Game was fine, is now freezing

[Wahooka]

I've been playing Oblivion for weeks and had no issues.

Game performance was fine and had no complaints.

Now all of a sudden, its crashing every few minutes, the screen just freezes up at random times.

I tried deleting my saved games and starting at an earlier point, but didn't fix it. Also tried playing in Offline Mode, but didn't fix it, so Steam wasn't the issue.

Any suggestions on how to fix this?

[Zubat]

Oblivion is a constant battle of trying to keep it semi stable. I'll try and help but not sure how much good I'll be.

Do you have any mods installed? Also if you don't have the unofficial oblivion patches I highly recommend getting them. They fix a large amount of bugs bethesda left in. They might help in adding stability.

Is there any background processes chewing up too much memory? Oblivion in my experience is a memory hog and is very sensitive to other programs running.

What OS are you running? I ended up having to reinstall Steam to a directory outside of program files due to the user account controls that come with Vista and onward. They interfered with oblivion and steam. This probably isn't necessary unless you are running mods or intend to use mods.

Can you provide any more information on when the crashes occur such as entering a building or specific area or is it completely random? I ask just incase there is anymore information you can provide to help me or others better understand what is happening.

If none of this is helpful you can try browsing the oblivion wiki tech support pages. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Technical_Support

[Wahooka]

Thanks for the response.

I don't think there are any new background processes and it says I only am using 2% of CPU.

The freezes are completely random, and are happening during almost any event, such as talking to citizens, just sitting staring at a rock or the sky, walking around the countryside, or just standing still.

The crashes seem to occur nearer the Imperial City, but I don't know if thats just a coincidence.

I've not run any mods or patches yet.

I didn't have any trouble with the CD version of the game on this same computer, so perhaps Steam is part of the problem??

Just a thought, if Steam is the problem, would I be able to buy the CD version of the game and used the saved games from the Steam version, or would they not be compatible?

Here are my specs, hope this helps.


OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
Version 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name Wahooka
System Manufacturer Dell Inc.
System Model Inspiron 620
System Type x64-based PC
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2320 CPU @ 3.00GHz, 3001 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date Dell Inc. A02, 7/27/2011
SMBIOS Version 2.6
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume2
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7601.17514"
User Name Wahooka
Time Zone Central Standard Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 6.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 5.91 GB
Available Physical Memory 4.24 GB
Total Virtual Memory 11.8 GB
Available Virtual Memory 9.85 GB
Page File Space 5.91 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys

[ManualMakron]

Try deleting yourr Oblivion.ini in MyDocuments/MyGames/Oblivion/ folder. Actually you might want to try deleting the whole Oblivion folder itself in MyGames. However, before you do that make sure you backup your saved game.

[Wahooka]

If I deleted Oblivion.ini, will it regenerate later when I run the game?

If my saved games have a bug in them, won't the bug happen again
when I restore my saved games?

A bit confused by your advice....

[ManualMakron]

Originally posted by Wahooka:

If I deleted Oblivion.ini, will it regenerate later when I run the game?

If my saved games have a bug in them, won't the bug happen again
when I restore my saved games?

A bit confused by your advice....

Your Oblivion.ini will be replaced with a new one the moment you start the game again after deleting it. It doesn't have to mean that the issue is with the saves themselves, so its worth saving them.

[Wahooka]

I am now 100% positive that what we are dealing with is a corrupt saved game.

I loaded a previous saved game from Day 1, went to the exact location where all the
freezes and crashes occured, and I didn't have any problems at all.


So the question:

how can I figure out where the saved games got corrupted,
and is there anything I can do to fix this without losing hours of gameplay?

It seems my game might have gotten corrupted by a certain spell I cast,
or a certain quest, or something I did wrong somewhere.

How do these bugs get started?

[ManualMakron]

Originally posted by Wahooka:

I am now 100% positive that what we are dealing with is a corrupt saved game.

I loaded a previous saved game from Day 1, went to the exact location where all the
freezes and crashes occured, and I didn't have any problems at all.


So the question:

how can I figure out where the saved games got corrupted,
and is there anything I can do to fix this without losing hours of gameplay?

It seems my game might have gotten corrupted by a certain spell I cast,
or a certain quest, or something I did wrong somewhere.

How do these bugs get started?

I don't think anyone knows the answer to this. It happened to my a couple of times and I was unable to continue.

[Wahooka]

I just made a big discovery:


I loaded a Day 1 game and it still froze up.


It seems to freeze up when anyone in the game

stands still for longer then a few minutes.

This explains why it is happening during long

conversations.


Does this give a hint as to why its crashing?

Maybe its fine so long as my character never

stands still :)

[Zubat]

That's quite strange that it crashes when standing still. I can't say I have ever come across that problem. Also I think its safe to rule out hardware being an issue.

You said that the CD version of the game ran just fine but now using the steam version you are having issues. It could be an issue between windows and steam communicating like what I mentioned earlier. When my game got messed up it was right after a steam update and before that it was fine for the most part. Reinstalling Steam to a directory outside of program files such as C:\Games might help. This may or may not fix it and doing so will require you to redownload and reinstall ALL games that you have under Steam. A way to test this is to turn off the user account controls and then try playing Oblivion. Just make sure to turn them back on before doing anything else. If it runs fine then you should consider reinstalling Steam. If the problem persists then this isn't the issue.

Here's how to turn off the UAC if you don't know. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/turn-user-account-control-on-off#1TC=windows-7

You also mentioned it could be corrupt saves. This isn't an immdediate fix but I've heard that instead of repeatedly saving to the same save file its better to save to a new one and then delete the old one. The reason for doing this is supposedly the old files get bogged down with old data leading to crashes.

Make sure your game is being run as admin as well as its up to date on patches. Oblivion's version should be 1.2.0416. I would definitely say grab the unofficial patches for Oblivion.

As far as saves from Steam working on the CD version as long as the versions of the game match I think they should work fine. Best of luck to you sir I hope it works out for you.

[Wahooka]

thanks for the response.

I established that it wasn't a corrupt save, because my earliest saved games are also crashing.

I had much better results when disconnecting the internet and running the game.

I think you're right,.,,I believe it might be due to processes running in the background or Steam itself screwing things up.

Wouldn't just playing in OFFLINE MODE get rid of that?

You would think so, but I still had crashes in OFFLINE MODE.

Is it possible the Steam self updater is the issue? It seems to be self-updating constantly.

Way to shut that off?

How can I be sure the unoffcial patches won't make things worse? Are some better then others? Are some reputable and others may cause bugs?

Thanks for your help!

[Dexter]

The key to playing Oblivion is to save often. The unofficial patches help with alot of problems.

Always save your game before starting any quests if possible, so you can reload the save if any problems occur and redo the quest from the starting point.

You should also save your game after completing any quests or obtaining any items you want to keep.

Oblivion has a rare problem sometimes that will make approaching a particular area in the game unstable and will cause the game to crash every time you get close to the area. Sometimes it is in the middle of nowhere.

The same thing can happen to quest NPC's when you go to talk to them to complete a quest. The game will just crash with no logical explanation and there is no way to fix it other then reloading a save from before you started the quest.

[Wahooka]

I have fixed the problem with a combination of methods.

1. Switched to Offline Mode
2. Reduced Screen Resolution to 600x800
3. Turned the textures to LOW
4. Turned off all the water ripple and water reflection effects

Doing these things seem to have eliminated the crashes, I just played for about an hour without problems.

Which of these fixed the problem is hard to say, because I tried them all separately without success. So maybe doing all of them allowed some extra memory?

I dunno, but I'll let you guys know if the problem reoccurs.

Thanks for all who helped with this thread.

[Partakith]

Years later but top search engine result is here, I'm using Proton and instead GoG but the point should be the same, for some reason I played for days no problem then started having this freezing problem.

I'm not saying this will for certain fix yours, I have no mods GOTY.

I do not freeze 90% of time at all if I "Run the game in 4:3 not 16:9"

Seems like in my case maybe an issue with the widescreen settings although as I said I played for hours before this started occurring. When I set it to 4:3 native vs the widescreen I do not freeze. In rare cases it might still but I have yet to have that happen more than once with the 4:3. Hope this helps someone.

[QHD_144hz_MLED_5ms]

that's weird, i deliberately try to break my game (aside from installing bad mods), and i've never really experienced this. well i did, but teleporting to a developer testing area, waiting there for 72 in-game hours, then teleporting back to Cyrodiil fixed it.