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[jaime74]

Hi all,

please... before reading this and blaming me for "not reading the f... manual" or for simply double posting a very old newby question, please believe me that:
- I have read and followed the readme thoroughly
- I have spent more than an hour searching for answers throughout the forums, but without success.

So here's the issue (it may sound well known, but I am convinced that it's worth posting it anyway, for the reasons given below):

I am unable to start a new game in my freshly installed Nehrim:
When clicking on "New Game", I receive a loading screen and a loading bar, and once the loading bar is full, the game crashes to the desktop immediately.
Please, please... (once again), before thinking that this has been reported a 1000 times, read my comments below!

Well... here's what I've analyzed on my own, trying to get rid of any already known reasons in advance:
- This is NOT the common "nothing-happens-when-clicking-'New Game'-issue": When I click "New Game", i actually GET a loading screen, and a progress bar that actually does progress until it is complete.
- I am using a regular, legal Bethesda edition of Oblivion (i.e. NOT Steam)
- I have the latest Oblivion Patch installed (1.2.0416). I also made sure that the "GOTY issue" mentioned in the readme does not apply (i.e.: I have installed SI, and thus also the patch)
- I have upgraded Nehrim to the latest patch version (1.0.8.2)
- I have installed Nehrim in an own folder (separate from Oblivion), which is not "c:\Program Files" (I am using WIn XP, i.e. 32bit, anyway)
- I have double-checked that all 3 Nehrim data files (including NehrimEnglish.esp) are checked in Nehrim Launcher's Data Files screen
- I have double-checked that no other esp files are checked (not even Oblivion.esm! )
- I have tried it both with the EV and DV, but the effect is the same.
- I have recreated a fresh Oblivion.ini (both by deleting it and by using the Nehrim Launcher)
- I am not trying to run in windowed mode, and I tried different resolutions (even including plain 640x400)
- My Oblivion installation is not broken in any way (still working fine)
- I used bsacommander to unpack "Oblivion - Textures - Compressed.bsa" into my Nehrim\Data folder (because this is recommended in several threads), but this made Nehrim crash immediately on startup!
- I have a decently powerful PC/GPU (Quad CPU, 4GB RAM, 2GB video RAM, NVidia GTX285 etc.), which so far never had any problems running TESIV even in high-end quality and 1920x1080px

Now... I must admit that here's one thing I did not do (though this is recommended in the readme): I did not reinstall my Oblivion from scratch!
This is simply because I have so many mods installed, and spent so much time and heartblood on modding my Oblivion, that I just don't want to risk destroying all of it just for a first try with Nehrim.
This means, in brief, that I am convinced that my CTD issue must have to do with some specific Oblivion mod, but I won't give up hope that this can be solved without throwing away my Oblivion installation.
I'd be very happy if there's a solution to this, and I suppose that I am not the only one struggling with this.

So my basic questions are:
Does anybody know...
- which files exactly Nehrim copies from the Oblivion installation folder into its own folder at installation time?
- which files exactly (if any) are still read from the Oblivion folders at runtime?
- what is expected to happen after the first loading screen: Is there a cell being loaded, or a video first (the latter might indicate that it's rather a video issue)?
- is it possible to switch on some kind of debugging/logging, which might tell me what the engine is trying to do right before it crashes?

Or maybe there are other hints to track this down? Just some ideas:
- I am using QTP3 in Oblivion. Does this affect my clean Nehrim installation in any way?
- I am using Darnified UI in my Oblivion environment. Is there any conflict with Nehrim? But even removing all DarnUI files from Oblivion didn't solve it
- anything else that is known to cause conflicts?

Any help would be really really appreciated! Thanks alot in advance,
jaime

[arvisrend]

Nothing should be read from the Oblivion folder at runtime, but the readme and plugins.txt files (they are shared between Oblivion and Nehrim - ufnortunately, there is no way we couild change this) are - try to delete them (well, you know... backup them in a different folder between you do that) and see whether the CTD remains.
Do you have some mods that have altered the Oblivion BSA files? Did you do some archive invalidation/redirection/whatever?
After the first loadscreen, Nehrim loads a video. Maybe that's the problem.

[jaime74]

Hi,

first off all, thanks alot for this quick reply!

Do you have some mods that have altered the Oblivion BSA files? Did you do some archive invalidation/redirection/whatever?

Does this mean that the Oblivion bsa files that I find in my Nehrim folder are the ones copied from my Oblivion folder? This would be important to know! If so, bsa alteration is something I definitely have to check! I am using OBMM for archive invalidation without fully understanding what it really does, so there's a good chance that I've modified my bsa files somehow without knowing.

Nothing should be read from the Oblivion folder at runtime

That's good to know, because it avoids having to analyze all my 230 mods to find the one responsible!

but the readme and plugins.txt files (they are shared between Oblivion and Nehrim - ufnortunately, there is no way we couild change this)

My current plugins.txt contains only the Nehrim esps and nothing else. However, I am using Wrye Bash for toggling between profiles (maybe I should have mentioned that as well). As far as I understand Wrye Bash, it replaces (or modifies?) the plugin.txt in the main savegame folder, depending on which profile is activated. I'll try to investigate further if this is part of the issue.

Hope to post some results soon.

[Chasm]

The Oblivion bsa files are copied from the Oblivion folder. Exept for Oblivion - Misc.bsa!

That one comes with Nehrim and should probably have been named Nehrim - Misc.bsa but was for whatever reason not.

[jaime74]

I have fixed my problem!

The solution was in the bsa alteration indeed!

This is what I did, hoping that it may help others who have the same problem:
- I created a backup of the 3 bsa files (all except Oblivion - Misc.bsa) in my Oblivion folder
- I opened OBMM and clicked the "remove BSA edits" button in the archive invalidation utilily
- I copied the 3 bsas to the Nehrim folder, overwriting the files that were already present there from the installation.

Now everything works fine.

Just two suggestions, to help others:
- Would it make sense to add a comment about this bsa alteration issue to the "Help - the game does not start" section of the documentation?
- Is it possible (maybe for an admin) to add a "FIXED" postfix to the title of this thread?

Thanks for the help!