Oblivion freeze when sound is enabled

[Caesum]

Hi, I have a retail version of Oblivion with Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles, it also has the latest patch installed. For some reason though while it played perfectly all the time on my PC it stopped working on my brand new laptop, Acer Aspire v5-573G. After the game loads it freezes immediately with no way of playing. It seems to work only when I disable sound entirely in the .ini file. Otherwise it doesn't work. My laptop has a Realtek sound card and I heard Oblivion has problems with it, so maybe that's the reason? Anyway do you have any ideas what can I do? I love music of Oblivion and don't want to play without it.

[Kongha]

Shouldnt be an issue. Have you tried the different audio fixes that floats around the internet? Also, tried to played in windowed mode and see if it helps

[$WAGG]

I have Realtek card and don't have issues with it... weird...

[Dusk of Oolacile]

The game uses mp3 sound and decodes it using the codecs you have installed, so check those. Probably LAV is set to play mp3 on your system instead of the built-in Fraunhofer codec. LAV produces the exact symptoms you describe. (Might be another codec too, whatever you're using for mp3.)

[Caesum]

Thank you for your answers. Have tried it in windowed mode as well as tweaking .ini file but with no effect. The game only works with sound disabled completely. About codecs, I don't have any codec pack installed on my PC.

[HeiTheM]

Hi , there is a dude who posted this on the steam forum . Its not the same sound card but maybe it gives you an idea on what to look for ?:

Crash to Desktop, Fixed by bSoundEnable = 0
I have an HT Omega Claro Halo XT sound card, and had crash to desktop anytime I would load a game. I searched for a few hours online and found Oblivion sucks when it comes to sound cards. Disabling the sound fixed it.

The problem & solution?

Turn off EX Xear 3D mode in the HT OMEGA CLARO SERIES control panel. I heard for ASUS cards, it's something like "GX" option.

Turning this off, solved the crashes.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/22330/discussions/0/610575007211191540/

[Caesum]

Unfortunately Realtek Control Panel doesn't have such option or anything similar to this.

[Caesum]

I think I have managed to fix my problem. Apparently it was Realtek's 3D soundback tool which caused all the trouble. After I disabled Oblivion profile in the app the game started working again. Thank you for all your help.

[wabbit]

Necro'ing this thread as it came up in searches when I was trying to figure out this problem.

The game was freezing for me whenever I tried to start a new game or load a game with music enabled. I also couldn't quit without it freezing up.

The solution in my case was to use this:
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/installed_codec.html

Make sure you use the 32-bit version, just control + A select all and disable all the codecs. Then install k-lite codec pack:
https://codecguide.com/download_kl.htm

The standard version is fine. It will reset and re-enable all the required codecs.

If that works for you, you can use the first program to re-enable the disabled codecs, but I recommend doing it systematically, one by one, until you find the one that causes Oblivion to lock up. Though you may not even wish to bother. The ones k-lite re-installs and enables should be all you need in most cases.

Hope that helps someone.