Hello All,

I have been playing Oblivion for the past eight weeks or so and am at Level 12, and now my save game mechanism has gotten corrupted somehow, making it impossible to move forward. When I try to load certain saved games, the picture freezes, forcing me to log off the computer to unfreeze the picture.

I have done tons of reading about save game problems with this game, so here is what I have done so far. I am hoping someone can think of something I haven't tried so I don't have to ditch this wonderful game!

I have downloaded and installed (and extracted) both the official and unofficial patches for Oblivion. Neither made a difference for this particular problem.

I have deleted all my save games except the one that still works, uninstalled and reinstalled the game. It didn't work.

I have renamed the extensions for both the autosave and quicksave games in my save game folders to the recommended extensions, and that didn't help.

I have read something about removing the Oblivion.ini file and letting the game create a new one, but I'm too chicken to do this yet.

I have not gotten anyone else's saved games because I would like to continue on as my character at my current level. I am playing on an HP 2009 Vista Home Premium, SP2, AMD Phenom 9550 Quad-Core 2.20 GHz, Memory 6 GB, 64-bit OS computer and have not had any problems with the game at all until this development.

Would appreciate any suggestions from all you wizards out there!

Thanks!
Andy

Let's wait for the vets of this game to help you.

I have no idea if letting the game create a new Oblivion.ini will fix your problem or not, but there is no need to be "chicken" about it. Locate the Oblivion.ini and drag it somewhere like your desktop (or somewhere you won't lose it) instead of deleting it. You can always put it back if the fix doesn't work.

Worth a try, Jenny. I'll let you know if this works -

Thanks,
Andy

******
A bit later - I tried this and in the process messed up the launcher and lots of other things. Couldn't even uninstall the game - had to delete it! Very sad cause it's a wonderful game. Well, thanks anyway....

Andy

Try deleting the game folder and cleaning up the mess with a registry cleaner. Then see if it will reinstall.

I'm sorry for you troubles - I agree, Oblivion is avery good game

I think you saved games might still be in there. Please go to this place to check:

My documents/My games/Oblivion/Saves

If your saves are still present, they will be in there. PS: You did do back-up of the Saves folder before you deleted the saves?

As will the oblivin.ini file you need to delete.
(not the one in the Bethesda/Oblivion/ folder...)

As a general note, Oblivion don't like autosaves or quick saves a lot, so turn this feature off. (can be done in the game's in game menu).

If you overwrite saves a lot, they can also become corrupted, or if you save normally a lot.

How did you, Andy, delete the game? Did you go into the registry and deleted it that way? Or did you manage to un-install Oblivion via the control panel's un-install feature?

As for playing Oblivion again, I'm on my third of fourth character, because I just like the game so much --- I wasn't happy with my other characters as well.

Jenny, good suggestion - how do I use a registry cleaner? Have never done this.

Thanks for the sympathy, Karsten - I feel like I've suffered a loss somehow (boohoo). And yes, I kept the one saved game that I know works. Trouble is, when I went from this one spot, all my subsequent saves were corrupted. But if I can reinstall the game, I can continue from this one saved game.

So I gather from what you say that you have to save in a New Game slot all the time, correct? I will do this if I ever get going again. I had been overwriting previous saved games.

And I had to delete the game using the dreaded delete key cause nothing else worked, not the game uninstall or the Add/Remove program uninstall. Probably due to my inexpert fooling around with that .ini file :-(

Thanks for all your suggestions!!
Andy

A lot of Gameboomers members like using the registry cleaner inside of Ccleaner. Ccleaner will do more than clean the registry (if you tell it to), but here are instructions on how to use it for cleaning the registry
http://www.ccleaner.com/help/tour/5-issues

You run Ccleaner, click where it says Registry, and then click the Scan for Issues button.

Be sure to back up your registry before "Fixing" the Issues it finds. I've never had any trouble with Ccleaner, but it's good to have a backup. Ccleaner will ask you if you want to back up your registry and will create the backup file for you. Or you can create a Windows Restore point, but that will take longer and use more space.

I'm sorry you had so much trouble with the .ini file. It sounds like the game didn't generate a new one the way they said it would. I don't suppose there's any part of the game left in the Windows Recycle bin, is there?

Thanks for the link and the instructions, Jenny - I will try this either today or tomorrow and will let you know how it goes.

And you are right - the game never did generate a new .ini file. I had backed it up, however, and thought I had restored it, but it never worked properly, again probably due to my inexpert bumbling. Now when I try to reinstall the game, it thinks it is already on the computer! What a mess. I don't think I will be successful in this effort to reinstall, but it's worth a try.

I am missing my Blade character named Fen Amborine already!

Andy

That's because you deleted the game folder instead of using the uninstaller. Try the registry cleaner. That should fix it.

You might also try REVO uninstaller next time a game won't uninstall using Windows uninstaller.
http://www.revouninstaller.com/

Good to hear from you Andy You can get very attached to your characters in Oblivion.

And yes, you will need to save in a new save slot everytime you do a manual save. Oblvion has un-limited save slots; no need to overwrite a save.

However, when you have around a 100 or so manual saves (save slots), you have to delete some of them.

As for the game believing it is already installed, un-installing via CCcleaner should work.

Ah, thank you, Karsten, that eases my mind! I will have time tomorrow to try the registry cleaner, so keep a good thought for me that it will work. I had just gotten a good number of Varla stones and was working on a Mages Guild quest, so I'd really like to continue with that. I had been working on Fighter's Guild quests, but I ran into a glitch there (won't go into that now) and couldn't continue. This game seems to be full of glitches, no?

This is your fourth time through the game? Wow, that shows how much there is to do and explore, doesn't it.

Thanks very much for the advice on saving games, and I'll remember to do that if I can get going again. Will let you all know how it turns out!

Andy

Progress!! I ran the registry cleaner and was able to uninstall the remnants of Oblivion! Yeah! Then I successfully reinstalled the game and also downloaded the official patch, discovering in the process that I had not unzipped either this patch or the unofficial patch like I thought I had.

So I tried to find the downloaded file doing a search, and I had saved the patch in the Oblivion file under Programs. But the patch wasn't there, and a search of the titled file Oblivion_v1.2.041english.zip turned up nothing!

I can't understand why I can't fine this file in the Bethesda folder. Does anyone have any suggestions? I also ran a search from the Windows button in the lower left corner of the toolbar - same results :-(

Thanks to Jenny for your help!!! I hope you can help me find these files now (I feel like a newbie) (lol).

Andy

Try the link on this page
http://www.elderscrolls.com/downloads/updates_patches.htm

or here (direct link)
http://static.bethsoft.com/Oblivion/Oblivion_v1.2.0416English.exe

Thanks for the links, Jenny. I downloaded the official patch to the owner folder because I got a message saying that I did not have permission from the administrator to download the file to the Oblivion folder (???).

So should I just copy the patch to the Oblivion folder? What do you suggest?

Thanks a lot for your help!

Andy

If you downloaded the patch from
http://www.elderscrolls.com/downloads/updates_patches.htm
it doesn't seem to be a zip file.

You may not have to run it from the Oblivion folder. Try right-clicking the patch and choose "Run as Administrator." You may have to direct it to the folder where you installed Oblivion.

OK, thanks, Jenny! I found that by dragging the patch to my Oblivion folder, that worked, and I was able to give the needed permission to install it there. Phew!!

And I read the notes in the readme file and am hopefully prepared to run the game (again).

I'll let you know if I can get my old saved game to work.

Thanks, everyone!!

Andy

Hi Andy

If you still have the Unofficial Patch for Oblivion, you should install this as well.

This fixes several bugs etc. that was left out of the official patc i.e. not fixed for varius reasons.

Hey, Karsten,

Thanks for the reminder - I definitely have to do this, but not before I fix the configuration of my gamepad which got royally screwed up in the process of reinstalling Oblivion. Wow, it never ends, does it!! And I found that my old saved game, the one that I thought worked, does not. So now I am playing from the beginning. Good thing I like this game so much, cause otherwise it would go right in the round file (haha). I think I spent a couple of hours on this yesterday, so I will probably take a breather for a while. But I'll let you all know if I make progress.

I have a question - do you delete your autosaves every time the game makes one?

Andy

Hi Andy

The game overwrites the auto-saves when the game saves automatically. Luckily, you can uncheck some of the options for when the game auto-saves in the game's in-game menu (choose options, I think, in the splash screen for the game).

Good to know that you got it working

Hi Karsten and Jenny,

I did as you suggested and turned off autosaves when I could. I have discovered, however, that my old saved game, the one I thought worked, does not, and so I definitely have to start the game over

That all pends fixing the problem with my gamepad, which I have been working on in addition to upgrading to Windows 7!

So thanks very much to Jenny and Karsten for their help. Karsten, maybe I will run into you somewhere in Tamriel, eh?

Andy