Hey there. I'm not sure where exactly to post this - so if this is in the wrong place, feel free to move it accordingly.

My problem is very simple: my CS stopped working and OB crashes when I try to launch it. If I try to open the CS it tells me "Unable to load CTL file", "cannot load the atmosphere model", "cannot load the stars" and "cannot load the clouds"; in that order. Then it just says a problem stopped the program from working and I'm forced to exit the CS.

I've been using the CS for various investigations/personal-use modding for a year or so and nothing like this has happened before. I don't know if it's relevant, but I installed a few mods recently (a week ago) which altered textures and meshes: Koldorn's Cave and Ayleid Textures, Kafei's Rings and Amulet textures, Book Jackets and Operation Optimization. However, I've been able to both play the game and access the CS without problems.

The only thing I can think of is this: I was playing today and my PC abruptly shut down because it over-heated. I had the CS in the background open. When I turned it back on and launched OB, the CS opened and then crashed and so did OB. Any ideas?

The overheating is the scary part.
Excessive Heat is still the enemy of your HDD and other comp elements.
Run some diagnostics on the HDD to be sure it is ok.

Clean up any temp files, crashes leave those not cleaned up.

Try and find the cause of running hot.
No computer should be running hot.

Does oblivion still play? The CTL issue usually means the CS is not installed in the same folder that you installed the Game.
It could also be that your registry is now corrupt because of the crash.

You might try reinstalling the game and CS to the same folder you had them in before.

Make sure your case fans work. You can also buy a cheap fan for the bottom of your hard-drives to help keep them cool.
Also, your heat sinks on your CPU could be so full of dust and fuzz that it cannot effectively cool it anymore. Clean the inside of the case out.

Thanks guys, so the problem is the overheating? Oblivion doesn't play and I just realised all my Oblivion meshes.bsa, textures.bsa etc are missing from OB/Data, so I suppose I'll just have re-install everything <_<
What I still don't get is how that could have happened. I've got all my OBMM stuff in order so the only thing that is left is the crash-with-CS-open. Sometimes I really hate my PC :brokencomputer: