(If this is a hardware/software issue, my bad) I tried the CS wiki. I tried doing a search on this forum. If you guys don't have an answer I just might break something.

My brother built me this nifty new computer. I don't know the hardware specs but he assured me that he tested vanilla Oblivion on it with all the graphics set at full and it worked fine, so that's not the issue. I thought this was wonderful and proceeded to back up all the installers I downloaded onto my old computer (for all the mods I downloaded) and put them on an external hard drive so I could put them on the new computer. I ran the CDs for Knights and Shivering Isles, as well as the patches I still had saved. But when I tried unpacking the .rars and .zips with WinRar, I'd get a whole list of "cannot open file" error messages, and nothing would unpack. This puzzled me, so I tried to go around it by moving the files themselves, as in the WHOLE meshes/textures/etc folders, as well as the ESPs. They are now on my computer, and I can open them in the CS. But I cannot edit them.

I had a problem similar to this before, and I did learn that while I couldn't modify the mod itself, I could copy the formIDs I'd already created into a new ESP (open the corrupted mod but not mark it as active, change the FormID so it'd create a new form, save the new active mod). Now I can't even do that (it crashes). I open a mod, I nudge anything, I hit save, and nothing happens; my changes are not saved and the asterisk doesn't go away, and it tells me "Unable to complete operation due to failure removing previous file. Temp file remains. Continue playing?"

This new computer is a different operating system from my old one, if that makes a difference. I went from XP to 7 (reluctantly, believe me). And on my old computer, I could've gone directly to the folder with all the temp files, but now I can't find it on this OS so I can't figure out if there's an issue with things being marked read-only (which happened with embarrassing frequency on my old comp). It's really aggravating to me that Windows keeps asking me to double-check just about every decision I make--side question, anybody know how to make that stop?--yet my brother swears that he never even put a password on the administrator profile on this computer so I shouldn't be having permission problems, and neither he nor I have no idea how to fix this. And yes, I tried restarting my computer after installing everything.

So... any ideas? Or do I have to start all of my hard work with all of my old mods from square one?

First off, where did you install the game and any game-related utilities? if it was in the default \Program Files location that is likely part of your problem. Unlike XP, Windows Vista and 7 are very protective of that folder and anything housed there. Oblivion does not need that sort of protection. What's more, it can interfere with game usage. What you want to do is (re) install the game somewhere - anywhere else, like C:\games\Oblivion or C:\Oblivion or maybe a different partition or hard drive. Just so its not Program Files.

Windows by default can also restrict which files and folders you can normally see and/or manipulate. But that's easy to fix. Google it.

My personal opinion is that Windows default file manager (Windows Explorer) is very barebones and klutzy. I recommend installing one of several decent freeware replacements. The one I like is Free Commander, which can be set up to display multiple panes. http://i307.photobucket.com/albums/nn303/Decrepit_Waste/ESIV%20errors/FreeCommander2.jpg

Starting with Vista, windows no longer natively supports hardware accelerated EAX sound for those with Creative Labs Soundblaster cards (Audigy / X-fi) that provide that function (not all of them do). Thankfully Creative provides a utility called ALchemy that restores acceleration. (ALchemy needs an Oblivion profile. That can be researched too if need be.)

Depending on which version of Win7 is installed, it will always ask you for permission to launch certain programs. That can certainly be a pain in the rump especially for the programs you launch repeatedly. But that's my only major gripe... and you get used to it to an extent. (I beleive Win7 Pro users can fix this via an exceptions list.)

In any case, Win7 runs Oblivion quite well. You just need to learn its peculiarities.

-Decrepit-

Thanks for replying! No idea which version of Win7 it is, but it's saved in C:Program Files ( x86) / Bethesda Softworks. Other than that little ( x86) everything looks exactly like it did on my XP computer. And I shall have a look at a new file manager, though after having spent over 12 hours straight with this default I'm finally starting to get it it to where it doesn't make my OCD flare up quite so much, so it may have to wait until tomorrow evening since I need to sleep and work. It would be nice if I could have spent that 12 hours loading up all my existing mods with the most visuals-heavy stuff before diving into the game. I'm ready to weep for all the work that might be incompatible with this machine: every house mod I build has a ridiculous library and kitchen, for starters.

I doubt you have any mods not compatible with Win7. Again, it's just a matter of learning the quirks of the OS. As to installation directory (folder), installing the game in /Program Files under XP was OK because UAC had not been implemented. That changed with Vista. Vista's UAC was a major pain, so much so that a great many people disabled it from the get-go. (I did.) Win7 UAC is gentler by default, but can still restrict what you can do anything installed in Program Files. That the point of it really, to make your computer much more secure against attacks of various sorts. But that protection comes at a price, and is all but needless and even detrimental when it comes to a game like Oblivion. That's why the game is best served installed elsewhere. Again, once installed and configured correctly Oblivion and Win7 get along fine, provided you don't have any hardware / driver issues. But that's true with any OS.

I can disable it?

First thing I'm googling in the morning! Thank you! I'll let you know how it turns out.

Aye, UAC can be disabled. I personally don't recommend doing so with Win7. (Vista is another matter.) It's easy enough to reinstall the game (and other needed game-related files) elsewhere. Heck, you don't even have to do an actual reinstall. Just copy the files to a more game-freindly directory / partition / drive, edit a line in the Win7 registry, and change some launch icons to point to the new location. Then again, it sounds like you are not yet comfortable enough with Win7 to take that approach.

Just please don't blame me if disabling it leads to any issues it is designed to protect against. Not that I want to unduly scare you. On my Vista machine, I disabled it from the get-go, some four (?) years ago. Its lack has never led to problems. But then I consider myself fairly savvy computer wise. And maybe I've just been lucky? In any case I'll go on record saying that with Win7 reinstalling is the better solution. Maybe others can chime in with their opinions?

-Decrepit-

The times I have seen this error normally had to do with something happening during saving and the CS saving the mod with a different extension (instead of .esp it would create a .tes file with the same name as the open .esp file --- then it would not allow me to save it due to the extension -- to get around it I simply had to rename the file using windows and change the file from xx.tes to xx.esp and then the CS would open and save files properly again. So check your folder and see if there are any .esp files that have been saved as .tes instead of .esp in the folder and if there is rename them and see if it helps.

So, if there is a Mod.esp and a Mod.tes, I change the .tes to .esp and overwrite the old mod? Or does mod.tes need to be renamed something like ModV2.esp?

If there are both then to be safe rename the .tes as ModV2 would be best since it is hard to tell which is the newest (though I guess you could go by filedate) - and until you examine both you will not know which has the latest changes so best not to delete anything yet !

Renamed Mod.tes to ModV2.esp, nudged something, hit save, and it worked! Thank you so much for your help!

No problem - Glad to hear it cleared things up ! I think it has somethng to do with the temporary files the CS saves in case of a major lockup to attempt to not lose everything you have been working on and the CS will not allow saving anymore until things have been cleaned up afterwards so as long as that temp file exists it stops the CS from saving an .esp with the same name. (It's actually saved me a couple times when the CS locked up and I hadn't saved in awhile as the .tes file would have most of the changes during that last sessions in it instead of having to start over from the previous sessions starting point )

Sorry to keep bugging you guys. I figured this didn't need a whole new topic since it's kinda the same problem (I guess?). I started playing Oblivion with all my mods tweaked to where I wanted them, but I kept getting CTDs. My brother built me a beast so it made me die a little inside to try running it on Medium graphics, which still didn't work. I did notice that it would work for quite a while at a time, and then I'd get too close to something (a building I made in a mod, or an Imperial guard who in the CS had multiple missing meshes/pink weapons which I promptly extracted from the BSAs). Since hardware isn't the issue, I assumed it was a mod conflict. I got myself TES4Gecko and made backups of all my stuff and then went on a ESP-merging spree, figuring that eliminating mod conflicts would be a good way to clear things up.

I have not playtested them yet, because there are pre-game problems. Firstly, the mods I messed with earlier according to your advice, I can edit them in the CS all day. I can edit the merged plugins, too. I can create new plugins from scratch. But when I tried to go into my HUGE mod without marking it active because I wanted to make duplicates of all the hair/eyes/races forms for a small plugin to be added to my collective Races esp (to become esm when complete), I kept getting the .tes error, and the trick you guys showed me isn't working anymore. If I change Mod.tes to ModV2.esp, then make a tweak and save it again, it crashes and I see there is now an additional ModV2.tes. I've gone all the way up to ModV5.tes before giving up. Also, trying to open one of these ModV2.esp files results in the CS telling me the form counts don't match, do I want to correct the file header? Hitting yes means I move up a number in V?.tes if I try to save my work. Hitting no 'fixes' the .tes problem so long as I play only in that sandbox, but I still can't dupe anything from any other mod to my active file without the CS crashing and making a new .tes file when I hit Save. And I've completely disabled the UAC, by the way. *bangs head against wall*

My other problem: my merged mods don't seem to be showing up on the file list for OBMM, even though they're right there in the same Data folder as the other .esps. So I can't modify the load order, which you wouldn't figure would be a problem with all these merged mods except that now the only way to keep Knights of the Nine at the bottom is to edit it in the CS. And restarting the computer didn't help. Do I need to reinstall OBMM, or is this something else entirely?

EDIT: And why, with my greatly shortened mod list and recently re-unpacked texture files, are there still some textures that show up black when I toggle the bright lights off in the CS? Most of them show up in the game in dynamic lighting, but I thought this oddity was some sort of harbinger of doom, which was why I started looking into merging mods in the first place.

OH, AND NOW OBLIVION WON'T LAUNCH. Apparently my skills as a screwup have leveled up: I can make it crash before it even starts!
(Correction: Oblivion won't launch if I use the default launcher to include the merged plugins, which were on the list. Using the OBMM's launcher, which does not show the merged ones, will launch Oblivion, but now I'm missing a crapton of files. I tried pulling the esps out of my Backup folder but they still don't appear in the OBMM list and I don't see a Refresh List button, so there's likely to be mod conflicts galore now.)

Figured out how to get some of my old mods back by saying Yes whenever it asks me if I'd like to recover the mods 'vista' moved to the virtual store. Had to delete a bunch of the useless ones again, but at least I've got the basics. And I've learned that I can't draw a bow. It shouldn't be anything with the mesh/texture because it's Nico's Bow of Daedric Blood with a custom enchantment. I can hold the bow, but the minute I start to nock an arrow it CTDs. As far as unprovoked crashes, I seem to do just fine if I ~coc to whichever building I want to be in, and I enjoyed a lovely swim in a lake which was one of the only things guaranteed to make my old computer crash if I did it long enough, but apparently somebody walking around in the IC Market district has a problem my game simply cannot tolerate. And I can look at myself in 3rd person when I'm alone. When I'm in the city, it crashes. WHAT THE FRELLING FRELL?

Have I moved beyond CS and into Hardware/Software Issues?