I decided to clean up my Oblivion directory, and ended up packing all my mods into OMODs and all the data files into BSAs for each mod. Now for some reason Oblivion doesn't seem to want to load data from any of the BSAs and causes my game to crash while loading my save. Even something as simple as Trollf's loading screens won't work, but will work if I unpack the BSA. The few loose files that are left are working however. I have old file invalidation turned on and BSA redirection (tried with this off as well) from OBMM.

Does Oblivion not allow overriding files to be packed in BSA's? It does seem like there is more missing than just overriding files though, I was able to start a new game and some icons for inventory items added by mods were missing.

Yes yes you are very wise to desire to unclutter the hellish pit that is the Data Folder, My sire in your desire to organize this Eye sore I garuntee satisfaction and ease of access to the once set in forget it because once you try to Edit, you will see the task is by no means....Pet-it..... :facepalm:


make sure your ESP's and BSA"s have the same name. rather you name the BSA's after their ESP's individually! for each mod tell me if this helps you for I had the same issue, and that simple step relieved all my issues regarding BSA's

You should not pack the same file (same file path) across multiple BSAs. Make a backup of the originals, then extract whichever you need to modify, install your mods on top of the extracted files, and then repack the BSAs.

That's exactly what I needed to know, thanks! Now to extract all the BSA's with conflicting files and see if the game will work again...

If repacking the meshes BSA give you trouble, grab the patch near the bottom of the opening post of the TESIV:POSItive thread (see my sig.) It corrects the filepaths for a few meshes known to lose their leading spaces during the repacking process. Do not use it unless you need it. You'll know because the game will crash with the repacked meshes BSA installed.

Well thanks for the help, I think I got it all sorted out. I also discovered that the mods will all original content weren't loading properly because I packed the BSA's with BSA Commander (it even broke the DLC's that I repacked with PyFFI'ed meshes). Looks like I'll be repacking all the BSA's again with OBMM tomorrow to fix it.

You might want to consider obtaining TES4Files to pack your BSA's.
Some meshes will not work inside a BSA because of the Texture filepath within the mesh.
Outside a BSA, Oblivion does not care whether the file path is / or \.
Inside a BSA, it most cetainly does. TES4Files with automatically correct the file path in the mesh as well as pack your BSA.

Two other considerations...

Some textures will not work in a BSA because they do not have mip maps.
What are mip maps? Think of holding a mirror in front of another mirror and look at all the mirrors. Each one smaller than the previous.
Most textures you see in game have up to 10 mip maps. Essentailly, in game, mip maps are how you see the detail of objects from afar while you get closer to it.

If you have a lot of mods, keep in mind that on many systems, Oblivion will start to play erractically when the total number of esp's, esm's, and bsa's approach 400.