Steam Overlay Not Running With Oblivion (and it took OBSE with it!)

[Taellic]

Quite out of the blue I discovered that OBSE wasn't running with Oblivion anymore, and I think I know why. It seems the community overlay isn't running with the game. Oddly enough I can access it just fine in Skyrim and every other game I own.

Things I've tried:

• Checking both the General and Oblivion settings to make sure that the overlay is enabled in-game
  
• Confirming the keybinds and trying different combinations
  
• Restarting Steam and my computer
  
• Reinstalling Oblivion
  
• Deleting everything but the steamapps and steam.exe files, thus reinstalling Steam
  
• Windows Update
  
• Checking NVIDIA for new drivers
  
• Disabling misc firewalls/NVIDIA programs

I can confirm that the overlay used to work (along with OBSE) only a few weeks ago. Gameoverlayui.exe just decided to start playing favorites. Whenever Skyrim or Civ V show up he's more than eager to play, but Oblivion get's the ol' cold shoulder. Dunno what Oblivion.exe said or did, but the rift between him and gameoverlayui.exe is threatening to tear this family apart. Please, would a kind soul please direct me towards some good technical counseling?

[west0040]

I tested a plain Oblivion install and the Steam Overlay won't start in that either. So it looks like OBSE users are dead in the water until the Steam Client (gameoverlayui.exe) is repaired.

[Taellic]

Well, at least I've (mostly) ruled out it being something on my end. Still... dead in the water indeed.

[[fp] peanutt]

I've been having the same problem. I hadn't yet tried all the things you had. Thank you for saving me the headache. I hope they fix this soon - too much is broken without OBSE!

[Star-Lord]

Anyone actually running OBSE with Oblivion GOTY Deluxe Edition (Steam) yet? I mean actual OBSE plugins working not just playing the game.

[west0040]

I had OBSE running with OBSE plugins and GOTY edition (not Deluxe.) Up until about a week ago it was working fine; just lately the Steam Overlay won't start with Oblivion so OBSE can't be used until the Steam Overlay is repaired.

[west0040]

hello everyone! i have submitted a Steam Support question for the purpose of getting the Steam Overlay working again in Oblivion. In the meantime you can use the old Steam loader with the current version of OBSE (I renamed this Steam loader to obse_loader_old.exe so I can have the current obse_loader.exe to be used by the Construction Set / Extender.) Here is the link for anyone who hasn't seen this yet. You just run the old loader and it runs Oblivion with OBSE.

http://media.steampowered.com/content/obse_loader.zip

[Taellic]

Fantastic. Thank you west!

[west0040]

You're sure welcome, Thoon. Thanks for opening this topic in the first place. Maybe others will be able to use Steam Oblivion until (hopefully) the Steam Overlay is fixed.

[Star-Lord]

I will try it if I ever go back to the Steam version, lol. I don't feel like spending 5 min to download and copy my installation... again... Anyway, I sent 144 chocolate chip cookies to your Steam account as payment for services rendered. Where did you get the old loader? From a previous version of OBSE?

[west0040]

It's on the old Steam Forums and was written by a Valve staff member in 2009. It hooks to the latest OBSE dll so you end up with OBSE 21. I renamed it to obse_loader_old.exe so it wouldn't interfere with the current obse_loader.exe which is used by the Constuction Set.

[malgrumm]

ive tried the OBSE loader the steam guy whipped up in 09 and it doesn't work..........it just crashes my game............ive even tried renaming it and nothing...........

[xsys]

I have OBGE and some mods installed that require OBSE and when I start the game a small overlay popup appears in the lower right of my screen indicating Steam overlay is active. If I turn the overlay option off I lose OBGE and there is no popup, so it must be working.

Something definitely seems to have changed though because I went through the same process in December. I believe I reinstalled OBGE and OBSE (latest version) to get things working again.

[malgrumm]

yeah but for some people the steam overlay does not work at all, no popup in the corner......nothing! hell im not getting the steam overlay for oblivion even with a clean install of steam, oblivion AND OBSE......no dice.....hell half of my games refused to activate the steam overlay and ive made sure that the steam comm is active not only for each game but also in the main settings! quick word to valve.........please get on this problem and fix it.........a lot of us are sick and tired of having to exit a game just to chat to friends.........

[lPaladinl]

There's a lot of games that have problems with Steam Overlay, and it's not always on Steam's end when it doesn't work.

[malgrumm]

yeah but oblivion was uesing the overlay just fine last year and there have not been any updates on oblivion since 07 so its not that. the steam overlay stopped working when Valve updated Steam with the most recent patch...................a lot of peeps have had this problem with the overlay on other games ever since that patch came out and the games they play did use the overlay so yeah........its valves fault methinks