Fallout 3 and Windows 7

G

GriMReapeRAK

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 24, 2009
Messages
306
Since it's winter break I decided to start playing Fallout 3's DLC since I never got the chance to, but it keeps crashing on me. I'm using Windows 7 Pro x64. Occasionally it will crash at the launcher, but most of the time it occurs during the game. It seems completely random sometimes. It may crash anywhere from a few minutes of playing to a couple of hours and the crashes will happen either just walking around or at the loading screen for new areas. When it does crash, it just gives me the message to close the application or close and find a solution. Sometimes I have to ctrl-alt-del to close the program.

Apparently this happens to Vista users as well, so I tried some solutions that people have posted. I changed the game's INI to use two cores at most, turned Aero/themes off while playing, and run the game as admin and it still crashes. Has anyone gotten their game to run without crashes?

If needed, my basic specs are:

AMD Phenom II X3 720
4GB RAM
Diamond 5870
 
1. Update Games For Windows Live. A recent update may or may not have made it onto your computer yet.

2. Install the official Fallout 3 1.7 patch if you haven't.

3. Install the Unofficial Fallout 3 Patch 1.2.0. Fixes hundreds of bugs, and yes, this is appropriate for FO3 1.7.

4. Install the Unofficial Fallout 3 Patch Rivet City Crash fix - fixes a crash bug in the unofficial patch 1.2.0 that causes crashes in Rivet City and Utility Tunnel. The author of the unofficial patch has had an accident and is not able to work on it. Note: visit the link with an adblocker turned on; if there's a safer source for this file, I'd like to know.
 
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You know, there's a lot of cool things in that patch, but I don't like when some nerd decides he thinks what Bethseda really meant, and makes a change like this:
Broken Steel: Undid the levelling change to Dogmeat, Fawkes and Sergeant RL-3 which caused them to have massive amounts of health (Dogmeat has 15000HP when you're at level 30). Dogmeat\Fawkes\Sergeant RL-3 will only have massive amounts of health if they where just found, if you already found them before Broken Steel was activated then they won't have massive amounts of HP (Altered Creature: FFEU255Dogmeat, MQ08Fawkes, RL3Follower).
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I like my uber Dogmeat. I like the fact that he can kill everyone in Megaton without dying. Dogmeat was notorious for dying in the original Fallout games, and the developers probably wanted to keep this from happening to FO3 players.

Or this:
Broken Steel: Fixed the "Nerves of Steel" perk increasing the action point regeneration rate by only 0.1 point per second (%2.5 increased rate) which sure as hell isn't the advertised "you regenerate Action Points much more quickly than you normally would.", Nerves of Steel will now increase action point regeneration rate by 50% (calculated dynamically by the fActionPointsRestoreRate setting) (Altered Script: DLC03APRegenScript).
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There are loads of great fixes in that pack, but they're supposed to be bug fixes, not design decisions.

EDIT: Be careful at that Rivet City Crash Fix site, my AntiVirus didn't like one of the ads.
 
I bought the GOTY off steam during the sale so it should be patched up already. I'll try that unofficial patch, though I don't like the idea of changing the game design like LstOfTheBrunnenG said. I wonder if there's a way to just keep the bugfixes. Thanks and I'll let you guys know if there are more crashes.
 
I'm sorry, but I don't think Bethesda intended Dogmeat to be able to survive a direct Fat Man blast at level 20.

If you insist on cheating with an invincible Dogmeat, there are several mods available to do that:
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=8953
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4199
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=361

Or you can simply make Dogmeat an essential NPC with a console command.

If there's a safer source for the Rivet City Crash fix, I'd like to know. Otherwise, I suggest going to that link with an adblocker on.
 
I wouldn't know how to play this game uninterrupted without some kind of freeze or crash every so often. I've played it on three different OSs, some different hardware configurations, followed every last piece of prudent advice to the letter...and it's just the way it is. It doesn't happen very often, but I think it's just a way of life with this game. With or without mods although I'm sure mods make it even more bitchy.
 
evilsofa said:
If you insist on cheating with an invincible Dogmeat
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Unbelievable. Now I'm a cheater because I don't play using some mod some guy came up with in his basement.

Though the fact that he can survive a Fat Man blast to the face does put things in perspective, it doesn't change the fact that the author of that mod is making design decisions along with the bug fixes.

Though, looking through, there aren't many more examples of such decisions, and I may use the mod for my next playthrough.
 
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Game is a biggy pos. Still have my cute little $50 paper weight on my desk at home. Most frustrating purchase I have ever made. Will never spend another dime on a Bethesda product. Sucks too cause the game looks amazing.
 
Justinimcool2001 said:
Game is a biggy pos. Still have my cute little $50 paper weight on my desk at home. Most frustrating purchase I have ever made. Will never spend another dime on a Bethesda product. Sucks too cause the game looks amazing.
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Amazing that I managed to play through to the end, more than once.

The game crashes once in a while, and it might be an inconvenience, but it's nothing the all-powerful quicksave key can't remedy.
 
I had crashing problem before with my quad core cpu, and when i went back to my dual core, it was fine :D I bought GOTY edition recently and out of the box it works fine under windows 7 ultimate.
 
I installed XP on a seperate partition just to play this game. It ran awesome in XP with the 186 Nvidia drivers. No crashes or stuttering. I did not run any mods or unofficial patches either.

In Win 7, I would get crashes and stuttering like crazy.
 
Skirrow said:
Sorry pal, couldn't resist. :p
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No offense taken.

There's an obvious difference between guessing at the intentions of the designers, and deciding that the designers were wrong or made a mistake and imposing your own design instead.
 
Sipster said:
I installed XP on a seperate partition just to play this game. It ran awesome in XP with the 186 Nvidia drivers. No crashes or stuttering. I did not run any mods or unofficial patches either.

In Win 7, I would get crashes and stuttering like crazy.
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The stuttering is a bug with recent nVidia drivers. Temporary fix seems to be to turn off AA.
 
There is also non-driver-related stuttering in both Oblivion and Fallout 3 that Skyranger-1 has made a fix for and discusses here, but that probably doesn't address crashing problems.
 
LstOfTheBrunnenG said:
The game crashes once in a while, and it might be an inconvenience, but it's nothing the all-powerful quicksave key can't remedy.
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Until the game deletes your quicksave. Which it did for me (not kidding). Then I was done. That's why I'd recommend that people play with a backup application hitting their save game directory every couple minutes and occasionally save to new slots (because the probability that FO3 corrupts the quicksave is high).

Whenever you think that no game developer could possibly do something so ridiculous, so unbelievably incomprehensible, just look to Bethesda, and I guarantee you they've already done it or will eventually :)
 
Haha, so many things to do for Fallout 3. Anyway, I downloaded the newest K-Lite codec pack (Mega pack just to be sure) and installed it and it ran without a hitch. I'm off to watch the game with my friends, but I'll probably get some FO3 in when the game is over. I'll let you guys know if updating to the latest ffdshow with K-Lite prevented any more crashes.
 
Fallout 3 randomly crashed quite a bit when I used a 9600GT, but it worked fine for anything else I threw at it. It would usually at least get me in game if I tweaked the graphics settings, like AA. It really does ruin the fun when you haven't saved in a while and the game crashes on you.
Now I have a 5770 and it hasn't crashed once, but you're also using a 5***, so I don't know what to tell you. (using Win7 x64 RC)
 
I was thinking of eventually doing an installation and modding guide for Fallout 3 like I did for some other games here, but it looks like stability is such a chancy thing that I won't even try to write it up.

That bit about the latest k-lite codec pack fixing crashing brings up some very interesting threads when I google for "fallout 3 sound codec", including this very interesting thread, which includes this awesome quote:

I have found the primary issues causing the CTD and other crashes. I’ve sent 3 e-mails to Bethesda and no responses. My Computer Science Engineering department took a shot it. I purchased 320 copies and gave them the weekend to figure it out. Here are some of the results;

1.) Fallout 3 Installer installs an older version on C++ Visual 2005 that appears to affect the way the vidcard driver communicates with the game.

2.) Fallout 3 Installer installs a Beta release of DOTNETFX3.0 (.NET Framework 3.0). For users of .NET Framework 3.0 SP1 or even SP2 (Service Pack of the Framework not the OS), upon restarting their system (when changes take place), their game will be quite unstable.
Users of .NET 3.5 or Vista should have even more random crashes.

3.) Fallout 3 Installer installs a non Plug’n Play DRM device manager (not driver but a manager) that doesn’t like any 3rd party codecs (ie K-Lite, WinAMP, etc) and will usually see a CTD when a Hardware codec comes online. This usually occurs when interactive audio (client controlled speech) initializes (ie baby walking to daddy).

4. Fallout 3 Installer installs SecuROM Root kit as well as 8 hidden non Plug’n play virtual drivers. Owners with more than one Optical drive or a sata drive may encounter random drive access issues. Also, Imaging software or any software that may use its own ASPI drive (ie NERO, Roxio, Daemon, ISO, etc.) will have one of the 8 virtual drivers causing the system to do a random CTD. Reason why clients using a cracked EXE don’t experience the same volume of CTD as those who bought the game. However, the SecuROM root kits are still on the system and active. Once the SecuROM is also purged from the system, 60% of the crashes disappear. Unfortunately, they must remain on the system in order to play the game as they are part of the EULA.

5.) Fallout 3 also has its own built in MP3 codec coupled to its DRM to protect MP3’s on the DVD (in game). Unfortunately, the codec was never tested fully with hardware decoders like those of an X-FI. This can be varied by the lack of a hardware audio switch in the game options.

6.) Fallout 3 has 14 memory leaks that we found. Most are small, but there are a few that are quite large. Some areas of the map, the memory counter just spins at over 100 MB/sec. Most memory leaks are around 5 to 10 MB/sec.

7.) Fallout 3 video graphics buffer needs to be adjustable in the options and an automatic cache purger installed for cards over 512 MBs as well as linked buffers from SLI and crossfire cards. I’ve seen areas where names on the screen start to disappear and all you see are “Input Text Here” instead of V.A.T.S. or range or etc. The cache doesn’t get dumped on some maps. Most games dump their cache when a map reload occurs. This can be noticed when fast reloads occurs from map changes. Most users will just see their graphics card run out of memory (CTD and stuttering).

8.) Most games were fault free with a basic XP Pro SP2 reload, and only Critical updates and latest stock drivers. Installed the game and played it error free for nearly 4 days. Upon a system restart, lots of errors showed up. This means that Fallout 3 significantly changes the operating system. Far beyond reasonable accounts as all you can do with the system in not to play MP3’s, watch movies, make a CD or DVD, or play other games.

Hopefully, Bethesda will address the issues more than 100,000 people are having.
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All of those hinky things explain a hell of a lot.

Another big fix mentioned several times in that thread is that resetting key mapping controls to default can fix crashing problems. So many WTF's about this game.
 
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#7 really makes since to me. I always thought my GPU was just running out of memory because performance would slowly degrade.

Anyways, it's pretty sad the game is in this poor of shape after so long. None of the patches really addressed crashes, just implemented support for DLC.

#1 also makes sense, since the version of driver you use really seems to make a big difference with stability (newer Nvidia drivers causing more problems than older ones).
 
Fallout 3 has 14 memory leaks that we found. Most are small, but there are a few that are quite large. Some areas of the map, the memory counter just spins at over 100 MB/sec. Most memory leaks are around 5 to 10 MB/sec.
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You'd really have to try to get a 100MB/sec leak. The idea that Bethesda can pull it off unintentionally is absolutely astounding.
 
phide said:
You'd really have to try to get a 100MB/sec leak. The idea that Bethesda can pull it off unintentionally is absolutely astounding.
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I would normally completely agree with you if this game didn't have anywhere near as many problems as it has. There's something seriously wrong with it.
 
Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying I doubt it. Just the scale of it is astounding. Leave it to Bethesda to do unintentionally what an adept programmer would struggle to do intentionally (assuming he were particularly malicious).
 
phide said:
Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying I doubt it. Just the scale of it is astounding. Leave it to Bethesda to do unintentionally what an adept programmer would struggle to do intentionally (assuming he were particularly malicious).
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Bethesda has made an art out of releasing ridiculously buggy games. If there were a Razzy's for games every year Bethesda released a game they'd "win" the award for "must buggy game of the year". FO3 would have "won" two years in a row thanks to the DLC.
 
bigdogchris said:
I don't remember Oblivion being buggy. I didn't play it much though.
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Was Oblivion buggy? Did the Waltons take too long to say goodnight? Did Elmer Fudd have trouble with his "r"s?

Here's over 1,800 Oblivion bugs unpatched by Bethesda.

What shocked me was that they did even WORSE with Fallout 3. I didn't think they could do any worse. Only this time, they abandoned the product even faster.
 
Strange, I've manged to beat Oblivion without running into any major bugs and only a couple of crashes the whole time I played. I've played FO3 probably half way through and only had a major problem with a crash every time when entering the DC tower, which went away after I upgraded graphic drivers. I played these games in Vista and Win 7 64-bit on the sig rig. I dunno, upgrade drivers and bios, kill all background apps, remove OCs, and apply game patches is all I can think of.
 
It's like the ultimate prick tease, if you'll excuse the pun. That's what a Bethesda RPG is whether it be Fallout, Oblivion, or Morrowind or any of their other games. Amazing stuff that you want to get immersed in but you're going to pay a price.
 
I'm using:

- Windows 7 Ultimate x64
- Latest nVidia 8.17.11.9621 drivers (Used latest drivers for 4870x2 which was running in the system as of a week ago)
- Fallout 3 patched to 1.7
- All DLCs
- Multi-core Fix set to 2 (See here: http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1033390052&postcount=207)
- Large Address Aware fix (Allows F3 to use more than 2GB of RAM if needed)
- FOMM (Fallout Mod Manager)
- FOSE 1.1b9 (Fallout Script Extender)
- Archive Invalidation
- FO3Edit (Renamed to FO3MasterUpdate.exe)
- BOSS 1.4 for Fallout 3 (Better Oblivion Sorting Software)
- Roughly 170 mods

...and don't have crashing issues.

Another part of the reason is the way the mods are installed. Here's what I do:

1. In FOMM, click on the button labeled 'Toggle Invalidation' to remove the invalidation bit.
2. Open Package Manager and add a mod. You can add several at a time but it is not recommended.
3. Close Package Manager Window and then the FOMM window.
4. Run FO3MasterUpdate and close window when it finishes.
5. Open FOMM, click on the Toggle Invalidation button to enable the bit.
6. Close FOMM.
7. Run BOSS
8. Open FOMM and run Fallout 3.

The above procedure has always worked for me. Unless, of course, the mod was buggy to begin with.

It does seem to be a lot of trouble to install each mod but if I don't have crashing issues than the effort is worthwhile.
 
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