All of a sudden something happened to my computer. I was playing Oblivion 4 GOTY when my computer froze. The only way I could do anything was to shut it down by turning it off.

After rebooting, I started the game up again and now when the game is loading, it gets half way through the loading process and locks up, will not advance.

All other functions and programs of the computer work alright. Is this fixable?

I’ve completed most all quests including Shivering Isles and Knights of the Nine. But there is still a lot of caves, forts, etc to explore. So if I’m hoping I wont have to start over again. Thanks for your help.

You can reinstall Oblivion. If you are using Windows Vista or 7 you should install Oblivion outside of Program Files and UAC. I use C:Games\Oblivion instead of the default C:Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion when I do a reinstall.
Next time the game locks up press the Ctrl/Alt/Delete buttons at the same time to bring up Windows and choose Start Task Manager, or Logoff -- instead of turning off the power.

When it locked up on me a couple of times in the past I did use ctrl-alt-delete and the Windows task Manager came up in front of the game, allowing me to restart. This time it came up behind the game and I could not access it. I tried rebooting from a complete power off and as I've said, the game would load only half way and then freeze. If I do a complete uninstall/reinstall, is there a way to save my save my saves? My OS is XP Home addition. Thank you for your help.

Saves are stored in My Games\Oblivion\Saves. Just grab the whole folder, and move it to your desktop.

Make sure to delete the install folder, and the one in my games, when the uninstall is completed. The uninstaller doesn't remove as much as it should....

Preserve your savegames as HeyYou suggests.

But before you go to the trouble of uninstalling and reinstalling, try the following:

Clean the registry with a program like Ccleaner.com.

Regenerate the Oblivion.ini file: Exit Oblivion, then try renaming or deleting the oblivion.ini file (...\My Documents\My Games\Oblivion\Oblivion.ini)

Oblivion will then redetect hardware. It will also, probably, not recognize your video card and set everything to medium. Just change the settings according to what you think your card will support (You can always change them later)

If none of this helps, after you uninstall Oblivion, run Ccleaner again (I think it likely that you have a registry problem). Then reinstall Oblivion.

Good luck.