Moving oblivion from Vista to Windows 7

Hi
Hope this is the correct forum for RPG technical help. I started playing Oblvion some time ago on my old laptop running Vista. Now I would like to move the game plus saves over to my new laptop which is Windows 7. I have seemingly succeeded in moving over the game (I just copied all the directories from the laptop onto a memory stick and put them into my new game directory). then I located the directory containing saves and some other files, and copied the lot across, but I'm not sure where to put them so that the game finds them. I can run the game up, and it seems fine but it can't find any saves to load. Can anyone tell me some simple instructions about where the saves have to be for the game to find them in Windows 7?
Thanks for any help - I would really like to carry on from where I left off, not restart

Did you actually install the game on the Windows 7 computer? Simply moving it probably won't work. If you install the game, it should create the appropriate folders for your game saves which should be the same as the folders on your Vista computer. You should then be able to move the saves in the Vista folder over to the same folder on the Windows 7 computer.

Thanks Drac

Vegpot

Do you mind helping me with something? How on earth did you get Oblivion to run on Vista? I have tried to install it before to no avail. It ran fine for me when I had a computer with XP, but ever since I've had Vista I just learned to accept that it won't run Oblivion. Have they made new patches or something that fix the old problems with that? I would certainly appreciate any advice you're able to offer. Thank you.

The Morrowind file is in Programs x86 in Vista so should be the same in Windows 7, like Draclvr said. I don't think the saves folder is there until you play long enough to make your first save, or you can try creating one. I moved mine from XP to Vista, I have only one save in there now, the rest are stored on a flash drive.

Hi
Are you sure it was all down to Vista and not other spec of your machine? I honestly can't remember what I might have had to do but I don't remember Vista being a big problem with it, is it perhaps more likely to do with graphics cards etc? Sorry I can't be of more help!

loony4labs

Thanks for the suggestions folks, I didn't think about going through the actual install duh! For some reason I thought it might just work as it was, and although the game did start up and seemed fine that does probably explain why it has no saves loaded. Should I delete it all and install from scratch from the DVDs? It takes *ages* too ...

Sharebear, I was posting re: Morrowind, but I did the same with Oblivion also. Oblivion runs fine on my Vista, but it is a gaming laptop with NVidia 9800 card. It also runs on my grandsons Windows 7 laptop, I don't think it has anything special in it. I didn't do anything like a patch so it might be your graphics card.

Vegpot since it is playing I would go ahead and play through the first save, then go look in the folder in Program Files x86 and see if the saves folder is there. If it works fine, why go to the bother of installing from the DVD's. Once the saves folder is created, then you can drag your saves from the flash drive (or whatever media you used) into that folder. Then check if they appear when you start the game.

By the way the games will also ahow in the Games folder in Vista, but you can't change anything there.

The reason for installing is to create the registry entries. You can try reinstalling on top of your moved files and see what happens, but I would suggest deleting everything and starting an install from scratch and then doing what Hawka suggests.

Sharebear, why don't you post your question down in the Glitches Forum? They are really good there at figuring out what the problems might be. I suspect your video might be an issue, especially if it's integrated video. Be sure to post your computer specs including what your video is.

Generally speaking, Oblivion shouldn't have any problems running on Vista, or Windows 7, for that matter. In fact, I've found it runs better, because if and when it crashes, (which isn't uncommon if you mod the game,) Windows does a better job of handling it.

If the game used to work under XP and doesn't under Vista, the most likely culprits are DirectX and your video card drivers. Vista ships with DirectX 10, but if you want to run DirectX 9 games, you need to make sure you have up-to-date DirectX 9 files, available here. You'll also want to make sure you have the latest drivers for your video card, which you should download from the website of the manufacturer of your video card--usually AMD (previously ATI) or NVIDIA, unless you're using integrated graphics like Intel's G45 chipset or GMA lines.

I have now managed to put my old save games into the correct directory and I can load one of my old games - hurrah and thank you! However - when I do select a game to load I get a warning message about some objects not being available which may cause problems - I had been using the console for god mode etc, could it be because of this? The previous install on Vista never commented like this though. I'm a bit puzzled, what might be causing this?

I have loaded a game to see if it works and it does seem to, and it also recognises the console command which the Vista version was awkward about, so that's in fact easier. However, I do need to tweak something because the movement seems choppy and the graphics quality isn't very high either - any suggestions about those issues? I am running the game on my new alienware laptop which I was given at Christmas, so it should be capable of running the game at its highest settings surely?

That message will come up if any mods were present when you saved the game that are no longer present. If you had any mods installed on your old computer, that would explain it. If you reinstall the same mods, the message should go away. Otherwise, you'll lose any content that was specific to the mod, like special armor and weapons.

The message could also be appearing if you had patches or official DLC installed on the old computer that you didn't install on this one.

Once you've saved again, you won't see the message again unless you try to load another old save.

Make sure you set the resolution of the game to match the native resolution of your monitor. Otherwise things can look pretty bad. If you're getting sluggish performance, turn down some of the less important quality settings like grass distance and shadow quality until things improve. Oblivion can take a bit of tweaking to get it running well, so don't be afraid to play with other settings like water reflections or draw distance. Try to leave the important stuff, like texture quality , at the maximum settings unless absolutely necessary.

If you still have issues, you may need to drop the texture size from large to medium, especially if your video card has limited RAM.

You should still be able to use HDR lighting, which by default will turn off antialiasing. If for some reason you have antialiasing forced in the driver settings for your video card, you may need to turn it back to "use application settings" if you want to see decent performance.

Thanks Demosthenes

Vegpot, I'm glad you are making progress

Demosthenes I had a think about what changes I might have made, and I suppose I might have installed a patch, so I did the same updating last night, it's the game of the year edition so it already has Shivering Isles and Knights of the Nine included so I won't have downloaded those. I can't remember doing any modding, I just used the console commands as far as I remember.

Re the resolution/graphics, the alienware manual says there are 2 graphics cards, one integrated Intel 4500MHD and an Nvidia Geforce GT 335M but not sure of the memory on either.

How do I change the game resolution to match the resolution of the monitor, maybe that might be the answer, I'm just not sure how to do it? Will it be something that has to keep being changed back and forth for different games/apps?

Thanks to you and others so for for your help and advice, I am definitely progressing, hopefully now at the last stage of tweaking to get it running just right, fingers crossed!