Oblivion hangs briefly after starting?

[blaholdings]

Here's my rig:

MB: GIGA 965P-DS3 (2.0)
CPU: E4300
RAM: 2GB Super Talent PC2-6400
PSU: 500W Seasonic S12
VID: SAPPHIRE ATI X1950XT 256MB

I am having an odd problem when playing Oblivion where my game locks and stops taking input (from keyboard or USB) shortly after loading up my character. Sometimes it crashes - sometimes I can access task manager and kill it and continue to use my comp w/o a problem. I've gone through at least 7 emails with the Bethesda tech support and none of the suggestions they have offered have helped. Their latest suggestion is that it might be due to my vid card using the same IRQ as other devices, like my onboard LAN.

Has anyone else experienced a problem with their vid card having issues when sharing IRQs?

Anyone else have any better ideas for troubleshooting?

[OCnewbee]

Nope but i did have an issue of random crashes in various time durations though, updated the drivers and was good to go, now with my 8800gtx very rarely will i have a crash. Smooth you do have all the patches installed correct? and your VC is up to date? Try backing up your characters data and re-installing the game again. Maybe it was a bunk install. It might be the cpu but i doubt it cause a 1.8ghz Dual Core is about the same as a 2ghz single core. I wonder if on the intel C2D you new to do the dual core fix or if that is with just AMD? You can set the processor affinity to just one of the CPU cores and try that.

[PingSpike]

Most IRQ sharing problems are a thing of the past, however, its certainly not impossible that could be the problem.

Its easy enough to test though, divide and conquer. Disable the onboard lan, play the game. Then try disabling the onboard sound. (I know you want sound, but it'll help you narrow the problem down) and so on.

[blaholdings]

Oddly enough it was because I didn't have certain codecs installed. I'm really curious to know what audio or video codec would cause the game to stop responding to keyboard / mouse input but ... well ... it fixed it. Here is a link to the forums where I found the resolution:

http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=561101

Weird huh ?