Hi, I imagine a lot of you are using Ely's Silent Voice mod for Oblivion. It comes as a DLL, there is no ESP - or at least this was the version I downloaded from Nexus two days ago. The problem is, it crashes Oblivion... Well, my Oblivion, obviously, but I also tried without any of the other mods. Oblivion crashes on wait, but also randomly after you've played it for about 3 in-game hours... which is not very extensive, to put it mildly.

I was wondering if anyone else ran into this? I suspect it has to do with Windows security, rather than with any bugs in the mod itself. I have Windows 10 which is constantly updating (as they do), and I run GOG Oblivion with OBSE, but I don't run it as administrator because that doesn't work with with my Xbox360 controller.

Does anyone know if administrator rights are required to run Ely's Silent Voice? I have other OBSE plugins in DLL form, and they don't cause crashes.

Any pointers would be appreciated! Alternatively, is there Ely's Silent Voice as an ESP? That might solve the problem.

I don't recall any probs with Ely's. I just remember unvoiced text would fly by really quickly, impossible to read, until someone told me about Ely's. Voila, problem solved. Never looked back. I know nothing about an .esp, of course.

Since you are experimenting with pulling voice files and re-adding them to the game, could the problem be somewhere with that? Is there a way you can try removing these re-added voice files, then see if the .dll still crashes your game?

That's all I got. Sorry if it don't work right.

I am fairly sure that Elys does not add any administrator requirement. Windows has some concerns about where a dll gets loaded from, and 10 may have different rules from 7, where I last used it. There may be an administrator “blessing” requirement on the dll, if it does not come from Program Files or the Windows folders.

Edit: regsvr32 is the process I was trying to recall.

Thanks for trying to help! I only installed Ely's Silent Voice because one of the city expansion mods recommended it, and I didn't see any reason not to. Until the crashes started, that is. No, it has nothing to do with me changing dialogue around and copying over voice files. The reason I thought it had to do with security is that Windows 10 has many fancy new shiny hard [censored] rules that would just kill an application for no good reason (because it could be "malicious"). So I did have to fudge them a bit, because of this:

- Windows 10 prevents properly installed Oblivion from running batch files with BAT command from the console (security risk - could introduce Dark Brotherhood assassins, or worse - Morag Tong).

- Windows 10 prevents running Construction Set Extended with OBSE because it is capable of changing other programs (err... yeah? It makes mods!!). So it must run with administrator privileges.

- This does not extend to Oblivion itself, although the same OBSE DLLs are used. However, the latest OBSE versions (xOBSE) all recommend to run Oblivion with administrator privileges, presumably to avoid crashes.

- I cannot run Oblivion with administrator privileges because that kills my Xbox360 controller which Windows 10 refuses to run with administrator privileges.

- None of this nonsense existed in Windows 7!! But I haven't got it, I've got 10.

Anyway, let this notice stand in case someone else has similar issues, then they can read it and feel less alone. I'll post something if I find a solution.

This is just one of the many reasons why I continue to use Windows 7. But I suspect I will be forced to upgrade to Windows 10 (or 11) someday (probably when Starfield comes out).

Yeah, it's probably Win 10-related. Shucks. I hate stuff like this. You'll probably figure it out, Lena. We always do, don't we? Like 90% of the time, anyway.

An update. It isn't a bug in Ely's Silent Voice or in any of the mods, but it is Oblivion getting overloaded with NPC schedule evaluation. It crashes when too many NPC schedules change at once, such as on the hour or at midnight. The use of Ely's Silent Voice exacerbates it, so when I removed Ely's DLL, the crashes stopped. But now the crashes are back, and I found which mod was responsible for them - one with too many NPCs with identical schedules all switching packages at the same time.

I haven't got a solution yet, other than to stagger and reduce schedule changes, but I have a few ideas. I think Ely's voice makes things worse because it forces more schedule evaluations somehow. Random people's comments now all have subtitles - why is this necessary, I wonder? It also makes the game pause ever so slightly every time an NPC is commenting on your skill in Alteration and stuff... What a waste. It's not a bug, but I cannot say I like this feature...

CM Partners will cause this if you have too many companions or recruitable NPC's active in the game. I believe there is a limit on how many you can have. I've noticed that the game music will cause this too.

Have you turned off all the subtitles in the game options?

I don't use CM Partners and at the moment I haven't got any companions at all - it's just normal NPCs. I put many identical schedules to NPCs in Kvatch - that is, identical defaults, and I think this is the problem. Vanilla NPCs do not use default AI generally, and never more than one. I shall revisit Kvatch AI system at some point to test this theory.

Music I haven't changed, but it is just another thing that the game has to assess real time in game: which tune to play. My suspicion is that when there are too many things to check and it does not manage to do something on time, it crashes.

Subtitles: yes, all disabled by default, except in dialogue, of course. But this is what Ely's Voice does according to the write-up: it enables them. Also it makes disproportionately long pauses: a character is saying "Hi!" but Ely's Voice makes him pause and move his lips for 10 seconds... That's quite a long "Hi!".

Another update. I found a mod that makes you press a button after every line of dialogue: Dialogue Click to Continue (OBSE). I haven't tested it myself because I don't need it, but it could be a viable option to use instead of Ely's Silent Voice.

I just thought I'd put it here for the record.