Oblivion Problem

[Kapitan_Phillips]

Hey guys, my Oblivion game just decided to start intermittently freezing up during gameplay. I'll be able to play for say, 30 seconds, then it freezes, then it's okay again for another 30 seconds.

When it happens during dialogue, the dialogue continues to play, but nothing else happens.

I've defragged my HDD (First thing that sprang to mind) and hunted around some sites for a solution, but I couldnt find one :cry:

[d@rk51d3]

I had a similar situation. Except mine ran for about 30 sec, or until you changed location, then CTD. I tried old saves, new saves, you name it. Every time though, CTD.:damn: I put it down to a mod conflict, and performed a complete uninstall.

What makes it worse, is that a "mate" borrowed my main discs a while back, and has since joined the army, and moved to the other side of the country. He came back for a wedding a few weeks back, and promised to return them, but he sent me his Knights of the "Nine pack instead", which I already have. :damn:

So currently I'm up that creek without a paddle.:roll:

[Dowly]

Check your temperatures. That is pretty much what happens to my PC in general when my HDDs are abit too hot. What windows you are running? Does this happen everywhere in the game? Have you tried lowering the sound hardware acceleration from control panel (sound problems are pretty usual on Oblivion).

[Skybird]

Yes, my oblivion also stalls due to temperatures. I then thoroughly clean the coolers and ventilators, and then I am fine again. Use to do it every 3-4 months.

[Kapitan_Phillips]

Yes, its likely to be a temperature issue. I'm getting distorted screens on reboot, and I usually leave the thing on overnight.

Giving it a nights rest, and trying in the morning. I'll let you folks know. Thanks!

[Raptor1]

Do you have an HP printer or something, it's software screws up the game really bad...

[NeonSamurai]

Uhh oh.. that is the same symtoms I went through recently (though with other games), first i started getting freezing, then distorted graphics, then the distortion went to everything (2d & 3d) and wouldnt go away.

Turned out the video card was slowly dying.

[Raptor1]

What kind of GFX Card was that?

The only things that have ever "died" on my computer we're my 7 year old hard drive and some RAM i broke when i uh...accidentally... kicked my computer (and it was RDRAM too, damn expensive)

[Oberon]

Wow...sounds like Oblivion eats Video cards for breakfast. It killed my mates laptop (which was pretty high spec) and now I hear this :o

Oblivion...aptly named! :lol:

[Raptor1]

Hell, i would have been willing to sacrafice a part of my computer just to play that game

It's...just...too...good... :-?

[Oberon]

I'm tempted but I don't want to nuke Aldeburgh...


Not that many would notice admittedly... :hmm:

[NeonSamurai]

What kind of GFX Card was that?

The only things that have ever "died" on my computer we're my 7 year old hard drive and some RAM i broke when i uh...accidentally... kicked my computer (and it was RDRAM too, damn expensive)

An old Radeon 9800 Pro.

Now It wasn't Oblivion that caused it (wasn't even playing oblivion when it started acting up), but the symptoms were the same, frequent long pauses while playing (game play would continue in the background sound wise), then scrambled displays for everything (including booting, post screen not displaying correctly is a sure sign its a hardware problem). Changing out the video card with another solved the problem in my case and proved it was the previous video card going bad.

Something to always keep in mind with bleeding edge tech, is that it tends not to last as long as it tends to be much closer to the heat barrier (heat is what will slowly do in hardware), and the main victims are cpu, and gpu (the 2 main heat producers in a computer other then the power supply).

Some basic tips to keep your computer cool are to make sure its not in a warm room, not sitting in the sun, that its air flow is not obstructed (a lot of computer desks are realy badly designed for this and tend to trap exhausted heat which gets sucked back in), and that the air intakes are not near a heat source (like a radiator, or vent). Laptops should only ever be used on hard flat surfaces (do NOT use them on top of a bed or blanket or they will block off the air intake/outtake vents, I've known several people who have killed their laptops in this manner). Also its a good idea every couple of months to open up the case (not laptops I don't recommend taking apart a laptop unless you know exactly what your doing) and clean out the air intakes (particularly any ones close to the floor).

As for games, well a lot of the more modern graphic intensive games are very hard on graphics cards (oblivion, crysis, etc), and tend to have them running at maximum power (and maximum heat output). If the ventilation is insufficient then it can slowly burn out the video card (or cpu).

[KeptinCranky]

Hmm, this issue, while still possibly GPU related is probably to do with the latest NVIDIA drivers, my borther had the exact same thing, game froze up repeatedly, this was because He'd updated to the latest drivers to play Crysis.

It killed Oblivion though, rolling back to an earlier version of NVIDIA drivers fixed it though

[Dowly]

Hmm, this issue, while still possibly GPU related is probably to do with the latest NVIDIA drivers, my borther had the exact same thing, game froze up repeatedly, this was because He'd updated to the latest drivers to play Crysis.

It killed Oblivion though, rolling back to an earlier version of NVIDIA drivers fixed it though

Works fine with the latest Nvidia drivers here.

[KeptinCranky]

Yeh, forgot to add that it's a specific mod that caused it in combination with those drivers... my bad :cry:

if you're using QTP3 for Oblivion though, that's what I referred to

[NeonSamurai]

Yes, its likely to be a temperature issue. I'm getting distorted screens on reboot, and I usually leave the thing on overnight.
Its this bit that suggested to me its a video card problem, and that it may well be on its last legs, especialy if the distortion happens starts when the computer posts (thats a sure sign either the card is seriously overheated, or damaged if it wont go away). If it distorts on post its definatly not driver issues (Drivers wont even have loaded by that point). Btw for those that dont know what "post" is relating to a computer, its the point when the computer first starts up, shows the bios information, counts ram, etc.