Oblivion keeps randomly minimizing itself!

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Hey guys,

First post here. I cant find an answer to this anywhere else, so im posting it here. Oblivion runs flawlessly for me, I run it at the highest settings with HDR on etc, and it runs fine. However, there's one major problem - it'll randomly minimize itself while im playing. And when I maximize it back, it'll crash, and I have to give it the three finger salute and end-task it.

Why does it keep minimizing? :\ I'm using WinXP MCE, and I've checked the obvious, my AV software is BitDefender, and the minimizing still occurs even when I close it. I cant think of anything else that could cause the problem. Someone help please?

Thanks.
 
If there aren't any new patches for the game that you are missing, I'd start by updating all your drivers:

1. graphics card
2. motherboard chipset
3. sound card (if you have one)

If that didn't fix me up, I might look into a bios update (at your own risk).

If that doesn't fix you up, I'd start doing some hardware troubleshooting. Run www.memtest.org to test your ram. Not likely but possible your ram is making some errors.

I'd also check your PSU voltages for stability. It may be sending out uneven power, which also tends to cause ramdom glitches (especially while gaming).

In the meantime, try running Oblivion in a windowed screen as opposed to full screen. It may help.
 
DonNagual said:
If there aren't any new patches for the game that you are missing, I'd start by updating all your drivers:

1. graphics card
2. motherboard chipset
3. sound card (if you have one)

If that didn't fix me up, I might look into a bios update (at your own risk).

If that doesn't fix you up, I'd start doing some hardware troubleshooting. Run www.memtest.org to test your ram. Not likely but possible your ram is making some errors.

I'd also check your PSU voltages for stability. It may be sending out uneven power, which also tends to cause ramdom glitches (especially while gaming).

In the meantime, try running Oblivion in a windowed screen as opposed to full screen. It may help.

Hey, thanks for the speedy response :)

All drivers are fully up to date, im a computer enthusiast ;) And I know im using the right drivers since im using them straight of my laptop's manufacturer's website. BIOS is also fully updated. I'll go try out the memory test, but I doubt that's the problem seeing as how I've been running other games on it fine so far.

Im not sure it's possible that the PSU is faulty, once again, it's running everything else fine, and secondly, it's a laptop, they've got to have made it right, no? :/

But your best tip, windowed mode, I didnt know about that! Ha, ill try that out while I try and fix this. Thanks a lot. Just one downside to windowed mode, in fullscreen I run it at 1920x1200, im gonna have to tone it down in windowed mode :(
 
If your other games are running fine, then the problem is probably a software issue. Howerver, Oblivion is such a demanding game on the system that it wouldn't surprise me if you ONLY have problems on that game and no others.

I don't think it is safe to rule out hardware issues based on the fact that other games run fine when we are talking about Oblivion.

I'd still go ahead and test the ram and the PSU. For the PSU, go into your bios and tell us what it is reporting on the +3.3v, 5v and +12v rails.

And just a side-note, oblivion is also known to have it's share of bugs. That may be the problem here, so maybe there is no fix for you. My desktop system runs the game fine. My notebook crashes a lot with oblivion, no matter what I do to try and fix it.
 
I feel your pain

The game does exactly to me what you are describing, excpet that I can bring it back up from being minimized without it crashing. Maybe it's because the amount of RAM I have. 2 GIG. I think its a bug in the game. What kind of video card do you have?
 
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