenerate the .ini as mentoined above. (deleting Oblivion.ini will cause the game to make on at newxt launch) IIRC, some mods like DarN UI might change the .ini, so keep that in mind.

By doing that, you should have a fully working game, like nothing changed.