Well I ran into yet another snag in my oblivion, this one may be my doing though.

Someone told me I could install the Battlehorn Castle plugin even with my old save and it would work without having to start a new game. Is this true? Because I installed it, and at first i couldn't see the castle. I could see the doors and windows but the castle didn't show up and I was seeing all these yellow signs saying "WTF! I'm a missing mesh". So I tried installing the UOMP patch and the castle then showed up, But the yellow mesh signs still show up.

Is this all because I installed it on an old save?

You didn't install the .bsa file. You need both a .bsa and an .esp in your Data folder.

Sweet thanks. I looked in the Data folder and noticed it wasn't there. Must've deleted it somehow so I reinstalled it and it works. Thanks!

I hate those yellow signs. So un-natural. I had a bunch of 'em after I installed MMM a couple weeks ago, but me & a friend solved that problem. Now I'm seeing them occasionally with Better Cities installed, but they're rare enough that I don't feel like messing with these yet.

Whose idea was it to have goofy WTF signs show up in a medieval-styled fantasy game, though?

They′re easy to spot so you know there is a problem. What game it is doesn′t matter for the creators of the mods

Do they stand out so garishly in other games?

Have no idea since I haven′t played and modded other games besides TES, but I would suspect so. Since they′re so easy to spot you can easily see there′s a problem so you can address it. Got the same ones in Morrowind when there was a mesh problem with a plant mod.

God, I hate those WTF signs too, Renee. They're added by mods. Bethesda's error marker is a large exclamation mark. Pseron showed me how to get rid of it. You do it by deleting a file in your Mesh folder called marker_error.nif. That reverts it back to the exclamation point.

He pointed me toward a nice mod that changes this error thingy to something I think is more attractive: http://static-2.nexusmods.com/15/mods/101/images/16704-3-1253661462.jpgThat's from a mod called http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/16704/? You can use the new error mesh all by itself, without actually using the mod. But I have found that the mod is really handy. It can identify any mesh added by mods while you are in the game, so you immediately know which mods are causing problems.

Thanks Shelley, that mod is more tasteful than the WTF signs. And I'm getting that FormID finder right away. Right now I've seen a few of these signs here and there but they're mostly in high places and areas I don't really see directly. Eventually I'll see one right in front of my char's face and it'll bug me though.

Let's be clear. They're meant to show you that you have a problem. Something didn't get installed right. They're not meant to be ignored just because they're not in a highly visible location. Anyway formID finder is good because it can pinpoint exactly which mod you didn't install correctly.

I understand that, but what I'm saying is if I'm right in the middle of a playthrough and I see one of those signs, it's not going to bug me as much if it's in a far-away location. I'm not going to immediately stop my game to figure out what's wrong at that moment, doing so might actually bum me out a bit.

The "WTF I'm a Missing Mesh" was created by a modder named Always Z back in 2007. For reasons I cannot fathom it was almost immediately incorporated into several larger mods. Consequently, it appeared like a virus in many games without some mod users being aware of having installed it. And the fact that it often arrives in a game 'under the radar' just makes it all the more annoying and disruptive when it is encountered.