Hey everyone!

I managed to pick up a PC copy of Oblivion for an absolute bargain after being recommended the game due to my thorough enjoyment of the Fallout series.

Upon installing the game, I had double clicked on the Oblivion Launcher.exe file and it could not detect my video card so it set the quality to default (medium). Then when I clicked play it opens up a black box, then the full screen goes black and immediately it crashes saying 'Oblivion has stopped working, windows is trying to find a solution to the problem.'

After doing some searching I managed to find several tips however I have tried them all (to my knowledge) and nothing seems to get the game working. I definitely know the game works fine on my system - I've managed to go through and play the game a couple of times after retrying clicking the Oblivion.exe and letting it crash, then retrying, etc. So I tried the following to no avail:

Deleting the .ini files: just the Oblivion.ini and the other .ini files.
Changed the settings to high quality/low quality/resolution.
Reinstalled the game
Updated all drivers for everything - including gfx cards, direct X, etc.
Disabled my second display monitor
disabled any HP software and printers from my computer
Cleared out any dust from my computer
Disabled programs running in the background.
Defragged
Disabled any anti virus / anti spyware / firewall
Ran offline and online
(I'm not overclocking so it's not an issue)
Patched Oblivion to 1.2.0.416.
Not using Mods - I tried the Unofficial Oblivion Patch v3.2.0 but to no avail.

My system is

Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit (6.1, build 7600)
Asus P5K-E motherboard
Q9450 Quad Core
4GB RAM
Direct X 11.
Nvidia 280GTX

Please help. I'm at my wits end!

Thanks in advance,
Matt

The only thing I can think of is this. Dx11 is simply not adequately backward compatible, so the game wants to install Dx9. The various APIs are totally compatible with each other, so there's no reason to tell the install not to add it, but some people get all proprietary toward what they think is supposed to be a "better" Direct3D setup that Dx9 will somehow dilute.

The only Dx reinstall to worry about is Dx9's, and adding Dx11's install after Dx9, as well as some of Windows 7's own updates, sometimes disable key parts of Dx9, which is another reason to disallow Microsoft's access for automatic updates.

The only thing is I've managed to play the game already without fail. The other day I double clicked the Oblivion.exe and after the 3rd crash it worked perfectly, without even fiddling around. It was only until it wouldn't work after 10-15 crashes upon start up that I started trying all these things but to no avail.

Regardless, I gave the DX9 reinstall a go, and then added the DX11 install. Neither worked. Not even when I just had DX9 running. But thanks anyway for the help!

You did it backwards (Direct3D), but it should have worked, anyway, if that had been the problem.