BSA Unpacker Tutorial

A quick tutorial on how to unpack the Oblivion BSA's

Warning: The new files from the extracted archives will use 3.2 gb of your harddisk.

Figure 1: The BSA folder

• Download Ghostwheels program "TES4BSA" here
  Then make a folder in the C:\ drive. I will call mine "BSA".

• Then extract the contents of the TES4BSA zip archive, the file you just downloaded, into the "BSA" folder which you have just created.
  Note: In WindowsXP extracting can be done by copying and pasting the contents of the archive.

• Also copy the BSA files from your Oblivion\data files: "Oblivion - Meshes.bsa", "Oblivion - Textures - Compressed.bsa" and "Oblivion - Misc.bsa", to the new folder, "BSA".

Your folder should look like Fig. 1.

Now, when everything is extracted, do the following:

• Open a Command Line window: In Windows Start menu, select Run. Type "Cmd" (no quotes), and press enter.
• Then write "cd C:\" (no quotes), and press enter.
• Then type "cd BSA" (no quotes), and press enter.
  This will make the BSA folder our current directory (Fig. 2).

Figure 2: The BSA directory

• Now write:
  tes4bsa unpack "Oblivion - Meshes.bsa" and press enter, this will unpack the meshes (Fig.3).
• And likewise for the other archives:
  • tes4bsa unpack "Oblivion - Textures - compressed.bsa" and press enter, this will unpack the textures (Fig. 4).
  • tes4bsa unpack "Oblivion - Misc.bsa" and press enter, this will unpack the misc (Fig. 5).

Figure 3: Extracting Meshes

Figure 4: Extracting Textures

Figure 5: Extracting Misc.

• All extracted files are now stored in your "BSA" folder (Fig. 6).

Figure 6: Extracted folders

• When you have unpacked all your BSA's, move the contents of the whole "BSA" folder to the "Oblivion\Data" folder.

And that should be it.

Happy modding.

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To ease up working with the command line, use Microsoft's "Cmd Here Powertoy". It adds a "Open Command Window Here" option to the context menu. After installing this you can easily open a command folder in any folder just by right-clicking on the folder and choosing "Open Command Window Here".

http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/Install/2/WXP/EN-US/CmdHerePowertoySetup.exe

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For even easier extract, create a batch file. How do you do that?

Open notepad. Copy the contents below into it and save it as a .bat Change it as nessicary.

@ECHO ON

ECHO Will extract Oblivion files from .bsa's

ECHO Extracted files will use up more than 3 GB

PAUSE

C:\BSA\tes4bsa unpack "Oblivion - Meshes.bsa"

C:\BSA\tes4bsa unpack "Oblivion - Textures - compressed.bsa"

C:\BSA\tes4bsa unpack "Oblivion - Misc.bsa"

See Also

• BSA Files
• Creating your Own BSA files
• Command Prompt Basics