GameBanshee Forums

Hello all,
I have been playing Oblivion for a long time now, but recently I lost a lot of building skins out of the blue. A lot of buildings in Skingrad and Bravil just became a black cube one day and it is really ugly.
I decided the best course of action would probably be to reinstall. I was told by a friend that I need to backup my saves, so I did. What I am wondering though is if I need to back up my mods, and if so how.
Is there any danger in reinstalling Oblivion, or something I should know before hand?

It may not matter in this case, but I am running Windows XP.

Thanks!

If you have mods, there are two ways to back them up. The easiest is if you still have the original Zip or Exe files to install the mod. Most mod downloads for oblivion come with some sort of extraction file, to easily make a reinstall. Same with official plugins, they are all EXE files, so if you have those, then you shouldn't have anything to worry about. Just reinstall oblivion (and Shivering isles if you have it), patch it up, and then start the process of copying or extracting or installing the mods again. Tedious, but easy enough to do.

The second way, if you DON'T have the original files, is to make a copy of your data folder of every file other than "Oblivion.esm." And when I say everything, I mean all the files of .esm or .esp extensions as well as all the sub folders to the data directory (Meshes, Textures, Sounds, etc). Then, after copying these files somewhere safe, uninstall everything, reinstall oblivion, and then paste over the copied data directory into the new freshly installed data folder.

There is a slight problem with the latter method. When one has an abundance of mods and experiences some of the weirder unheard of glitches in oblivion, it's more than likely the mods problem. So I'd look for any mod that alters the entirety of a city to make the buildings black. If it's simply a mod that adds a couple of new spells to buy, nothing to worry about. But if it were to say add any sort of building to one of the cities, it might just be that mod.