Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion "crashing" / 2sec freezing

[Monster667]

Hey all,

I just recently purchased the Elder Scrolls IV on Steam as it was on sale. Loading the game and playing for a bit works fine, I have all the settings maxed, except I have Bloom on with 4x AA. However after about 2 minutes or so of playing, the game "crashes" with "Oblivion has encountered an error and needs to close". The reason I put crashes in quotes is because it doesn't actually crash, I tab-out and click the button to close the program, then it takes me back to the game where all seems well.

After coming back to the game every 2 minutes or so I get these very annoying 2 second freezes in gameplay, doesn't seem to matter what I'm doing, looting a corpse, fighting a goblin, etc.

I'm on Win7 Ultimate 64-bit. I never had any problems with Oblivion on my WinXP system. I used my old Oblivion disc then, which I still have, I just bought the one on Steam for the other expansions and whatnot.

Does anyone have any ideas as to why this occurs? Any possible fixes I can try? I'd like to be able to play without any freezing or any other nasty things happening.

P.S. Thanks everyone for the replies on my soundcard thread, I bought an Asus Xonar D2X, which works fine.

[FordGT90Concept]

Any mods installed? Got the unofficial patches installed?

[Monster667]

No mods aside from the ones that come with the Steam download.

I haven't attempted to patch it as I figured Steam would do it automatically, but I'll try that.

Edit:
Ah, didn't notice the unofficial part. I'll search around for them.

[crazyeyesreaper]

also steam version..... bethesdas games have always been better stand alone for me in that regard besides there drm is easily avoidable just turn off auto run and install the game manually it bypasses securoms install but since ur on steam ive no idea how to fix it

[douglatins]

just bought morrowind too, might buy OB, since my DVD is like way over there in my closet

[TheLaughingMan]

Oblivion was a great game, but we all like to forget home much of a buggy mess it was. I would try running it with compatability mod on for WinXP 32-bit. The game has never been nice to 64-bit OS's.

The game also doesn't seem to like HDR and Bloom being on at the same time. If you are using the CCC and forcing AA, then turn off bloom. If you are using bloom in game and forcing HDR, turn off bloom in game, switch to HDR and turn AA on by forcing it in CCC. That may fix the issue.

[Monster667]

I installed the Unofficial patch and tried Compatibility mode. Neither worked =|

I'm only running just Bloom and 4x AA. I don't want HDR simple because I can't have AA with it. Bloom and HDR are very similar effects anyhow.

I may try running the game outside of Steam and see if that works.

[FordGT90Concept]

Links to download the Unofficial patch are here:
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tes4Mod:Uno...Oblivion_Patch

I played it yesterday for over an hour with all the latest unofficial patches and experienced no issues (comp in specs, except HD 5670).


HDR is supposed to be better than Bloom and I thought bloom looked like crap so I did 8xAA instead. Try disabling bloom and just using AA.


Do you have the Game of the Year edition or just Oblivion?

[Monster667]

Yup, that's the patch I installed. Version 3.2.0.

Will try that.

Game of the Year Edition. The one that comes with Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles. It was on sale for $8 yesterday, it may still be.

[FordGT90Concept]

I assume you got the full installer. They have incremental updates mixed in with the full updates. Full update for Oblivion is like 122 MiB, Shivering Ilses is around 45 MiB, and Mods is around 5 MiB.

You should also get the Shivering Isles and Mods unofficial patches as well. The links are on the same link I posted before.

[TheLaughingMan]

Bloom is not the same as HDR. The effects address the same issue with realistic rendering, but the results are vastly different.

You can have AA with HDR, but you have to use CCC to override the game's settings and set AA from CCC as part of that game's profile (Not too clear on how that is done as I have not done this myself. I had a roommate who did this on his game when we are addicted).

I am not sure how Steam is handling Oblivion, but you may want to try installing the official patches manually, then reinstall the Unofficial patch to fix most of the bugs.

[FordGT90Concept]

When I tried to change it in game, it's HDR or Bloom or AA. Can't have any combination of them.

GotY is fully patched out of the box (verified on my install). The game is extremely unstable without the unofficial patches.

[Monster667]

OK, I tried it without bloom and only 4x AA, still crashed. Then I installed all of the other unofficial patches for Shivering Isles, Knights of the Nine, DLC, etc. Still crashes.

I noticed after the game crashes there is a really annoying stuttering sound playing over and over that I can't get rid of. Maybe its something with this sound card? Asus Xonar D2X? In game I notice no sound problems.

I never did do a reboot, I'll try that now.

[FordGT90Concept]

It could be. Have you tried any other games having that sound card installed? Got the latest drivers for it (drivers on disk are rarely the latest)?

[Monster667]

Yes, I've been playing STALKER: Call of Pripyat and it works fine. However, I did have to install OpenAL to get sound to work at all in that game with this sound card.

Yep, I didn't even use the disc that came with the card, I just downloaded straight from Asus.

[FordGT90Concept]

Got any anti-viruses running?

[Monster667]

Yes, Microsoft Security Essentials and Windows Firewall. I will try to disable them... I doubt it'll do anything, security essentials usually never interferes with games.

Thanks for continuing to help me. If I still can't get something working, I'll try to avoid Steam and install it without it.

[Arctucas]

I remember having similar issues, lowering my overclock solved it.

[Monster667]

Not doing any overclocking whatsoever. I never have and don't plan on it.

[Monster667]

I may have found the cause to my problem. I was suspicious that it was my Asus Xonar D2X causing the problems, so I disabled sound and music in the Oblivion.ini file.

bMusicEnabled=0
bSoundEnabled=0

The game didn't crash after about 20 minutes of playing, however, after I clicked Exit game, it seemed to crash with an "Oblivion has stopped working" error again... Which didn't really affect anything. Not sure what to do at this point. Before I installed the latest drivers (less than a week ago) I wiped out all the ones for onboard sound and anything else so as to avoid any potential problems there. I might just sell the Xonar and use onboard sound, since it seems that no one can make good sound cards...

EDIT: I read something about it crashing with GX mode enabled in the settings for the card... going to try this now.

[FordGT90Concept]

Some games crash on close for some nameless reason. Try using onboard audio instead of the Xonar (you can easily switch by changing the default output device).

My HT Omega Striker 7.1 works well. I haven't encountered a problem with it yet (at least 54 games installed).

[Monster667]

Great news. Turns out the problem was the GX setting in the Asus Xonar D2X settings.

Turning that off solved everything, theres also no more crashing on exit. I suppose Asus never ironed out the bugs with that function. It doesn't seem to affect sound quality much anyhow, so I'll just leave it off.

I used to play this game tons years back, I had a level 38ish character, I'd beaten pretty much everything in the game up to Knights of the Nine. Now I get to see what the fuss is about Shivering Isles..

Thanks everyone for the help !

[FordGT90Concept]

Mad God!

I recommend saving Knights of the Nine for last. If memory serves, completing it sets infamy to zero. Plus, the preacher asks what makes you worthy and the more of the game completed, the more choises you get. Just don't talk to the preacher in Anvil until you are ready to play it.

[entropy13]

Go play Shivering Isles first. Would be much longer though.

There are restrictions in the items you get during the Knights of the Nine main questline, so don't forget about that. Especially if you want to join the Thieves Guild and/or Dark Brotherhood.

[lyndonguitar]

Also download mods, it would be another hundreds hours of gameplay. dunno how mods work in a steam version but im sure it will work and it has to work. There so many great mods out there. try this site. tons of cool mods, just don't mess up your game by having to much conflicting mods/buggy mods