firewalls are for network access.

antivirus can move your .exe's if it thinks the program is a virus.

check antivirus log.

have you tried verifying game cache and reinstall?

I have

you played 19 hours. so the files were working on your machine. what changed?

open a command prompt with admin permission and run these commands to check windows system files

sfc /scannow
dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth

(sfc scans and repairs Windows system files
dism fixes corrupt files in the Windows system image, use it when SFC can't repair files)

so double clicking on oblivionlauncher.exe in file explorer and launching thru steam both give executable not found?

Launching through Steam doesn't give that. Only when I try to start on Prompt

When I press play through Steam it just hangs

I did run sfc and corrupt files were found and repaired. Tried launching through Steam again and still hangs. The verbatim when start through prompt----->"Windows cannot find file 'Oblivion'". I've also tried starting by giving full path and still nothing

Please confirm that you used the Verify function of Oblivion in the Steam library, and then the game still hangs when you use Play in the Steam library, and that both
- Oblivion.exe, and
- Launch The Elder Scrolls IV - Oblivion.exe
are in the Oblivion folder of your Steam installation of Oblivion.

What exactly happens when you double-click any of these two files in Windows Explorer (not via whatever prompt)?
By the way, what does "LEL" in your first post mean?

as the previous poster asked,

are the files OblivionLauncher.exe and Oblivion.exe in folder

...\steam\steamapps\common\Oblivion


"I did run sfc and corrupt files were found and repaired". perhaps check the sfc log
C:\windows\logs\cbsl\cbs.log
and see if everything was fixed.

and did you reboot the machine after the fix? running programs that were using the old
corrupt data are still running with the corrupt data.

if you ran "dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth"
depending on what was displayed you may have to run
DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth
to try to fix things.

might be worthwhile to run either chkdsk on your drives
or thru windows file explorer/tools/properties/error checking

check windows event viewer and also windows reliability history
might have game errors or system related issues

Hi, I very much appreciate. Those files are in the folder. In the log would it show error or whatever couldn't be fixed? I didn't run dism though

Running D.I.S.M now

ExceptionCode c0000005 something to do with Launcher?

in windows file explorer
go to the steam oblivion game folder.
double click/open oblivionlauncher.exe
game launcher runs on my win 11 version 24H2.
what happens on yours?

then do the same for oblivion.exe
game itself brings up the launcher then runs on my pc
what happens on yours?

The exe just hangs. Same with launcher

To be crystal clear this only happens with Oblivion