I understand that this papers over cracks which may lead to your house falling down in a few weeks/months. So my question is this: Can the WEOCPS log be used for debugging in any way? ie can the crashes it prevents be translated in any way?

It all started http://www.gamesas.com/?showtopic=870869 really.

There are some who can apparently tell/guesstimate what kind of problem leads to what kind of crash. All reverse engineering and such. ... errr I meant what kind of crashes resulted form what kind of problems.

So correlating exception codes with types of crashes and then creating fixes for each specific one. Windom took it on a case by case basis with Elys' original one or two instance crash fix as the base model. [Elys' http://karamail.nerim.net/elys/misc/ElysOblivionPlugins.htm]

Anything more is over my head.

[edit] found the only remaining http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/974500-alpha-windom-earles-oblivion-crash-prevention-system-for-obse/ - more info on how there.

Blargh, I wish I'd seen this thread sooner.


This, and basically every other post Arthmoor's made in this thread, is misinformed. First, Oblivion very often crashes for not-very-good reasons. Second, the crashes that WEOCPS has been programmed to handle are very specific, and they are not merely hidden - WEOCPS fixes the data that is problematic so that Oblivion doesn't need to crash. WEOCPS is not some kind of lazy cover-up, it's a utility designed to handle certain common sources of crashes.

Programs get errors. Error handling is a major part of programming. Oblivion, unsurprisingly for a program its size, has plenty of potential errors that are not, by default, handled. Windows closes any program that doesn't handle one of its problems. WEOCPS hooks into Oblivion and adds code to handle certain problems, so Windows doesn't need to close it.

So that means that actually it is good to still use WEOCPS?

In my opinion, based on what I saw of it, yes. Windom Earl knew what he was doing, and did it well.

Alright, thank you! Once again today I installed it .

+1

Seconded.

That right there? That's papering over a crack. "Link to 0x00000000 is faulty!" means the program tried to reference a NULL pointer in some way. You can make whatever claims you like about jumping around that, but there's no way you'll convince a seasoned developer that ignoring NULL pointer references is a good idea.

I grant that Windam knew his stuff but even he plastered a big disclaimer about it being highly experimental and warning about keeping backup saves before relying on it. The thread Psymon found doesn't have the post where he told people not to rely on it as a regular tool but to use it more in the way Elys intended when she did the older Crashshield plugin - a means to bypass a stubborn crash and attempt to continue on.

Persistent crashes are a sign of real problems that need to be fixed, not masked over and ignored and thus never fixed properly. Nearly all issues *DO* result from mods, so they should be fixable provided the cause can be found.

I remember Vanilla Oblivion crashed till exasperation to me as well...so I don't know if mods are really the problem.

Anyway, until an http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=19510 is created by someone, I think weOCPS is the best solution. "Corrupter" or not.

I played vanilla a good 5 months before using even a few mods.

I never crashed not once.

and dreamer2008 - just try it out - I'm certain there will be no harm in that. Or don't use it and only try it when you do have crashes and see if it helps.

I don't think you are going to get a decisive vote.

There is only one true way to fix a crash, and that is Bethesda fixing them properly. But we all know full well how Bethesda develops: like [censored].

No plugin is going to do this, no matter how good you are at developing it. If Oblivion is going to crash, I say let it.

....or install WEocps and gloss over them

I guess I will try it out and see if I get even rarer CTD's

The source is crap code. The solution is fixing that code.
Modders do everything for free, so our only motivation for fixing problems is a desire to fix them.

WEocps has helped me get past inane crashes that I've gotten before I even started using overhauls. I know it's not perfect. But it's not a fix, true, it's a way of bypassing certain crashes that occur in all copies of oblivion.
I may not have a clue in hell why it works, but it's saved me grief too many times to count.

It's paper over a crack, and it's the best we have. That's why I use it.

The nice thing about Oblivion corruption is that you tend to find out about it quick. I can usually go back a few saves, and the corruption is gone. I have never been stuck with a deep corruption before. With Morrowind... it would be pretty nasty. The corruption could stay hidden for a very very long time. Though Morrowind Code Patch certainly has worked wonders in that respect.

I'm convinced that low FPS is the biggest contributor to corruption. At least in my experience. if WECPS addresses problems in that area, then I'm sure it does more good than harm.

I'm using this mod for some months now (though the omod I created for it in my hard drive date from July 17 2010).
I had in the past two very nasty problems of savegames becoming corrupted with the time. I think one of them was even before starting using weOCPS. From my humble experience a great factor that leads to corrupt savegames is when you are starting to collect a very big number of items (say some thousands) in combination with some storage mods that do not work well. This is specially true for Alchemy characters who move thousand of ingredients in every game session.

If low FPS is the biggest contributor, then the solution rests with the Oblivion Stutter Remover - which does a fabulous job of managing that particular problem. Especially useful when combined with the LAA patch on a 64bit OS with the RAM to spare.

I must have been one of the lucky ones who played Morrowind with a crash once every month or so and never had to worry about load ordering on mods. I was pretty liberal with installing and removing things and putting things in wherever they landed.

I also never had much trouble with vanilla Oblivion. Yes, it did crash more, but it's never corrupted a save on me unless the crash happened while it was saving. The real problems didn't come along until I got crazy with a ton of mods and only went away after becoming aware of how to manage them.

It's not a good idea, but it may be the best solution you have if you know why it happened. I don't know the details, but I do know for a fact that Windom specifically investigated every crash he patched, and figured out why they happened and whether they could be safely ignored.


Of course Windom had a big disclaimer - it was highly experimental. That's not the same as intentionally ignoring problems, though. Windom did know what caused the crashes and had every reason to expect them to be safe to ignore - or otherwise handle, which I believe he did in some cases.

On the other hand, I don't recall that post, but I could have easily missed it. Worth considering, that. A shame that it's probably been pruned away.


Ehh... yes and no. For example, the extremely crash on exit issues - IIRC, WEOCPS handled many causes of such errors, which is a good thing. While mods influence the crashes on exit, it's not something that the mods specifically do - it's just that mods exacerbate an extant issue in Oblivion. It's inconsistent and occurs to some people on some mod setups - the only consistent thing seems to be that it's more likely to happen the more mods you have. But people have actually gotten rid of it by installing mods - because it's not consistent. I believe the OBSE crew have some idea of why it happens, but they haven't made it a priority. In any case, it is, I think, a good thing, or at least certainly not a bad thing, to handle that error.

Beats me, but as you can see that was over a year ago and everything is still kicking. And I haveno idea what NULL references are etc... My comments on weoùcps are strickly user's POW.

I agree with Arthmoor there.

Usually, for my setup, when WeOCPS saves a crash from happening (I come to know from that ding sound it makes), the game usually crashes pretty soon after that. Essentially, WeOCPS did not help prevent the crash, just delaying it. I have it in my setup at the moment, but I realize that anything it saves is something that I should try to sort out by other means rather than depending solely on WeOCPS (i.e. the root of the problem lies elsewhere).

That too is how it is for me - it doesn't really prevent a crash just delays it.

I hear the ding and in my mind I think "Ok see how long it lasts, but no saving." More often than not it will crash anyway.

I've had it in for periods of times and out and really I can't say that it is some strong guard against crashing - I've never experienced it that way. So my log might have info on stopping a crash it does not have info when it does.

Windom Earl still responds to PM's, you could try asking him directly about save corruption.