Hello!

I have the game on Steam and it crashes after a few minutes of play. Does the GOG version have this problem?

Thanks for replying.

Clean your mods with TES4Edit. Use BOSS to sort them. Use the mod installer indicated on the mod page.

And it's an Elder Scrolls game. Crashing is just included.

Edit: Usually not nearly that severe, though, which is why I'm guessing it's a mod issue.

Thanks for the tip. I don't have any mods though. I apologize for not mentioning that earlier.

Edit: typo

No problem, no need to apologize. :)

Anyway, my guess then would be some hardware/software problem. If you post your config, someone should probably be able to help you. I've heard of some problems with new NVIDIA cards, but that seems to just cause a blank screen, not crashes. (It's also easily solvable, AFAIK, before anyone panics :) )

Also, the official DLC are terrible for needing cleaning. I recommend backing them up, and then cleaning them.

Hmm...Quick check: By "no mods", do you also mean "no unofficial patches"?

I don't have any patches, unofficial or otherwise. How do I get my config? I would load a game, and barely a minute in the sound would get all screwed up, the screen would go black, and I get a message saying "Oblivion.exe has stopped working". I tried disabling the DLC but that didn't help.

Playing the game for 70+ (IIRC) hours with only one trivial mod (+5 all attributes; all it does is change a few GMSTs, and is a mod I could easily reproduce myself), and I believe I only encountered one crash during normal gameplay (when the game tried to load the area).

The other situations where I encountered crashes are:
* When quitting the game (this is not an issue because the game is already saved and I'm done playing anyway; I note that Morrowind can also crash at this time)
* When using the "player.disable" cheat in the console, but that's documented (on at least one site that lists console commands) to crash the game, and I am not sure what the alternative to crashing would be. (In any case, this particular command seems to have no other purpose than to crash the game.)

Edit: One other detail is that I am playing the game on Debian Stretch via WINE rather than on real Windows. Maybe the game is more stable on WINE than on real Windows (though I did get stuttering)?

Sorry; by "config", I mean, what version of Windows? If not windows, what version of Wine? what CPU? graphics card? How much memory, and what type? What motherboard? What kind of drive (HDD? SSD?) are you using, and what size? Basically, what hardware/software are you running on?

There's always going to be a few brand/version incompatibilities, and the more information you include there, the more chance someone might see something they know can have problems.

I'm not always sure how much information to include in my questions; too little is uninformative, while too much can be seen as condescending.

Crashing after a few minutes with no mods at all sounds like either some incompatibility, RAM size limitation, remaining drive space limitation, or an odd/obscure problem. I've almost never seen a post about "Oblivion crashes within a few minutes" that isn't followed by "and I have 100+ mods".

Make sure you have the right version of DirectX.
In early versions of DirectX, the sound was handled directly by your drivers and not through DirectX
Your antivirus software may have stopped the Steam Installer from installing it.
Don't use the web installer if you are on windows 10
Make a new temporary folder on your desktop.
Go to Microsoft http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8109 And download the June 2010 runtimes to the temporary folder .
Disable your antivirus software.
Then scroll down and run DXSETUP.exe (see pic)
When it says, Installation Complete, you can delete the temporary folder, and re-enable your antivirus software.

Let me ask again: Are the crashes reproduceable? Do they always happen at the same time and in the same way? Have you tried to start a new game and / or to load different save games, and did you notice any differences?
And as Nard_The_Mouse said, we need your PC specs, CPU, OS, GPU, RAM (I trust you have convinced yourself that you have disk space enough).
There are so many possibilities, like a corrupted sound driver or a corrupted save or oblivion.ini file, or a damaged game file (damaged by one of the crashes), an incompatibility with some other component of or something else installed on your PC.
Have you tried to uninstall and reinstall the game? If a simple un-/reinstall doesn't help you should perhaps unstall the game, but before reinstalling it, make sure there are no traces of the old installation left on your PC, which includes the main game folder (most likely contained in steam\steamapps\common), the save and config folder (contained in My Games somewhere in your user area (underneath documents or my files or something similar), and the registry entries. Make sure you backup the save games if you don't want to lose them, and don't touch the registry yourself unless you know what you're doing.
I do prefer GOG over Steam, but, to be honest, I can't imagine that your crashes are related with Steam - of course, you never know. I also doubt that disabling your antivirus system, even temporarily, is going to help. I have seen this advice so often, but never seen any indication that it actually did help. Of course, this is also a matter of personal attitude: I myself would never disable MY antivirus system to solve a problem - either there is a different solution, or the system which can't coexist with my antivirus system is likely to do something which my antivirus system is trying to protect me against, and is thus unsafe and a risk for my PC.

Then you haven't bothered to look, or you would have found literally thousands of examples.
Simply Google antivirus software block Directx 9, click on any youtube video that explains the problem and see how many times he/she has been thanked for posting it.

If your antivirus is the cause of the problem, then disabling it is the solution.

Your antivirus software has never found a virus in any file on the Microsoft website.
If there ever was one, 100 million plus users would be up in arms about it instantly and you would know.
Even in blocking the old DLL's, the antivirus software never claim to have found a threat in them.
They block them solely on the grounds they are old DLL's and a potential threat.
But old games need old DirectX files to run properly.
It's why they are included when you get the game from Steam, GOG, or from the retail disks.
The game specifies DirectX 9.0c or later, because at that time new DirectX versions had always been backwards compatible with previous versions. But in order to advance their DirectX-Box or X-Box they had to abandon full backwards compatibility to move forward.
Windows 10 has DirectX embedded into the operating system, but it is only fully compatible back as far as DirectX 9.11.
If the automated setup files you get from Steam or GOG try to install the necessary version, the antivirus program can and often do stop the older .dll's from being registered with the operating system, and give you no warning that everything wasn't installed as intended.
You only know when the game crashes or won't start at all.
Happened to me with AVG and GOG's Neverwinter Nights 2, I spent days trying to locate the source of the crashing before checking in the event viewer showed AVG had block DirectX at the time I installed the game.
A quick Google will show that is is not just AVG, but many, if not all antvirus software has done this at one stage or another, going back years and it still happens.

Some games, like the Witcher will check the registry for the specific version they need and give an error message if it is not there when you try to start the game.
Given that all versions of the Witcher come with the correct DirectX version, the only reason it wouldn't be there is if your antivirus stopped it at installation.

So your antivirus software isn't keeping you safe by blocking these old Microsoft files, because no one ever got a virus from them.
They are simply stopping you from installing what you want and need to install.

It may not be the problem in this case, but it happens a lot and only takes a few minutes to try.
Don't worry about viruses in any files you get from Microsoft, their internet security is like Fort Knox.
Unlike Steam, who's internet security has been breached on at least 2 occasions that I'm aware of.
People who tell you not to trust Microsoft and then link you to the Nexus to get mod files, when the Nexus has had their internet security breached in the past and user details and passwords compromised.

I never asked the OP to disable his antivirus software before downloading the SDK.
By all means, have you background checker scan it before download, and if your paranoid right click on it after it is downloaded an manually check it again. You won't find anything though, there is probably no safer site on the net.

Well, if my antivirus system prevents me from doing something which doesn't present a risk for me or my PC, then I should get a better one in the first place.
Of course, I can't speak for every AV system on the market, and it's possible that certain AV systems really work as you describe - which I wouldn't tolerate from my AV system.
I've been using Norton for more than 20 years, and I've never seen anything like what you describe - no complaints about Microsoft stuff, no problems with NWN2 or Witcher (I have both games).
Sometimes Norton drives me half-crazy because it blocks / removes files due to its heuristics and reputation based algorithms - but it tells me, and lets me decide to accept the removal or to restore the file. I've also seen false positives from Norton. But again, I can override it, at my own risk, of course.

I didn't intend to offend you - my apologies, if this was the case. I did intend to issue a warning to be very careful with disabling AV. Before doing it, people should make sure that AV is the problem indeed (which is difficult to do in most cases, I guess). And they should be aware that disabling AV has the potential to create new problems, either by opening a door for dangerous software, or by making a technical mistake, or by undesired and unexpected side-effects (this is why I always add a warning when talking about editing the registry, for example). If people understand the issue and know what they are doing, there is no reason why they shouldn't temporarily disable any protection mechanism.

I got Oblivion from GOG and so far it hasn't crashed. With the Steam version, when I got the part where you split up with the emperor the screen would go black. For me, the GOG copy is only stable if I use compatibility mode with Windows XP, Service Pack 3. I did try doing that with Steam but it still didn't work. I also tried downloading DirectX from the link above, as well as deleting all of the data and reinstalling it. I eventually threw in the towel and got the GOG version.

I'd like to thank everyone for taking the time to help me.

You're welcome. The most important thing is that it works for you.
The black screen sounds like a corrupted file (unless you have completely uninstalled and reinstalled Oblivion, and the problem is still there), and my Win10 Oblivion installation doesn't require any compatibility settings - but don't let this bother you.
Have fun!