God does not want me to play Fallout 3.

[Arkaign]

That's too bad. I have heard of a lot of people that had trouble with FO3, but it's never crashed on me even once, and I've played it on several different systems, two dual cores and two quads, with no tweaks at all.

I've played about 40-50 hours together with my GF on FO:NV, and that has crashed to desktop twice so far, I am running that 3rd party dx3d9.dll thing or whatever that's a community performance patch.

 

[Modular]

None that I am aware of. I've done fresh installs of the game about 6 times now.



All most recent. I updated everything in an attempt to get this running.

KT

That's what I was getting at. I'd say try some older video card drivers and see what they do for you.

Also, this game was buggy for many, many people, but I didn't have a single crash in my time playing. The only problem I did have was that VATS would engage really slowly at times. When that happened, I would have to restart the game, but it was nothing detrimental at all.

I hope you get it working. It's well worth it!

 

[sandorski]

Download/Install latest version of GFWL. 45% chance it will fix your issue.

 

[Sulaco]

On the system in my signature, the game ha crashed on me a handful of times. It's really more of a "lock-up". The game freezes, music is still going and everything, but I have to Ctrl+Alt+Delete and close it out as it always comes up "Not Responding".

This has happened maybe three times in the 12-15 hours I've been playing since building my system.

 

[PottedMeat]

I think that's everything, but the game still freezes after the opening cinematics. There is a weird flashing square in the top right corner of the game and that never seems to go away. So anyway, seems like this game was a complete waste of money unless anyone has any suggestions.

like there's a program popping up trying to tell you something?

have you tried pulling up task manager and killing every non relevant program ( i.e antivirus/sync things/ati/nvidia crap )?

 

[sandorski]

like there's a program popping up trying to tell you something?

have you tried pulling up task manager and killing every non relevant program ( i.e antivirus/sync things/ati/nvidia crap )?

Could be Windows Firewall seeking user Input(Internet Access permission), but GFWL also pops up during that process. I suspect GFWL is crashing and taking FO3 with it. I had an almost identical issue with GTA IV and it was GFWL causing it.

 

[OCNewbie]

I found the fix for one of the freezing problems and it worked for me.

I had played Fallout 3 in the last few weeks and had no problem.

I recently did a clean vista install and also added a new video card. A 1GB 4870 Sapphire.

I started playing F3 and it started crashing. sometimes within five minutes,s ometimes within 15.

So I started looking all over the web for a solution. I did the fddshow trick, the bios problem was only with the 512mb versions of the Sapphire 4870.

Then I found the following link.

http://www.pdsys.org/blog/post/200 [...] going.aspx

Turns out the patch for 1.1 breaks quad core support. The game can't handle 4 cores anymore. So if you have a quad core pc and you install the latest patch the game will start crashing. There are instructions on how to fix this.

Open up the fallout.ini file in: My Documents\My Games\Fallout3
Find the line:

bUseThreadedAI=0

change it to:

bUseThreadedAI=1

Add another line after it and insert:

iNumHWThreads=2

This will limit the game to 2 cores and prevent the engine bug from causing the game to freeze.

I tried this and it worked for me. And I have a quad core pc. Also, I didn't have freezing issues before the patch. Only after the patch. I thought the culprit was my new graphics card but this was my problem. After I made the fix, I played two hours without freezing.

So give this a try. It MAY fix your problem.

I had freezing problems a while back when I was playing FO3. It's been a while, so I'm not 100% sure, but I believe I did the above suggested ini tweaks, and I had no problems afterward.

Try those, and see if that fixes your problem.

 

[Bateluer]

I was never able to get FO3 to work on my 7-64bit rig, it always crashed randomly no matter what I did. To play it, I had to use my alternative machine under XP. Even there, I had to use a crack from FO-Nexus to remove/disable GFWL to it to work.

 

[biostud]

same here, worked fine on my old X2 on winXP.

 

[KeithTalent]

The flickering box is gone now and GFWL is up to date. I already gave full permissions in the firewall and a/v.

I did read there was a way to disable GFWL that may work; I'll have to hunt that down to try it.

KT

 

[Dorkenstein]

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1086

Hope that helps.

 

[s44]

It just can't be worth this much grinding just to start any game.

 

[Barfo]

I say you'll be able to run the game when you have time to do a clean install.

 

[manimal]

im still waiting for a patch so I can play this game......

 

[KeithTalent]

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1086

Hope that helps.

Damn, so freaking close. Using this I got farther than I have ever gotten before; I was actually able to create my character (first time ever!), but then the doctor (my Dad I guess) showed me to the Mom, leaned in to me again and it froze. All I heard was the beeping of the hospital instruments, then I just had to alt-ctl-del. :\

I say you'll be able to run the game when you have time to do a clean install.

Of my OS? It's not like it's been that long, I only put in this new hardware like six weeks ago and did full re-install.

KT

 

[BladeVenom]

The game does crash sometimes even for those who never had any problems getting it to start.

So this is a fairly new computer? Did you run memtest?

 

[HeXen]

the odd thing about PC's. Cause see, the game worked perfectly on mine right off the bat, never crashed or nothing...but i didnt really like it and graphics were kinda pooey

 

[nitromullet]

Dude, it's not even worth it. I played like 4 hours and while the atmosphere was quite good, shooting 8 ft tall scorpions like 5 times and still not having them die, gets old pretty quickly...

Not sure what the OP's issue is, but as far as this goes...

You have to level up a bit to become formidable in the wasteland. When you first step out of the vault you are squishy and don't do much damage. There is a quest line available in Megaton that teaches you the dynamics of the game and gives you the opportunity to level up a little bit in a series of lower level quests. If you just run out into the wasteland straight from the vault you will die a lot. The biggest complaint most people have about Fallout 3 (myself included) is that once you level up you are actually over powered and nothing in the game presents much of a challenge.

 

[Mem]

the odd thing about PC's. Cause see, the game worked perfectly on mine right off the bat, never crashed or nothing...but i didnt really like it and graphics were kinda pooey

I remember when I installed the game on Vista x64,it ran ok however its like New Vegas(currently playing that on Win7 x64) ie you get the odd crash now and then but still plenty of playing hours before a crash or two.

All I did back then was install latest DX9.0c from FileHippo,I had latest drivers etc plus K-Lite codec pack at the time,so there should be no reason why it shouldn't run on KeithTalent's PC.

 

[HeXen]

I remember when I installed the game on Vista x64,it ran ok however its like New Vegas(currently playing that on Win7 x64) ie you get the odd crash now and then but still plenty of playing hours before a crash or two.

All I did back then was install latest DX9.0c from FileHippo,I had latest drivers etc plus K-Lite codec pack at the time,so there should be no reason why it shouldn't run on KeithTalent's PC.

differences in hardware and how/what drivers is installed. lets face it, tons of poorly coded 3rd party stuff out there.
i blame Windows usually. I have fixed many game issues by doing a fresh reinstall...but it shouldnt be like that, i just think its not a great platform for solid developments imo.

DRM can be another factor. Sometimes even adding the game to the DEP filter fixes it. DEP prevents some executables from running properly....overall, theres just too much variety in hardware, quality of drivers and general setup of software.

 

[zokudu]

Have you tried the community patch?
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3808

 

[KeithTalent]

Community patch is installed. Yes, I did run Memtest. It failed very late in the test, but I bought new RAM anyway which passes the test fine, so I don't think it's the memroy, plus I have not had a single issue with any other program; I even completed about 4 other games in that time.

KT

 

[Malak]

Nah, I do have a PS3, but I don't really play games on consoles, particularly this type of game, plus I've already invested enough in the stupid game.

KT

I don't know what type of game you think it is, but it plays perfectly fine on the consoles. Most of the game you are pausing the action to choose targets and then letting it shoot for you. It's a really boring game.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Most of the game you are pausing the action to choose targets and then letting it shoot for you.

You're doing it wrong.

 

[sandorski]

I don't know what type of game you think it is, but it plays perfectly fine on the consoles. Most of the game you are pausing the action to choose targets and then letting it shoot for you. It's a really boring game.

You're doing it wrong.

This. On PC you don't need to do this, not much anyway. VATs is likely only there to make the game more playable on Consoles, not that I hate it, but I only really needed it for situations where I was in deep trouble.