EDIT on 4-1-07: (copied from my post on pg 6)

Since patch 1.2, there's no reason to assume the black screen fix in this thread will work, and certainly no evidence that it does - at least that I've seen*. Patch 1.2 changed all the shader packages. So, if you're on 1.2 and getting this same old problem (and it seems lots of folks are), you can try this fix but I wouldn't hold my breath. Someone else is going to have to come up with some new "fix" to try. (I say "someone else" because I haven't had this issue in many months, so I can't test what might work or not)

*If you're using 1.2 and have had success with ending black screens by swapping out shaderpackage019 and 013, please post.

Another note:
There seems to be some confusion over what exactly the "black screen" problem is. It's not a complete screen blackout or a system hang/lock. It's everything going black except the HUD, with the sound still playing and the game still going on normally. If you can open the command console, type "CAL", and have the problem go away for a few seconds or minutes, it's the black screen. If not, your problem is something else entirely.

======================================================================

Original Post
Ah, the infamous HDR + Nvidia black screen. Some have never had this problem, some have always had it, some get it only after many hours of otherwise trouble-free gaming. Isn't Oblivion great?

I wasn't going to post this at all, because too many times a fix only seems to work for a limited few people, and those that it doesn't work for get all bent out of shape and insulting.

But... I'm going to go ahead and post it in hopes that maybe it will help at least a few folks out. This has worked flawlessly for me - I haven't had an HDR black screen since I did this, with about 15-18 hours of game time played since then. I make no promises it will work for anyone else... if it doesn't, then you're out the 10 minutes it takes to make the changes. If it does, well... I accept payment in donuts....

Please follow all of the following steps in order. They are all important, I promise. Be prepared to reverse any changes if this doesn't fix the problem for you.

The Steps:

• Open the Oblivion launcher and enable HDR
• Launch the game, load up a save - any save
• Exit the game (yes, this was for a reason)
• Go to "My Documents/My Games/Oblivion" and open the Oblivion.ini file
• Search for this line: bAllow30Shaders=0
• Change the 0 to 1 (if you haven't already done this in the past)
• Save the file and exit
• While still in the same folder, open the RendererInfo.txt file
• Go to the last line of that file, where it says "Shader Package" and make note of the number there (I'm betting it's a 13, but it might differ)
• Close that file
• Go to "Program Files/Bethesda Softworks/Oblivion/Data/Shaders"
• Find the file shaderpackage0xx.sdp, where "xx" is the number from above... for example, if your shader package in rendererinfo.txt was 13, you'd find the file shaderpackage013.sdp
• Rename that file to something else - I recommend just adding the extension .ORG to it
• Now find the file shaderpackage019.sdp, right click on it and select "Copy"
• "Paste" that file back into this same folder... it should paste as "Copy of shaderpackage019.sdp"
• Rename the new copy to match the name of the file you changed the name of a few steps back, such as "shaderpackage013.sdp"
• Close everything
• Launch Oblivion
• Pray it works

If this doesn't work out for you, first make sure you did everything exactly as above. If it still doesn't work, just reverse what you did, curse at the Fates, and don't blame me.

To answer a question before it even gets asked: The reason you launch a game with HDR enabled before doing the rest of the steps is because until you do so, the "shader package" listed in rendererinfo.txt may not be accurate - if you have bloom enabled instead, for instance, it will be a different package. Screwing up and replacing the wrong shader package will make your game look really funky... if it works at all.


EDIT:
To keep all the info in one post, I'm including this added step from DagothUhr, which has made this fix work for some people:

Hey man wicked guide, unfortunately it didnt work for me, but i only get the crash when equipping Windy's Elven Longbow, do you know why that might happen?

That's probably related to the bow crash bug. See here for a fix.

I GOT IT WORKING
This is what you have to do :



1 Make sure you have the latest forceware driver : *91.31*

2 Follow the steps *exactly* as luchaire notes,

3 In the Nvidia control panel look for *3d settings* > *Adjust image quality with preview*

4 Choose *Use my preference emphasizing*

5 Set the slider to *balanced*

6 Click *apply*


Enjoy HDR like you should

Have fun

DagothUhr out

I tried recreating the same situations that started the blackouts which was heavy fighting with lots of bright DESTRUCTION SPELLS flying and so far NOTHING. Before I was getting it on an average of 15-20 minutes apart. I would get nervous everytime I would run into multiple bandits because my screen would go blank while the game continues to play and the bandits would gang up on me while I'm swinging BLINDLY. Only solution was to interrupt fight with console command "CAL". The clear up would only last a few seconds before it went blank again. With this simple solution you guys gave me, no more blackouts and I have full HDR GLORY again. Once again thanks.

note for the pci-e users
I have a 7900GTX

*psssst..... it works too*

hmmm maybe its a bug in the nvidia control panel that lets you play with AA and HDR
*when the card is not capable of doing that*
Gonna look into that now....

Nah, I don't think that's the issue at all... I have never tried to run HDR + AA simultaneously, and I doubt that all the other "black screen" sufferers have, either...

I believe it's a shader issue, hence why replacing the shader package fixes it. I suspect it's just a very simple error of the game's hardware detection choosing the wrong shader package for SM3.0-capable Nvidia cards when HDR is enabled.

I tried activating AA in control panel to override the "software control" and activate HDR in Oblivion but I still get minor jaggies (barely visible). So i just gave up the idea of AA. HDR just makes the whole thing so RICH, AA be dammed.

Tried ths myself and still getting black screens. Was already on the 91.31 drivers. Will try uninstalling and reinstalling the old drivers.

FG

Blackouts fixed without going to the 91.31 drivers (don't think I could have anyway because they're for the desktop cards and I've got a Geforce Go model). Thank you very much, I'm in the "got it after many hours of trouble-free gameplay" camp and am glad to not have to drop HDR.

@Luchaire:

Could you explain what the difference is between shader#13 and shader#19?

I've only ever had one instance of blackout that I've actually noticed and had to shut down the computer to fix it - couldn't get back to the desktop. I've tried replacing the shader#13 with shader#19 just to see if there is any difference in video quality and now the display seems very much more over-bright like the bloom effect is too intense (I am running with HDR and 3.0 shaders on NV6800).

Questions:
1. Is shader#13 (ordinarily) the proper one for HDR and 3.0 shaders?
2. What (original) use was the shader#19 designed for?
3. Is there a decompiler for the shader packages (yes I know I could look this up myself - I'm lazy)?
4. Are any of the shaders supplied with the game actually 3.0 specific (or 3.0 only)? I got the impression from various web sites that the shaders were all just 2.0 versions and that the 3.0 shader ini setting really doesn't do anything - it's just there for a future implementation.

[also answer #2 and #4, as best I can] No, shader 19 is, according to the info I've found, anyway. Hence why I believe there's an error in the shader selection for Nvidia 3.0 cards when HDR is enabled, and also why this fix seems to work for most people.



No idea - that's beyond me. I'm an historian, not a computer tech.

I had such oddities on my 7800GS but they disappeared after the Oblivion beta update (I'm talking about THAT back then) and 91.31 Forceware. Ah, forgot to say that I reformatted too, but I seriously don't think it had anything to do with OB and black screens/artifacts.

Never had a problem eversince, except from very rare CTDs and some not-so-very rare exception faults on exit (no real damage though)

Hm. There are 9x.xx drivers that are made for laptops. Have a look here, for example. The tweaksrus.com guys know what they're doing.



Well, yeah... up until now, that's been the only solution.

Oldblivion saved the day!
Thanks to everyone posting on the board about this great piece of software!

Huh?

91.31 is perfectly stable. Maybe it's not on your system, but you can't make blanket statements like that based on one system.

And as for the 8x.xx series - they're good, but there's no reason to stick with them, they are out of date. The 9x.xx series is much better in a number of ways, and definitely likes Oblivion much better than any other driver I ever tested (and I tested every single version from 81.98 through 91.33). They're not just for SLI cards... Truly.

http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_download...2bit_91.33.html

Dual channel. They're DDR400, but I run them at DDR333 because of the overclock on my FSB.

You could try opening the console with the tilde key (top left of the keyboard near ESC) and type CAL followed by pressing <RETURN>

CAL stands for Clear Adapted Light, i found it.

I think it purges the light buffers.. anyway someone said in this thread it works for them.

that is because you are using the standard setting you need to change it to display advanced settings (IIRC it is under options at the top of the page) I could be wrong on where the setting is as I have mine set to classic display mode instead of the new display mode .

This didnt work for my situation.

I have the famous blackouts that relate to Cids Multitude mod, although he does include a spell that turns off the ActorAlpha which causes the blackouts in his mods.

ActorAlpha, as far as I know, is a transparency shader that is used for invisiblity effects and fading.

I merged a few mods with the TES4 that where causing blackouts to his mod, Lanterns mod, and Defensive Staves, and it worked but I ran into another mod, Recastable Summons, that would not work with the merger.

To make a long story short, I now use Timeslips Fake HDR mod, and have bloom enabled. It works fine, and I never get blackouts using Fake HDR. I suggest this if the fix doesnt work. Also get the latest Beta drivers from Nvidia, since they are a bit more faster.

I'm experiencing 100% the same as you, changing to bloom with fake hdr solved black screen, but all trees are messed up, red bars appear in the sky, and trees look like an untextured bookshelf.

I got a 6600 GT, with 91.33 running, 91.31 didnt make a difference. Will try the 8 series now

Based on this and your previous post above, it sure sounds like you have something more serious going on than the "plain old" black screen problem. I'd be looking hard at your GPU to make sure it's not overheating, poorly seated, underpowered, or just plain defective.

With antialiasing 2x enabled I no longer get the black screen issue but instead I'm seeing some crazy graphical distortions - persistant lines and shapes, some which change when I move my character around (currently seeing these in the interior of Fort Nikel) and some which are static - I will try to post a screenshot if anyone is interested.

Has anyone had issues like this with OOO1.3?

I didn't know what black screen was (yes I'm lying it did occur a couple of time outdoors) but know
I have OOO 1.3 installed and I get it frequently INDOORS. It doesn't seem to happen in every cave
or fort just in some like Cursed Mine with the amazone chicks and always at a specific point.

CAL doesn't really help, I tried the fix above but only the first part because i don't see this

*3d settings* > *Adjust image quality with preview*

in my nvidia panel I assume I should be looking in performance & quality settings but i don't have it.

The strangest bug I have ever seen, it's one thing when you get graphical distortion now and then but
the whole screen going black?!!? That can't be good, Bethseda should really release a patch the first
one didn't fix a lot of things anyway.


The drivers are XTreme-G 91.36
3700+
7900gt
1 gb RAM

I solved the Problem!! Hooraay!
Guess what I did? ...... I removed all Mods and their textures etc. After that there was no black-Screen bug anymore so it can savely be tracked down to one or some of the mods.
I then one after another installed my most needed mods again and it works well so far. I would say that one of the Texture-Replacement mods are suspicious but I cannot say which one it is for sure yet.

I found something that worked for me.. i went back to the old shader configuration and installed the XG 92.91 tweaked drivers and it works great so far.. better performace.. for me anyway.

Link

Very nice! I've always had low fps in the wilderness, and black screens of death when loading new scenary. However, after taking every step mentioned, my fps have increased substantially, and I've been getting less black screens. "Less" because I still got one after trying these things out today. I'm gonna use the script extender along with the cache dumping mod and see if that fixes the remaining problem. Thanks again for the help. Oblivion is running better than ever for me. Especially after updating the video driver for my Nvidia 7800 gtx

I didnt know this was such a common problem, so I´ll post a solution that worked for me.
Ive been playing oblivion for six months without problems and suddenly last week: BOOM black screen (right after lucien appeared in henantiers dreamworld, which im kinda sure shouldnt have happened). After that every time i tried to leave henantiers house would bring a black screen.
After trying several reloads i decided to begin deactivating mods, and traced my black screen to AWS.
I switched to NE and now everything is working perfectly again.

I've got a 7800gt with 2 dual channell ddr400 1gb sticks and i experience this, i tried the steps and sadly didnt work. CAL does though, ima try my luck at moddign and see if i cant have it jsut CAL evry 5 frames or something.

Is there any condition i can test for? Does soem value get messed up that CAL fixed?
somethign like,
if MysteryAttrib=MysteryValue then
CAL
endif

any ideas?

Sounds like as Vista/Vista Driver issue especially as you get no UI... try different driver, maybe some tweaked ones

I tried the fix and it went immeditately to the black screen. so I switched back to Bloom with anti-aliasing, but then I thought I'd just try one more time. I switched back to HDR and it worked.

Weird.

I only played for about ten minutes though. It may go blind on me yet.

The only difference I notice is that the colours are somewhat richer. Other than that it looks pretty much the same, except without the anti-aliasing it looks a little crappier. So I guess it's a toss-up. Either you get the richer colours or you get the anti-aliasing. I'll the the AA personally. The jagged lines kill the immersiveness for me.

Thanks for your help.

I'm playing with Senus' Complete Mage Pack ( http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=8385 ) and I get the black screen whenever I equip the Cold Forged Staff. I have a 6800gs and the 93.71 drivers, and have tried the shader swapping fix and the performance slider fix. Oddly enough it only black screens when I go out to 3rd person view. I can swing the stick around in first person view just fine. `CAL can correct the staff's black screening but only in first person view.

Played 3 chars to completion in vanilla oblv. NEVER had a black screen issue, downloaded OOO and got my first black screen like 10 hours into play. The only place I have gotten them are in Rock milk..bloom is just plain wretched. I followed the possible fix instructions the save loads..insta black screen and the message "obliv. has encountered a prob"

IMPORTANT NOTE

If you have done this fix in the past, you will need to UN-do the shader package rename process and replace your original shaderpackage file in order to patch the game to v. 1.2 - once you've patched, you can restore the modified shaderpackage. But having shaderpackage019 in place of 013, for instance, will screw up the patch process and you will get a message about "old file found, contents do not match" or something to that effect.

The infamous Black Screen Bug was a big problem with the original OOO 1.3 base install, but most of the problems were fixed in the 1.31c patch (only available on TESSource). It's caused by problems in custom meshes, and can often be fixed in NifSkope.

so this patch corrects the problem? whats the link please?

what ya mean it wont patch?

*tear*, i wish i could do that.....but each time i load a game thats past the servers it has an error...maybe i should try saving in the sewer then loading it...my oblivions mean.., well i managed to load a game...for like 5 seconds...hope this works, cause then i have one less problem to work out , ok well that didnt work it gave me the screen of doom....i thought i already had it O.o...reversiving steps

While my problem I had isn't directly related, it maybe indirectly, and others may find it. My hardware is eVGA 8800GTS. I can run Oblivion fine in 1.1, but as soon as I put the 1.2 patch on I would get a "black screen" like effect if I was in the "shadows" of areas. I did a clean install and applied the patch and had the same problem. Removed HDR, and even without Bloom lighting, I still had the black screen effect.

In my case the screen would go solid "black" (even though you should see the lighted area outside the shadowed area) - but I would still have my HUD, crosshair and such. Simply reverting down to 1.1 fixed it.

I am not sure why....and am greatful *prays* that it only seems to happen in Rock Milk...but whats also wierd..is that it doesnt always happen..go figure.

In my case it is consistent and it happens everywhere. Visual effect combined with custom mesh = black screen.

Same with me. Never had a black screen at all pre1.2, then all the sudden after I patch, bam! Black screens everywhere, except the HUD. Mine isn't related to the custom meshes, as I don't use any, but this is really annoying. Tried the old shader replace method, and it didn't work. So... either I have to wait and see if nVidia releases a driver update for this issue, or I'll have to just give in and uninstall... cause I know Bethesda isn't going to patch it anymore.

Switching from HDR to Bloom does stop the black screens. I have heard people express some very strong opinions about HDR vs. Bloom, but at least on my system there is not that much of a difference.

You think maybe so?

I remerber very well, that Oblivon updated the shaders on my screen ^^

Hm.... @everybody who has this bug since 1.2: try to let Oblivion make a new ini. There are new entries and now I think it works. But I have no time to test it today.

Hello,
I was having this problem as well. I solved this problem by switching over to a different video driver. Before the switch, I'd be lucky if I could make it through 10 doors before a lockup. With the latest Omega nvidia drivers I was able to go though a doorway some 50+ times before I decided it was stable.

I had tried other things such as reinstalling the game (to rid my system of the patch), removing all mods, the shader trick. Nothing worked, except for using different drivers. However, if you try this, you might want to revert any changes made to files in the shader directory. I ended up with blue hair.

Good luck folks.

It would seem that the Omega drivers are fairly old. You may want to try reverting to the drivers that likely came with your video card.

Drivers that came with the card are likely to be old as well. The 7800GTX came out around March 2005 (I have two of them), the game released in March 2006 and the first recommended Forceware was 81.25, which was specifically released for Oblivion. The ones that came with my card were way in the low 70s. I'm currently using 93.71, which my cards love, and I haven't gotten this error whenever I do use HDR.

DON'T use Omega drivers for an Nvidia card. They are entirely too old - the last version of Omega ones is 66.93, which simply won't support the most current cards or games properly. I can only imagine the number of problems that would crop up from using such an outdated set of drivers.

If you MUST use 3rd party drivers, use XTreme-G ones from www.tweaksrus.com. They're the only ones that are both current and decent. As a rule, though, stick to Nvidia's official drivers - they tend to be the most stable (3rd parties sacrifice stability for speed, generally). The most current WHQL driver is 93.71 for WinXP, with 93.81 in beta. I'm not sure what driver they're on for Vista, because I don't keep track of Vista stuff.

Anyway... since patch 1.2, there's no reason to assume the black screen fix in this thread will work, and certainly no evidence that it does - at least that I've seen*. Patch 1.2 changed all the shader packages. So, if you're on 1.2 and getting this same old problem (and it seems lots of folks are), you can try this fix but I wouldn't hold my breath. Someone else is going to have to come up with some new "fix" to try. (I say "someone else" because I haven't had this issue in many months, so I can't test what might work or not)

*If you're using 1.2 and have had success with ending black screens by swapping out shaderpackage019 and 013, please post.


Another note:
There seems to be some confusion over what exactly the "black screen" problem is. It's not a complete screen blackout or a system hang/lock. It's everything going black except the HUD, with the sound still playing and the game still going on normally. If you can open the command console, type "CAL", and have the problem go away for a few seconds or minutes, it's the black screen. If not, your problem is something else entirely.

My issue is similar, but it's not necessarily when going through a door. It can happen at any time. It even happened once in the Arena.

I wonder if maybe I'm having a power supply issue. I upgraded my card before installing Oblivion, and I have a really wimpy power supply. This is the first time I've used a card with a molex connector (my card's a 7800 GS), and I wonder if my power supply is getting overworked. I'll try it out with some other games tomorrow to see if I have the issue while I play anything else.

I had not had this problem until the 1.2 patch. It seems whenever anything uses a shock spell I lose everything but the HUD. CAL does work although it will keep happening as long as the creature/NPC on the screen keeps casting the spell. I may go back to driver 84.56 but it seemed to start once the new patch came out.

From what I've read in this thread there's really no solution for it but I will continue to keep an eye pealed here and let everyone know if I find a way to fix the problem on my end...

If you have a nvidia series 7 or 8 card with the latest official driver (v93.71) and experiencing black screens or crashes at cell change, download and install this leaked beta driver, it's known to solve lots of 1.2 patch issues. It won't help you if your problem is not video card related though

For XP 64bit you can try XTreme-G 100.95

posted by Fat Man.

Got this from the shivering isles hardware/software section "Black Screen Of Death" Topic and is related to this topic as shivering isles adds the 1.2 patch and people with NVidia cards are all having the same problem, people are testing it and so far no BSOD no lockups but not 100% sure if it's a full fix though.

Not all. I run a 7800GS, using vanilla 93.71 drivers and haven't had an issue at all with 1.2 or SI. *shrug*

As for the post you quoted and "what was added with 1.2" - terrainnoise.dds was added, true, but also 18 of the 19 shader packages were altered somehow, including 013, which is the one Nvidia cards use for HDR. Still, if people could test disabling TerrainNoise.dds and see if it really does help, it would be good to know.

posted by ShinAli

From same section others are testing it as well.

Ok, so I could not get the 101.02 drivers to work with my computer. So, I decided to try out the 97.92XG drivers from that same site http://www.tweaksrus.com/index.php?option=...&Itemid=41/ - it seemed to be getting alot of praise from its members. Ok cool I installed it fine. Now note I was using the official forceware drivers 93.71 before updating. Since it seems there is a large difference in version numbers I decided to give Oblivion w/ 1.2 another whirl - just to see if maybe drivers could solve the issue after all. Did a clean installation and just patched Oblivion straight to 1.2.

Note that I have been having the black screen lockups with repeating sound when cells are loading.

I ran from town to town entering every building I could see and I am happy to say that I did not experience a single crash. I also have to mention that these drivers have seemed to give me an excellent performance boost as well with no noticeable decrease in image quality (they are tuned up by members of tweaksrus hence the XG version). I will test this further, especially on my real save games loaded with some mods. But so far it has worked, further than anything else I have tried with the 1.2 patch installed.

Also note that my card is a 7950GX2. So being this is not an official driver and it has been tweaked by a third party - I can't guarantee you will get the same results. But based on this I definately think it was a driver issue that the patch introduced with the new shaders.

Many thanks to Rovin Hoot for suggesting tweaksrus!

Well I reinstalled and didn't patch to 1.2 left it at 1.0 and its now working for me, played for 2 hrs + last night no crashes. Obviously this isn't going to work for everyone cause they need that patch for one reason or another. I don't know why I didn't think of this before, I thought my graphics card or power supply was having issues too..

Ok I loaded up all my mods and reloaded my old savegame from 1.1. I was seriously expecting hell to break loose .

Loaded without a hitch. I ran from the arena to the market district and proceeded to visit every shop and house. I did the same thing in the temple district. I then proceeded to run to cheydinhal and visited every house there as well.

Guess what?

No black screen lockups for me!

I also managed to quit the game without a crash error or computer lockup! Just a clean quit can you imagine that!

Again, I cannot guarantee everyone will have the same results, but I highly suggest people look into their driver. It seemed to be the culprit for me!

Not in my opinion, no. But they are similar enough in symptoms that people are confusing the two problems.

since I had tried everything else with no success, I was happy to hear of this, yet, I have no success with this either.
Damn.
4 possible fixes down, 0 to go.

OK, I was able to get mine to stop blacking out.

I reverted back to driver 84.56 (64-bit), tested and I was still getting the blackout whenever a creature/NPC would cast shock. I then moved and renamed my ini file so Oblivion would create a new one. I made a few minor tweaks (memory and multithreading) and started it up. I ran into a couple of creatures and stood there while they cast shock and no blackout. Then, I dragged a bunch of creatures/NPC's to another storm atronach and fought them all off without a blackout.

I will keep my fingers crossed and hope it really is fixed; if not, I will be back to let everyone know...

Well, I did as the post instructed, left entered a new cell, and no joy. So I did console 'cal'. So far so good, I guess I'll just have to keep console cal-ing if it does it again. Thanks for the...fix...hopefully

Thanks. This worked out for me. I have not had a black screen for 2 days now after installing patch 1.2. I'm running on a 7800gtx with windows XP.

Cheers

Hey, just posting to say thanks for informing us of the 101.02 drivers, I've installed them and it seems that the black screen has been banished, just to clarify, i'm running a 7600GS on Windos XP, and i'm loving it!

After reinstalling Oblivion and all of the mods I am running (aside from Shivering Isles) I am happy to say I played for about 2 hours and didn't have one black screen. 1.2 is definitely causing the problem but only from shock spells.

I plan to finish the main quest again before starting the expansion so I will wait it out and hope there's a fix by then...

Sorry to hear about that. I guess the problem with beta or tweaked drivers is, that you can never be certain how they work or with what. I personally have been doing quite well with the 101.02 driver, and have also been able to test Shivering Isles without incident.

I understand that there are quite many other driver versions available at www.guru3d.com if you look up their list of GeForce drivers. Also, many people seem to have been using drivers downloaded from www.tweaksrus.com, as is apparent from this thread. The only practical advice I can give is to test a few, if you have the patience for that, although it certainly is no fun. Try to keep on eye on whether any individual driver looks like it doesn't like your hardware or whether it looks like it does not fix the actual compatibility issue, but of course, this may be nearly impossible to deduce.

The best hope is that the people at nVidia get their unfortunate Vista-mess solved so that they would have the capacity to issue a new round of properly fixed drivers.

The black screen fix involves correcting nif files using NifScope.
1. Triangulate the mesh.
2. Update tangent space on the mesh.
3. Make normals.
4. Smooth normals.

I believe that steps #1 and #2 (especially #2) are all that is really needed in most cases, but I'm not 100% sure. Doing all three definitely eliminates the problem.

Which .nif files? There's a few thousand to pick from...

And which "black screen" problem are you referring to? It's hard to tell anymore since this thread became a tangled mess of two completely different problems with superficially similar symptoms.

Yes, Sheogorath would certainly love this thread. I regret contributing myself to the tangle, but it may be almost unavoidable.

Still, to make the tangle even worse, let me also summarise my experience with the non-crashing Black-Screen-With-HUD-Visible Bug:

I never had it before, but it was the first complication I experienced after installing the 1.2 patch. Doing a full re-install of Oblivion with the 1.2 patch and the small set of mods that I am accustomed to gave me the Black-Screen bug with 100% repeatability when leaving Henantier's house after rescuing him.

I was able to resolve that fairly quickly: I simply updated my GeForce driver from a slightly earlier 9x.xx to the latest official 93.71 and deactivated all other mods except the very latest versions of UOP and OOO. The result: never had this problem again and happily forgot all about it.

However, then I soon encountered the crashing Black-Screen-of-Death issue, which is another story altogether. Fortunately, I was able to resolve that with yet another driver update (to modified unofficial 101.02) (And thanks to RovinHoot for the original hint on this thread, although I downloaded it from another source, with which I felt more comfortable)

Although I may be totally wrong, my general impression from this thread is that the severity of both issues is highly dependent on which nVidia graphics card one is using, and on how friendly terms it happens to be with whatever GeForce driver is installed, and I may be just lucky with my 6800 Ultra AGP. A nice touch of randomness from nVidia in true allegience with Sheogorath.

I am refering to the "screen goes black with hud visible, type in "cal" to fix it" black screen problem .

As for which nifs ...
Probably a user made mod and not a Bethesda mesh.
To figure out which mesh, take note of what is in the area when the screen goes black.

For instance, in my case I noticed that whenever I had a certain sword in my hand and a visual effect occurred (fire, spell cast, etc.) I would get the black screen. I tried a different weapon, cast a spell, and did not get the black screen. Went back to the original weapon, cast the spell, got the black screen again. Okay, now I know which weapon is causing it, and it was one of mine. After figuring out how to fix it, I went through all of the nif files in my mod and applied the same procedure.

Ideally, the mod maker will fix hings up and release an updated version. You just have to help said mod maker identify the offending mesh, or at very least narrow down the list of possible offending mods by noting the conditions under which the black screen occurs.

Just encounted my first black screen in the IC "Discount Spells" store. Whenever I walked over to the shelf to the right of the door, and looked at it, I'd get a black screen with my HUD still visible. I backed up and I can see again. Walked toward it, black screen. Going to try the 100.65 drivers.

Although my problem (black screen with HUD still viewable) only happened when a shock spell was cast, I never noted the weapon I had in-hand. I will retest this evening with all of the weapons/armor I could've used when I first noticed the problem (although I was using 1.2 and I've now gone back to being unpatched).

Maybe it's not the 1.2 patch after all, which would be great...

I think it's a combination of 1.2 and bad meshes. I never had a problem in hundreds of hours before 1.2 using these custom weapons. However, some other people did. As soon as I installed 1.2 I got black screens like clockwork. Turns out my favorite sword was one of the offending meshed.

I never had problems with the black screen either. Install 1.2 then SI and black screens everyone. So far, it seems to be attached to the chainmail gauntlets I'm wearing. If I equip different gauntlets, or draw my weapon.. it goes away. Weird...

<edit> Turns out if I change my weapon to a bow or draw a weapon (even if it's just my fists) the black goes away. Only if I have my sword or no sword sheathed. If I equip a bow, it goes away too. I figured the only custom mesh I'm using is corwyn's body. I triangulated the body meshes in nifskope, but still black.

Same here, after reading your post yesterday I tested it last night and sure enough it was one of my favorite mods, Marcos's Samurai.

I really appreciate your help. For a little while there, I thought I was going to have to fork out another $300 or so to upgrade my GPU after only 1 year. Now I'll just have to find someone to fix the items I use regularly...

Are there any tutorials on how to "Triangulate the mesh" and "Update tangent space on the mesh" ?

I've had reports that two custom weapons (Hammer and Defensive Staff) on my Armory of the Silver Dragon mod are causing the same problem.

If there is no tutorial, I could create one and publish if somebody can tell me how to do it.

Thanks
LHammonds

Open the .nif file with NifScope.
Note the line item list of parts.
Click on the mesh in the 3d window until it is selected (vertices in green)
Note that one of the line items is now selected.
Right click on this line item.
Select Mesh
This is where the Triangulate and Update Tangent Space options are located. You can also apply and smooth normals from here.
Save the nif file.

It took me about 30 minutes to get through 30 meshes, so it's very quick. I also applied and smoothed normals.

Good luck.

Thanks, I'll give it a try tonight. Only problem is that I can't verify if it works (I have an ATI card...and it doesn't even support HDR)
LHammonds

Semi intelligent speculation here, but I believe that if a mesh is flawed, updating tangent space will pop up a message to the effect that several vertices were duplicated. So you should have at least some idea that something good happened.

A comment and a question (or 2):

I tried this fix even though I seem to be having a different Black Screen problem. On entering or exiting buildings in the city I will get a complete black screen (no hud) with stuttering sound. Ctrl - Alt - Del won't return me to the desktop, but turns the sound into that of a door opening and closing - over and over again. As I expected this fix didn't work. Neither does just turning off HDR. Does anyone have a link to a fix for this type of problem? The forums are getting confusing as to which is which and what works.

7900 GS, Dell XPS 400 P4 1.8 GHZ dualCore. 1GB RAM, SB XiFI with latest drivers. DirectX 9.0.c

Questions, sorry for those off topic:

1) I tried this fix with both the 93.71 and the 84.4 forceware drivers. Didn't work on either. Why on earth would I use the 84.4 driver? That brings me to my first question which is a desperate attempt to get an answer to something I've posted and hoped in many places. I have a widescreen monitor. A Dell 2007WFP 20" to be exact. The original driver that came with the XPS 400 allows for the optimal monitor resolution of 1680X1050. If I upgrade to anything in the 9x.x series, I lose that option. Instead I get 1600X1200. I've tried setting a custom resolution and i get the message that the resolution isn't allowed. I've tried a custom timing via the new control panel with automatic or DMT set and nothing changes when I do a test. Have any of you computer geniuses (or historians) encountered this before or know what I need to do to get 1680X1050 back?

2) In the shaders file in the program data directory, the files have the RealPlayer icon. Is that just a lousy attempt by Windows to assess a file type or could it actually be part of the problem? I have iTunes set as my default mp3 player if that means anything.

FYI: My kid plays the game on nearly an identical setup (XPS 410, same sound card, ram). The only difference is he uses the 93.71 driver as he has the Dell 19" 4:3 monitor. He originally had the same black screens without the Hud. Turning off vsync seems to have been the only thing needed to fix it. He says his only crashes now are upon quitting the game, but don't require a hard boot. His installation is from his own set of disks. I tried using his discs and turning off vsync with the 93.71 drivers loaded on my setup. Alas no fix.

The XTreme-G Forceware 101.02 fixed this for me. I'm on a GeForce 7800GT, and this is about the only driver that did the trick. You can download them here:

http://www.tweaksrus.com/index.php?option=...41&Itemid=1

Hopefully those will work for you as well, but - as always - YMMV. As I said though I've gone from the "Black Screen of Death And Sound Distortion" every fifteen minutes from interior-to-exterior transitions, to no crashes at all now.

Good luck!

Thx for your advice....i just use XTreme-G Forceware 101.02 and now HDR black screen is solved!......

FYI. My computer detail

C2D E6300
Kingston DDRII 667 1 GB x2
XFX GF 7900GS