How Not to install Shivering Isles and the 1.2 Patch
Guess what I spent all of Sunday afternoon and into the evening doing. Hopefully others will profit by my experience.
I was at least smart enough to get backup copies of some things first, namely Wrye Bash and OBMM; the profile manager I prefer to use is just an exe so I cutpasted it elsewhere.
But then...
- Attempted to install 1.204 patch. Got error refusing to overwrite, apparently indicating presence of shaders.
- Uninstalled Kind Kin Inn, which is broken in all KINDS of ways and I should've known better than to download it to begin with.
- Deleted Shaders folder.
- Installed patch without errors. Redid archive invalidation.
- Attempted to start Oblivion.
- Crash to desktop before it even got to the Bethesda logo. Swore violently.
- Figured maybe it was a load order problem. Installed SI anyway.
- Repeat previous. Crash to desktop.
- Spent 30 minutes backing up huge data files folder. (This was stupid; I should've just renamed it to something else.) Fully uninstalled both SI and Oblivion.
- Reinstalled Oblivion, patch and SI.
- Redid archive invalidation. Attempted to start Oblivion. Crashes.
- Swore violently at computer in both English and Spanish.
- Removed all mods and tested one at a time to determine if one was causing crashes. Narrowed it down to OOO/MMM/Fran/FCOM.
- Scramble around on internet and find FCOM web site. Check Fran version and rename Fran's BSAs. Try to start Oblivion. Crashes.
- Further investigate. Game will start with Fran and OOO activated. Activating any Oscuro file or any FCOM or Bashed Patch dependent on ditto = crashes.
- Mutter darkly at dev_akm and team for making a defective mod. Return to their web site in a state of high dudgeon.
- Discover that the latest version of FCOM is not defective, but rather is dependent on OOO version 1.32, which I do not have.
- Bang own head repeatedly against the wall.
- Roll FCOM back to version 7.5. Redo archive invalidation.
- Start game.
- Game starts just fine.
- Play for two hours in order to playtest, slightly concussed from head banging but greatly relieved.
The two most important lessons I learned from this?
When installing 1.2/SI,
- Always check version numbers.
- Don't assume none of your mods have shader packages. Kind Kin Inn is a horror quest mod. I had no idea.
My massively modded install now works like a charm.