For the save game bloating (which could be the reason for the crashes), you might want to try this mod:
Clean up by kuertee
Description
Prevents saved-game file-size bloating by cleaning the game of actor
and item references that are no longer required. (e.g. inactive
references created from dropped items that were picked-up by the
player.)
Cleans long-dead actors that may have been corrupted somehow.
Details
The cleaning process used is the game's inherent behaviour of
removing items that no longer has any "links" to the game world.
Normally, dead actors and "dynamically created" items that were not
picked up by the player will be removed from the world, when the cell
they are in resets. (Dynamic items are those created at game-time as
opposed to those created in the Construction Set. Examples of these
items are: those created by PlaceAtMe, those dropped by the Player,
those dropped by dying NPCs: e.g. shields, etc.)
However, there are cases when these actors and dynamically created
items will (for some reason or another) stay in the game world
forever. And actors not cleaned up by the game properly will never
respawn, causing a "broken" game experience. Saved-game bloat is the
result of these. And saved-game bloating may be the cause of some game
crashes.
To prevent crashes, I'd recommend Streamline's Streampurge feature (memory purging on an intelligent, scheduled basis - can be configured to do a memory purge before a save, which can help with stability; more info here) and Fast Exit 2 by Scanti. You can choose to enable only Streampurge and Streamsave and not the other Streamline features in sl.ini
(Streamline's configuration file).
If you are running a 64-bit OS and have 4 GB or more RAM, you might want to try the 4GB EXE Patcher on Oblivion.exe
. More info on the Steam forums thread on this link here.
You could also try OSR (Oblivion Stutter Remover):
This plugin makes Oblivion not "stutter" as much, and generally feel smoother or perform better. It prevents or mitigates a number of issues related to stuttering and framerates, and can reduce the frequency of stutter related crashes.
Make sure you set MaximumFPS = 0
in 'sr_Oblivion_Stutter_Remover.ini' to avoid it putting an artificial cap in your framerate. Aside from that, try using it with the default options. If it still crashes, you might want to try to replace the default Oblivion heap (memory manager) with one of OSR's. In 'sr_Oblivion_Stutter_Remover.ini', set bReplaceHeap = 1
and change iHeapAlgorithm
to 1, 2 or 5 - read 'sr_Oblivion_Stutter_Remover.txt' for more info and other OSR tweaks that you could try.
Note that Streamline, Clean-up, Fast Exit 2 and OSR requires OBSE (Oblivion Script Extender)
After installing any new mods, make sure to run BOSS (Better Oblivion Sorting Software). BOSS properly sorts the load order of the mods, avoiding crashes and mod conflicts. It also provides a large number of usage notes for many mods, including requirements, incompatibilities, updates and bug warnings.
More info on configuration and mods that can help stabilize and prevent crashes in Oblivion here: http://tescosi.com/wiki/Oblivion/Stabilization_and_Optimization
This is mostly caused by some bugs with newer graphic cards and HDR + AA (Anti Aliasing). Either turning HDR or AA off, or setting HDR to Bloom should fix the issue.
I do not know about any patch that fixes this issue. However, there is a few workarounds to get both of them working together:
- Enabling HDR, and disabling AA in the game options, while forcing AA to be enabled via CCC (Catalyst Control Center)
- Editing the "Oblivion.ini" file manually. Find and change the iMultiSample=0 in [Display] to 4 to get 4xAA.
Best Answer
When launching Oblivion (or Skyrim/Fallout for that matter), the games usually load into a Launcher window. This window gives you some basic options for the games, like video/audio quality settings, support links, and most importantly here, Data Files.
Click into Data Files, and you will see a list of all .esm and .esp files that are being loaded into Oblivion. This is called your Load Order. Make sure that all necessary files are check-marked, including Frostcrag Spire. It would not surprise me if the game deselected it for some reason.