Game crashing when saving

[toffee1012]

Hello,
I've been able to play for weeks without a problem, but now when I try to save or exit the dungeon I'm in, Oblivion crashes every time, so I'm stuck. Only one save hasn't been corrupted in the process and I can't create a new one without crashing the game.
No mods, nothing different from this morning when everyhting was fine, I don't understand!!! The only difference I can think of is I levelled up to level 13, but that was a few hours ago...Anyone else with this problem?

[lonetrav]

Try verifying your Oblivion files (Steam->Properties).
If this doesn't help, try starting a new game and saving it, If this works, your savefile(s) may really be corrupted, for whatever reason. Do you have a save from before entering the dungeon?

[toffee1012]

Hello lonetrav,
Unfortunately no, all my saves were made after entering... I tried starting and saving a new game and it seemed to work fine, so I guess I just have to move on
Thanks for your help anyway!

[Leeux]

You could try a few things before giving up with your saves that sometimes are of some help:

1. Strip your character bare of all gear and equipment that you're carrying... get to a chest and stuff all your stuff in the chest (doesn't matter if chest it's safe or not, could be one in the dungeon,) and then try saving... if it works, then now you know that some item you were holding was causing the crash (some items are scripted.) So you can start re-equipping bit by bit and see each time if it breaks again, so find out which item caused it.

2. From the console: coc TestingHall and see if you can save while you are in the safe cell, If it works, then you can go back to where you were using coc <cellname> but you'll have to find the cell name for the cave you were in, UESP is helpful in that as it lists the name of all the vanilla and DLC caves in its pages.

3. If not of those above work by their own, you can try both: go to the TestingHall and strip to a chest there and see if that helps.

If nothing help, then I'm afraid that the cause of the crash could be save corruption, as in at one point in time your save got corrupted and it's only manifesting now for you, In that case, you maybe could rollback a few saves and redo what you did and try to do stuff differently.

EDIT: Just remember, if you stuff your things in a chest and wait for cell respawn, then if you've picked an unsafe chest you'll lose your stuff... so only do that where you know that the chest is safe (I think, IIRC that most containers in the testing hall don't respawn, so they should be safe.)

Other things that could help that you can add in the mix:
* toggle ai (~tai) before saving (if there's still actors alive where you are at that moment.)
* go around and try disabling dead actors and picking up actor's dropped weapons lying in the floor and stuffing them in some chest before saving.
* wait for cell respawn (3 days) before trying to save again (you'll probably have to disable autosave if you do this, else it'll try to save before waiting and it'll crash.)

[toffee1012]

Hello Leeux,

Thanks for your help, I'll try it when I go back to the lands of Oblivion :) In the meantime, I began The Witcher 3 again, so I'll tell you if your solution(s) worked when I launch the game again.

[Leeux]

No worries, really hope it works for you.

Chances are it wont work, but doing variations of stuff like this helped me recover some of my saves a couple of times, but there's no telling if the same will work for you or not...

Good luck!

[Dark Lucifer]

I know this is Months 11 but for the sake of relevance and for those who might stumble upon the same problem, I did find a solution that could potentially fix crashing while saving and improving Oblivion's stability. Try downloading Unofficial Oblivion Patch and other Oblivion Patches (DLC patches to be precise) then run LOOT and it should be good to go. Also, don't overwrite saves, and never use autosaves. Also, try saving on the console by typing "save (whichever name you want to name your save as)" without the quotations. Just wanted to share that as those fixed my crashing-while-saving issues.