I've been playing for more than a yearwith no problems. I recently (maybe two months ago) added some mods, and have played with only a little trouble since. (yeah I'm blessed!) I thank Oblivion Mod Manager and FCOMHelper for fixing most things.
Today, out of the blue, I wanted to wait for a day or two for the "Shade of the Revenant" at Dark Fissure. The game just died (froze) after waiting a couple of hours. The first time I was able to Ctr+Alt+Del. Then it happened again, and again, and again... sometimes I have to do a hard reboot. Just defragged to no avail. Clean Boot also no help. I'm ready to reinstall Oblivion, but I thought I'd post here first and see if anyone might know what to do.

Please help an old oblivaholic!

here's your problem. Go into your options at game start,disable save on wait and save on fast travel,they corrupt save games after a while.I'm surprized you got that much time without a problem,also DL the latest unofficial patch and make it first in your load order

Personally, I don't buy that. The auto-save features don't corrupt anything. If they did, Bethesda would be a HORRIBLE company, because who in their right mind would release such a horribly compiled saving system?

its a well known fact by those that have played it for a while. How many bugs and glitches have been modder fixed? Its called Big Business.It's all about money!

I agree with both of you. I've never had a problem with the autosave function, and in fact I use the quicksave function to prevent crashes in my game. (It seems that if I play too long without saving, the game will crash.) Again, never had a problem. And secondly, the prime example of businesses releasing crap is Microsoft. People expect it to be full of bugs. With anything, the more complex it is, the harder it is to make it flawless. A simple mod that only adds one or two items will almost never cause you any trouble. The overhaul mods need to be tweaked and rewritten/re-released because they attempt to do so much.
Now then, about my problem...
After posting, and not getting an answer instantly, I went back to the game and found that this only happened when I tried to wait while at Dark Fissure. Now that is odd! I just went to another cell and I can wait or rest and everything is normal. I say that with fingers crossed. I think my computer may have some other problems that I haven't been able to track down. I may need to backup everything and format my HD, do a new XP install, and all the headaches that go with that.

Finally, thanks for the feedback!

Good luck,hope you get it solved

I think that there's a difference between bugs within the game (UOP and USIP) and a fundamental flow in programming. Saving is the one thing people will do most in a game, and with it borked, it only shows that Bethesda is more than money-hungry, they're assholes. But it's true, the bigger it is, they worse it can get. Especially with the GameByro engine. Seriously, it's a horrible engine.

Either way, it may be a bug related to that area in particular.

People always hype things up. Like people who say 'Vista isn't good for gaming!'...I use Vista and have NEVER had a problem with ANYTHING running. I have Oblivion installed into the default folder and everything, still runs like a charm...for the most part. ;P

honey,I'm not hypeing up anything.I've been playing this game since day one.I have thousands of hours in play time also hundreds of hours creating mods.My answers are factual,whether you chose to believe them or not is your problem,not mine.
Some people have to learn the hard way.....good luck!

Really, calm down man. Don't assume that I don't know what's what either. I've punched around on Oblivion for a while. There is no 'hard way' to learn. Saves are just saves, they work fine. Save corruption is only on the other side of the screen, eg: the user. I've clocked in over 3,000 hours in Morrowind for PC (had it since '03) and I've never once had any problems with that game that weren't on my end, either. It's mostly about the mods you have, and if they're made cleanly or not. Don't believe me? Run all your mods through TES4Gecko, of all your meshes through PFYII, and watch the problems reduce a whole lot.

Some times, people think they know what they're doing, but in reality, they don't know the real inner workings of the engine, so they have no idea if what they're doing is really as fool-proof as they'd like to think.

I didn't assume anything,but you have,and I'm not a man...goodbye!!

probably just a problem with script/cell respawns in that area, download a mod or something that sets respawn period to 24 hours and wait 24 hours.

or better yet, just w8 24 hours, works for me most of the time

I noticed long ago that, whenever I experienced a CTD, the 'quicksave' is lost apon re-boot but not the 'autosave on rest'. I have since stopped using quicksave, save on travel, and save on wait.
However, I still use the save on rest without issue. Now, I simply save my game more often.

thank you for verifying what I've said before!