I've been up all night. I loaded in Oblivion, then (just copied) files from that external hard drive into the Data folder. So far - I still have Maxical and Shivani (YEAH!) - but the "Ring of Console" is not working. That means I can't access the console anymore. I can still get that mod at TESNexus though. The basic instincts mod is working well. (haha).

The Pirates and Werewolves mods are not working. Shivani appeared in the Tiber Septim hotel. (I'll live with that).

I had to reinstall EVERYTHING - email, internet connection, printer, scanner, Kaspersky Antivirus, had to re-register everything including my word docs before it would let me on to them. It was ridiculous.

Each one of those things has a code you have to have to re-register them, so I had to dig all through the house to find the original paperwork with those codes on it - and the codes are glued onto the little white paper disc covers, not always in great shape when you find them. GAAAAAH !!!

The good news is, Maxical is still Maxical, and Shivani is still Shivani !!! WOO HOO !!!


@ TK - Oh, the Geek Squad had def lost me as a customer after this crap. They used to be very good here, but all the people I always dealt with are gone now. The ones that have taken their place don't know, don't care that they don't know, and could give a crap about the customer in general.

I agree totally that Norton is like a malignant tumor, you can't get rid of it once it is in and it drains the life blood from your PC. Kaspersky is quit a drainer too, but at least it doesn't crash your PC. Wait, my PC did just crash! GAAAAH. It'll be Trend Micro for me from here on out, never had a problem with them.

@ Treydoggie - The closest PC shop to me (that I could find) was around Callahan and I-75. I went in there and they sell PC's that they have repaired (supposedly) - my PC ran better than any of them when it was crashing. Everyone of them was filthy - I decided to drive the whole [censored] way to Best Buy - which is like ALMOST as far west as you can get and still be in the ANNEXED part of Knoxville. I found another small one (before going to Best Buy) over in the middle of town Merchants & Clinton Hwy - their shop was clean, but they didn't have a single gamer in there, and when I asked a few questions (that I know the possible or probable answers to) - the guy kept saying, "A yuk...der...I dunno." - which is why I went to Best Buy, lol. - I would LOVE to find one that handles gamers, but I'm sure that is just dreaming, lol. I would settle for someone that knows the case gets screwed shut at this point.

@ King Coin - Oh, that is a great idea. I may need to find a way to rate them though - maybe just go in and ask them how many Geek Squad's does it take to screw the case on a PC - (answer: none, because they forget it needs them to stay together....gaaaah !!

@ Olen - DIY is out for me. I already pictured that. Forgetting to unplug the PC before sticking a screwdriver in was the least of it. Trying to vacuum the dust out and having the metal vacuum cleaner nozzle sucking the motherboard into pieces while the PC is plugged in - that was about when my thoughts of doing it myself hit a big NO!!! GAAAAAH !!! Lol, and my vision of how I would do was probably as accurate as it would be if I tried.


@ Rick - Three weeks! They had mine one and I became a surley monster. If your mother goes on a nice vacation and leaves you minding the shop - I'll bet she comse back to find Oblivion on her PC, lol.

LOL....I already have it on her machine. But I don't get to play it much there. She usually has it balled up with her work. Plus, she won't let me put mods on her machine. She is uber-tight when it comes to downloading ANYTHING on her computer. I told her I could bring it over on a flash drive instead of downloading anything...but....

Lol, I can see it now...she gets up from the PC to use the rest room and hears mysterious noises coming from her home office. "For the Empire!" "CLACK CLACK!" "I've fought mudcrabs more fiercesome than you!"

Quite frankly... it sounds like anything at this point would be better than the Geek Squat. Small places need to do their job well because they can't afford to piss off customers. Best Buy is big enough that pissing off everyone doesn't really hurt them. (At least not right away)

I use McAffee anti-virus. It seems to do well.

I never had a problem with Trend Micro as far as coverage on my PC went - it did a great job. The company made one of their products obsolete while I was using it once, and I got into a big huff with them over it because I still had 6 months left on my subscription. They didn't want to upgrade me to their new product unless I bought it first - which I refused to do because I knew down the road they would short me the 6 months I had already paid for.

We argued back and forth for a month before they upgraded my service, and I refused to go back with them after that. However, seeing as I've tried all the others and their products aren't near as good as Trend Micro - I am willing to try them again. I got it for the new laptop - just have to wait for the Kaspersky to end in like 233 days before the PC's get it.

My Intel i7 2600 and Gigabyte P67A-UD3-B3 motherboard have arrived! Just waiting for the new memory to come in now!

Keep in mind you will need to re-install your OS if you perform a MoBo upgrade, King Coin.

Time to hunt down that external HD then.

I had some mod files GHOST'd on Wrye-Bash when my PC went to the shop a while back. They transferred all my files to an external drive, then just handed me that and told me to put them back on my PC by myself. (after charging me for the external drive).

I put the Wrye-Bash files back where they were originally in the Oblivion/Oblivion Data/ and Desktop - but Wrye-Bash and Boss won't open - they are trying to reinstall instead. My mod list is showing in Boss, but the files that were GHOST'd are all missing except a few misc. files from some, the .esp's from others.

Does anyone know how I can recover GHOST'd files from Wrye-Bash under these circumstances?



** IF I can't recover them, (after I am done crying and smashing my PC) - I plan to "Uninstall" and then "reinstall" Oblivion to start with a clean slate again (since for some ODD reason my landscape has all disappeared and my character is running around on a green and purple rubber mat suddenly).

Is this hard to do? Can anyone give me tips (step-by-step instructions would be welcomed and appreciated) on how to do it?

Thanking in advance for any help !!

Could you get a screenshot of the problem? Purple(ish) landscape can take several forms and there are multiple reasons for it occurring.

I got a screenshot, will upload it today and post a link.

Here is the best example I could find in the screenies I took :

Ah-ha!!!

That, my fair maiden, is a sure sign your shaders are broken.

You can get fresh shaders here.

Thank you !!! I DL'd, will let you know if it fixes the problem !!

memory came!

Not really, when it comes to purple landscape, there are two common causes:

1. As you see above, broken shaders. This causes the game to tile on the texture and normal for the Landscape LOD quad you are currently in instead of the normal terrain textures, making the terrain look bluish-purple.

2. The textures are flat-out missing, resulting in a very bright pinkish-purple color. This means you didn't install the game properly or you have a badly implemented BSA Alteration Archive Invalidation occurring.

My post was actually unrelated to mALX's computer problems. The 4G of RAM I ordered came in the mail today.

http://img857.imageshack.us/img857/2118/p3280036.jpg

WOO HOO !!! Are you building it tonight?

Just got done with it in fact.


new specs

Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz (8 CPUs****), ~3.7GHz
Memory: 4096MB RAM
Hard Drive: 500 GB @ 7200 RPM
Video Card: ATI Radeon HD 5770


**** I have a quad core with 8 threads, not an Octa-core

Yeah, yeah, yeah... too bad Oblivion ain't gonna care.

[/envious rationalization]

Want to hear something funny TK? I put the new motherboard/processor/RAM in and hooked it up to my HD without reinstalling 7 and it did NOT blue screen! and I had an AMD processor in there before! It ran like crap but it ran! I have since reinstalled the OS and it runs great!

** mALX slips in a puddle of drool **

Our machines are almost twins...Same MOBO, same RAM, same graphics card, but different processor. I have an AMD Phenom II x4. I am curious as to which AMD processor you had because this one runs great. It is a hair slower then your i7 (2.80 Ghz vs. your 3.40 Ghz), but once you get up near 3 Ghz, the difference is barely noticable.

I had an old Athlon 64 dual core. I have no particular affinity for either brand, the Intel just seemed like a better deal cost/performance. This board has a turbo feature that Intel processors can take advantage of that temporarily over clocks the processor.

OK...this is really a software question rather than further hardware discussion, but I need advice. My McAffee subscription is going to run out on 5/10/11. I am tired of paying $85.00 a year for it. Plus, money is really tight right now. So, can anyone recommend a good, reliable, FREE internet security suite?

I have used Avast! for several years now, and have no complaints.

Mozilla Firefox with Ad Block Plus is very helpful with filtering out those horrible, virus-ridden Flash ads.

As for the AV Software, AVG is reputable and has a free version available. I'm using a paid version of the software, myself, and it with the above means I am quite safe surfing the web. I'd imagine the free version would be very helpful, too.

Although recent reports have said that AVG is getting a bit off-key, so do please only select what you think is best for you.

Is there anyone who doesn't use Firefox? Foolish mortals...

Chrome is faster!

Another vote for AVG- it does quite well- especially for a free version- and has none of the bloatware annoyances of Symantec.

This one doesn't use Firefox...yet. Still using IE8 here. I found a free internet security suite though. Got good ratings from cnet, PC Magazine, and Bright Bulb. It is called COMODO. Installed it last night.

When I have to use Windoze, I really like Firefox.

Google Chrome is intriguing. I probably will get more familiar with it as I work on developing the website for my church.

I will not have IE8 (or any iteration of IE) on my computers.

As a Mac user, I run Safari, of course. Love that it's fast and quite streamlined. Haven't yet compared load speeds with GChrome yet, though.

Man, I've come a looong way since Netscape!

When I have to use Windoze, I really like Firefox.

Google Chrome is intriguing. I probably will get more familiar with it as I work on developing the website for my church.

I will not have IE8 (or any iteration of IE) on my computers.

As a Mac user, I run Safari, of course. Love that it's fast and quite streamlined. Haven't yet compared load speeds with GChrome yet, though.

Man, I've come a looong way since Netscape!

Have you tried firefox with adblock plus (I hate banner ads), quick java (great for stopping scripts from sites you don't trust) and flashblock (quick java technically can block flash but it's not as pretty about it)? Add in FireGestures for mouse gesture navigation and you have my base set-up, the other twenty or so add-on explain the massive weight of my install.

It's one of those things that you didn't realise you needed until you get it. Chrome is ok, but there aren't as many addons and I've found it a bit unstable.

As far as Anti-virus goes my advice would be:
Free trials of the better ones: NOD32 (the best by a long way IMO), Kaspersky, BitDefender and Panda are all good and free trials can keep you going for a while (though are a faff on).
The cheaper system I use now is:
Avast! Personally I prefer it to AVG, it doesn't catch everything and gives the odd false positive and is a bit heavier but AVG misses more and is a bit clunky. However it isn't as good so where getting a virus is likely I use Linux which doesn't get viruses (well tends not to, use something weirder if you're that worried).

Any way I can get around this?

http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/4710/mech...40123225679.jpg

It worked fine on Vista, but on windows 7 it doesn't. I've ruled out the GPU.

WOO HOO !!! Finally got it working, thanks TK !!!

The directions on the mod tell you to copy the file to Oblivion/data/shaders - they really need to detail that for people like me who don't know. You have to open the file "select all" and copy THAT to the Oblivion/data/shaders - (and replace all)

Well, I'm having a nightmare with my pc gamewise at the minute, and was just about to start a new topic when I saw this - and it kinda fits I suppose.

Some games (DA:O, DA2, Risen) I'm having no problems with, others (The Witcher & COD) crash with this message displayed:

"Display Driver NVLDDMKM stopped working and succesfully recovered"

I've done a google search, and there are thousands of posts going back to 2007 with this same problem, yet no solutions! Obviously it's the Nvidia card, but I'm just looking for a way to fix this.

Anybody else had this problem? Did you find a solution, or do I just forget about certain games until I buy a different graphics card?

Any help appreciated.

I'm guessing you will have but have you downloaded and installed the most recent drivers from nVidea? Windows often moans about them not being approved but they tend to be better.

Well, this is random...

My computer doesn't seem to like my joystick anymore. When I plug it in and start my computer, Windows BSODs on bootup...

...but when I unplug my joystick, the problem vanishes.

Yay Windows.

Can you reload the software for it?

Yeah, I have. To be honest I think it's just an issue with the combination of Vista & Nvidia, especially seeing how many people have been struck with it. But, getting on for four years since the issue started getting reported, no fix has come about from either Microsoft or Nvidia.

I'd upgrade to Windows 7, but people are reporting the same issue on the Nvidia and Witcher forums with Windows 7 as well, so...

I'm at a loss - not a clue how to fix this. I've gone back and installed previous drivers, latest drivers, just about every suggestion made on all the forums, and I still cannot get past the first frickin' cut scene at the start of The Witcher. Frustrating as hell. It's not like I can play it on console either, as it's PC only. Hate paying money for a game that I cannot actually play!!!!

/end rant

Dual boot XP?

Failing that run it under wine? By the time you've got it working(ish) the next version of windows will be out and two more sequels to the witcher and the problem will be moot anyway.


Does anyone know a decent program which records video from a webcam? I just got one and the software which came with it is predictably awful.

Though I'm a proud Mac user (and MS-phobe thanks to my work experience), I have been following this discussion with great interest.

The console game has been interesting, and the DLC on Xbox Live has kept TES IV fresh for me, but as I'm writing my fiction, I've been growing increasingly frustrated by the limitations of the format.

Now that my Mac Pro (professional level tower) is out of warranty, I'm ready to crack the box open and install some upgrades. I'm adding 8 GB RAM (for a total of 12 GB - not the max the 'puter can take, but the max I can afford!). I'm also installing two new HD's, each 1TB in size. Because of my photography, web site work and newsletter publishing, the original 325 GB HD is filling up fast. I like the idea of internal HD's (the Mac Pro has four HD bays). Because it is an Intel Mac, it has the capability to run Windows under Boot Camp. I just never liked the idea of having Windows on the same HD as the MacOS. But thanks to my tax rebate --

Guess what that means?

I pick up the hardware today. I'm so excited!

Good that you have a tower. The ones that have the computer and display as 1 unit are a pain assets to do anything with. To add RAM you have to actually take the display out. Facepalm.

Yeah, the iMacs are for those who don't touch their 'puters except to turn them on and off.

I've had towers (pro-level) since the G3 iteration (blue and white). Wouldn't switch to iMacs for anything. The towers just make better financial sense. And I love the DIY aspect of them.

What made me go ahead and get the PC installed inside my Mac was the fact that I already have a vid card that runs Oblivion just fine according to comments earlier in this discussion (GeForce 8800 series).

For 400 bucks I've got a whole new computer added to the trusty workhorse I've already got!

Still a Mac geek here, but I hear Windows run better on Intel Macs anyway, so there! *sticks tongue out*

So, hautee wishes to play Oblivion on the PC, it looks like?

You will not regret it.

And yes, I am running Oblivion swimmingly well with numerous graphics enhancing mods and several high-res texture packs on an nVidia GeForce 8800GT, so you are definitely good to go on video hardware.

Oh, by the way, my computer has only truly BSOD'd once over the four-year period I've had it, so there! Indie towers aren't that bad, either!

(That above escapade doesn't count, it was because of an outside source screwing with Windows' operation).

Well, it's done. Most of it anyway.

It took me longer to blow out the dust out of my box than it did to install the actual components themselves. The hard drives are ridiculously easy to put in. The new RAM booted up without a peep.

So now I have the original 320 GB HD, two 1 TB HD's, and one more empty drive bay. Gee, wonder what I could put in there? A Linux OS?

I've also upgraded from 4 to 8 GB of RAM.

Windows 7 was almost as expensive as the RAM, but also ridiculously easy to install thanks to Boot Camp. So now I have a HD dedicated to just Windows (one of the new 1TB's) that will be running Oblivion. Skyrim? I'm not so sure. We'll see . . .

I've just got back from the game store with my Oblivion GOTY PC disc. After supper I plan on installing that sucker on my MAC and firing it up!

Then it's modding time (loading 'em, not coding 'em!)!

"loading 'em, not coding 'em!"

Shame, this is so much fun, and I have to admit the CS is starting to hook me in. I might try my hand at a few villages and quests of my own if I can get enough experience at some point.

And remember, if you have any questions, don't be afraid to ask in the thread.

Computers are a lot easier to work on now than they used to be. I remember having to position hard drives in the right spot on the IDE cable, and moving around jumpers to put one as master and the other slave. Things like SATA make life so much simpler. Not to mention cases are designed much better now, usually with an eye toward making it easy to pop drives in and out.

I hope the rest of your PC gaming experience goes just as swimmingly! Oh, here is a thought. Once you are done installing Oblivion, copy the entire game folder and everything in it to a new folder somewhere on your drive. You have plenty of space, so no worries there. Call it something like Oblivion Vanilla, or Oblivion Backup, etc... That will give you a fresh version of the game if you ever screw something up royally with it. Rather than reinstall the game, all you would have to do is delete the contents of your Oblivion folder, and copy over everything from the backup folder.

Except of course your savegames, and .ini file, which are located in the Users\<User Name>\My Documents\My Games\Oblivion folder.