Ok, it's official (at least for me), Fallout 3 is a buggy mess.

[Golgatha]

You know, I think I'm just going to boycott all Securom 7 games from now on. Not so much because of the DRM, but because it seems the publishers in bed with Sony's Securom technology don't give a flying f**k about their customers.

 

[exar333]

All Securom does for Fallout 3 (same as Oblivion) is check for the DVD (Edit: CD -> DVD). I don't mind this too much; it is not limiting my installs or anything.

 

[nitromullet]

This is why you should include your rig in your sig (it's not just for bragging rights)... Makes it a lot easier to spot the potential culprit when people are experiencing crashes.

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: nitromullet
This is why you should include your rig in your sig (it's not just for bragging rights)... Makes it a lot easier to spot the potential culprit when people are experiencing crashes.

My system: Gigabyte P45 mobo, Intel Q9550@3.0Ghz (only OCed from 2.83Ghz), 8GB (4x2GB) ADATA DDR2 800 RAM, ATI 4850 512MB, Velociraptor 300GB for OS/apps, 500GB Seagate 7200.11 for games, Samsung DVD burner, X-Fi Gamer sound card, and Vista 64bit Ultimate OS.

 

[zerogear]

Originally posted by: Golgatha
I installed Fallout 3, got everything configured, and then went to playing. Game crashed to the desktop at my 10 year old birthday party every time Dad tried to say something. I was only 5 min into the game for crying out loud!

Rebooted my computer at this point and started up a new game. Everything went smooth for nearly an hour, but when I exited the game I got another crash to the desktop (CTD). I get the CTD whether or not I'm running the cracked game executable, so I don't think the copy protection is at fault here. I honestly think the game is just buggy. Hopefully it will get officially and unofficially patched like Oblivion did, but it sucks to have to wait such a long time to play such a great game.

Are you using any trainers or cheat codes?

 

[sirdigitalduck]

look this game is buggy. you only have to move sideways and look at something close and watch how it moves relative to you. its far from smooth no matter what sort of rig you have.

 

[sirdigitalduck]

Originally posted by: Golgatha
I installed Fallout 3, got everything configured, and then went to playing. Game crashed to the desktop at my 10 year old birthday party every time Dad tried to say something. I was only 5 min into the game for crying out loud!

Rebooted my computer at this point and started up a new game. Everything went smooth for nearly an hour, but when I exited the game I got another crash to the desktop (CTD). I get the CTD whether or not I'm running the cracked game executable, so I don't think the copy protection is at fault here. I honestly think the game is just buggy. Hopefully it will get officially and unofficially patched like Oblivion did, but it sucks to have to wait such a long time to play such a great game.

this game is buggy as. You only have to look at something close while moving sideways and its far from smooth no mater what sort of rig you have.

 

[JCGhz]

Originally posted by: Golgatha

Originally posted by: nitromullet
This is why you should include your rig in your sig (it's not just for bragging rights)... Makes it a lot easier to spot the potential culprit when people are experiencing crashes.

My system: Gigabyte P45 mobo, Intel Q9550@3.0Ghz (only OCed from 2.83Ghz), 8GB (4x2GB) ADATA DDR2 800 RAM, ATI 4850 512MB, Velociraptor 300GB for OS/apps, 500GB Seagate 7200.11 for games, Samsung DVD burner, X-Fi Gamer sound card, and Vista 64bit Ultimate OS.

Your issues may be related to your sound card drivers and or settings. I had a similar problem but i cant remember what game it was. Try going back to older drivers or newer..cant hurt to try. My 3 cents

 

[Golgatha]

Bump for an update to the OP.

 

[skace]

Originally posted by: Golgatha
I installed Fallout 3, got everything configured, and then went to playing. Game crashed to the desktop at my 10 year old birthday party every time Dad tried to say something. I was only 5 min into the game for crying out loud!

Rebooted my computer at this point and started up a new game. Everything went smooth for nearly an hour, but when I exited the game I got another crash to the desktop (CTD). I get the CTD whether or not I'm running the cracked game executable, so I don't think the copy protection is at fault here. I honestly think the game is just buggy. Hopefully it will get officially and unofficially patched like Oblivion did, but it sucks to have to wait such a long time to play such a great game.

Update (11/03/2008):

The game will play fairly reliably with no AA or 2x AA enabled. I also reduced the AF setting to 8 samples (down from 15) and this seemed to help as well. I've been able to play about 8 hours worth of the game with only a random crash thrown in here and there. The key to success is to have 3-4 gamesave files to revert to after a crash. I swear I'm saving the game like every 10-15 minutes to make sure I don't lose precious progress in the game.

I still stand behind my stance that the current state of this game is absolutely unacceptable. I have around 50 other games on my system, which all seem to run with near perfect stability. I sincerely hope Bethesda gets on a real patch before the first dog armor DLC comes out or I'm going to be one pissed off gamer.

Let's look at your history: starts out crashing 5 minutes into the game, then you managed to get it to run for an hour? Then 8 hours. Yet it always ends in system instability, sounds heat related IMO.

I've got the side of my case off because FarCry 2 was causing my MCP to overheat. Actually, it's not FarCry2 that is causing that, FC2 was causing my video cards to heat up and the heat from my video cards was not being moved sufficiently which ended up causing my MCP to overheat. Pretty crazy. Anyhow, absolutely no crashes in Fallout 3 and I've had it running for several days. I don't see a memory leak either.

Edit: Oh god, you've got a X-Fi....

 

[CVSiN]

using an Audigy2 ZS with mine.
E8400 non OC 8 gigs of Patriot non OCed 8800GTS 512 not OCed on Vista Home Premium x64 and not one issue not even the crash on exit.

the one thing I have noticed is that the game does have a mem leak.

 

[nakedfrog]

I know it crashed on me when I first entered Marigold Station, but I just loaded the auto-save it made when I entered and it was fine.
It also crashes pretty much any time I close my laptop, anybody know a fix for that? It will still be running in the background when I re-open it, but I'll be at the desktop, and it crashes when I try to switch back to it.

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: CVSiN
using an Audigy2 ZS with mine.
E8400 non OC 8 gigs of Patriot non OCed 8800GTS 512 not OCed on Vista Home Premium x64 and not one issue not even the crash on exit.

the one thing I have noticed is that the game does have a mem leak.

Hmm, I might uninstall my X-Fi for the onboard Azalia HD. They're both optical output anyway and I have a 2.1 setup using a stereo Yamaha amp with a powered sub, so 3D EAX isn't much of any issue anyway.

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: Golgatha

Originally posted by: CVSiN
using an Audigy2 ZS with mine.
E8400 non OC 8 gigs of Patriot non OCed 8800GTS 512 not OCed on Vista Home Premium x64 and not one issue not even the crash on exit.

the one thing I have noticed is that the game does have a mem leak.

Hmm, I might uninstall my X-Fi for the onboard Azalia HD. They're both optical output anyway and I have a 2.1 setup using a stereo Yamaha amp with a powered sub, so 3D EAX isn't much of any issue anyway.

Using the Azalia HD audio didn't really help anything stability wise and it sounds much worse on my system. The 2.1 setup is a Yamaha stereo amp, dual 8in Yamaha sub, and a pair of 5.25in JBL Northridge bookshelf speakers.

 

[Shiningfury]

This game was crashing constantly on my system (talking a crash every 10 minutes). I have CCCP (this might also apply to K-Lite) and apparently Fallout 3 uses the same codecs. That causes problems. After every crash I'd see the FFDSHOW icon in the task tray. I'm at work and don't remember where I found the specific directions, but basically you exclude FFDSHOW audio and video from running for fallout.exe. This allows F3 to use its own codecs.

This simple change reduced my crashes dramatically; down to crashes maybe once every few hours.

 

[Eeezee]

I haven't crashed while playing, but sometimes quicksaving does stall the game. It only happens outside. I'll hit quicksave (habit) and it'll take 2 minutes sometimes. Usually it's instantaneous.

 

[Eeezee]

Originally posted by: AdamK47

Originally posted by: waggy
i so want the game. but the wife said i can't buy anything until after Christmas LOL damn.

That's why I have a "secret" bank account where I have $125 from my paycheck direct deposited. I get $250 a month to spend on computer games.

$250 / month?! I'm jealous

 

[HumblePie]

Originally posted by: Shiningfury
This game was crashing constantly on my system (talking a crash every 10 minutes). I have CCCP (this might also apply to K-Lite) and apparently Fallout 3 uses the same codecs. That causes problems. After every crash I'd see the FFDSHOW icon in the task tray. I'm at work and don't remember where I found the specific directions, but basically you exclude FFDSHOW audio and video from running for fallout.exe. This allows F3 to use its own codecs.

This simple change reduced my crashes dramatically; down to crashes maybe once every few hours.

I noticed this as well, although I can go much longer than 10 minutes before a random lock out usually in Vista 64. How do you exclude FFDSHOW from fallout3?

 

[nakedfrog]

Originally posted by: HumblePie

Originally posted by: Shiningfury
This game was crashing constantly on my system (talking a crash every 10 minutes). I have CCCP (this might also apply to K-Lite) and apparently Fallout 3 uses the same codecs. That causes problems. After every crash I'd see the FFDSHOW icon in the task tray. I'm at work and don't remember where I found the specific directions, but basically you exclude FFDSHOW audio and video from running for fallout.exe. This allows F3 to use its own codecs.

This simple change reduced my crashes dramatically; down to crashes maybe once every few hours.

I noticed this as well, although I can go much longer than 10 minutes before a random lock out usually in Vista 64. How do you exclude FFDSHOW from fallout3?

Hm, I just updated ffdshow and one of the config options had a list of programs to not use ffdshow for, you can probably pull up that config screen from Start->All Programs->Where ever ffsdshow is

 

[Golgatha]

Ok, so the latest patch really improved the issues with the game crashing. Now there still seems to be a memory leak, because I can play the game for 3-4 hours and then the game will just crash. It will crash within 5min if I try to just run the game again and my RAM usage is through the roof. If I reboot the system, I'm good for another 3-4 hours before I have to rinse lather and repeat. Good thing I normally don't play for more than 3-4 hours at a time and rebooting the system isn't a huge deal breaker.

P.S. I just finished the game's main story. Now to play through the excellent side quest missions.

 

[poiZin]

Here is a fix that works for some people who are experiencing the crash to desktop problem:

Source: http://nostasolutions.com/2008...top-ctd-at-game-start/

Hope this helps