Fallout 3 crashing thread

It's crashing for me right when I enter the town of Megaton. I did remap the VATs key, so perhaps that's the issue. Hopefully Bethesda is quick with a patch.
 
C McCarter said:
Just a Heads up I was able to fix the problem by turning off the GX mode in the Xonar menu.. I hope that helps

Colin
Click to expand...

Is this for Fallout3, FC2 or both?

To be honest the crashes in FO3 seem isolated to the computer terminals for me, so I'm not too picky about losing EAX for that.

Thanks for the info though!
 
Eggothewaffle said:
Fallout 3 for me is crashing randomly every 10-30 minutes. It's not even crashing, but the screen is frozen while the music still plays. After that happens, I have to ctrl-shift-esc to force quit the Fallout 3 process.

It's really annoying :[
Click to expand...
I'm having this exact problem and have not yet determined a solution. I have been googling like mad in hopes that someone has already solved it, but I haven't found anything.

Let's compare rigs, see if there is something in common.

I'm running Vista x64, ATI 4870 512mb (790/1100), Catalyst 8.10, X-Fi Titanium with 2.17.xxxx drivers, on a GA-EP45-DQ6 motherboard driven by a Q9450 @ 3.20 GHz (400x8).

EDIT: I've got 4GB DDR2-800

Also, I had a weird installation dialog related the Visual C++ / dotNet 3.0 during installation. Oh, and I'm using the Steam version of the game.
 
Gigas-VII said:
I'm having this exact problem and have not yet determined a solution. I have been googling like mad in hopes that someone has already solved it, but I haven't found anything.

Let's compare rigs, see if there is something in common.

I'm running Vista x64, ATI 4870 512mb, Catalyst 8.10, X-Fi Titanium with 2.17.xxxx drivers, on a GA-EP45-DQ6 motherboard driven by a Q9450 @ 3.20 GHz.

Also, I had a weird installation dialog related the Visual C++ / dotNet 3.0 during installation. Oh, and I'm using the Steam version of the game.
Click to expand...

I've got the exact same problem too, music-still-running crash let's call it.

my rig:
- Vista 64
- 4gig
- Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R
- Q6600 stock
- 8800gt stock
 
Well, there goes that theory.

Maybe the audio is still the problem, though. I'm not sure.
 
Could be... I'll try upgrading the onboard audio drivers on mine tonight.

I've already tried the ffdshow audio filter exclusion thing on the first page, no go
 
I don't think it's the audio because I'm running it through a professional audio interface.

Oh, I also got that weird installation dialog as well about Visual C++/dotNet 3.0.

Since Gigas-VII is using an ATI card and pookguy88 and I are using Nvidia cards, it probably has to do with Vista x64 and it must be a separate problem from what other people have been encountering.

Glad to know that I'm not alone here :)

Are both of you F5ing as often as I am?
 
Eggothewaffle said:
I don't think it's the audio because I'm running it through a professional audio interface.

Oh, I also got that weird installation dialog as well about Visual C++/dotNet 3.0.

Since Gigas-VII is using an ATI card and pookguy88 and I are using Nvidia cards, it probably has to do with Vista x64 and it must be a separate problem from what other people have been encountering.

Glad to know that I'm not alone here :)

Are both of you F5ing as often as I am?
Click to expand...

What professional audio interface?

And yes, i'm F5ing like a mofo
 
Eggothewaffle said:
Audio for me comes from my E-MU 1616M.
Click to expand...

That's a creative product, though. Professional or otherwise, it might be related. Also, professional audio equipment is notoriously bad at handling gaming, because it is designed for one thing really: recording. If my band and I recorded more often, or were turning a profit, I'd be running a similar solution, but for now my X-Fi does a good job there too.

That's not the point, though. Let's get back to figuring this out. Are we all running Vista x64?

I read something about Winamp and .OGG associations being a problem for the game on the Bethsoft boards. They suggested associating .OGG files with WMP. I don't know if this has anything to do with crashing, though, because the solution seemed to fix a bug where voices weren't being heard.
 
Personally I think Fallout 3 crashing is a combination of issues. The one crash where you start a new game is an audio problem with certain sound cards and even a combination of certain sound cards and Vista. You notice there is very little customization for sound for the PC version (like not being able to choose which device or even how many channels) because I think it was kind of an afterthought for them. I managed to get mine running by using my headphone (2.0 channels) sound card. I am thinking driver related (game drivers) not being able to support 5.1 audio.

Then during the game, there was a certain area in a certain time of day where I would just constantly crash (near the Family subway, at sunrise) where I'm thinking there is some sort of other bug right at that moment. I fixed this by fast traveling immediately after my last save and came back at a different time of day.
 
Gigas-VII said:
That's a creative product, though. Professional or otherwise, it might be related. Also, professional audio equipment is notoriously bad at handling gaming, because it is designed for one thing really: recording. If my band and I recorded more often, or were turning a profit, I'd be running a similar solution, but for now my X-Fi does a good job there too.
Click to expand...

You are correct in that it is a Creative product but I have *never* had any problems playing games with it. Whether it's Crysis Wars or Far Cry 2 at the highest settings, this thing is just amazing for gaming..

Gigas-VII said:
That's not the point, though. Let's get back to figuring this out. Are we all running Vista x64?
Click to expand...

That seems to be the case.

Gigas-VII said:
I read something about Winamp and .OGG associations being a problem for the game on the Bethsoft boards. They suggested associating .OGG files with WMP. I don't know if this has anything to do with crashing, though, because the solution seemed to fix a bug where voices weren't being heard.
Click to expand...

I'll try that out and see if it changes anything.
 
Guys, sorry to hear all of your troubles. I have no idea why , but I am running fine. I can alt-tab ect.. I have a very similar setup to folks that are having this problem.

My specs :
Abit AB9 Quad GT
C2D @3.6
HD4870 (latest drivers 8.10 i think)
2GB RAM
Onboard Sound

Hang in there yall, i'm sure a patch is on the way.
 
My crashes have been relatively infrequent until now. I've gotten to a certain point in the main storyline and I simply cannot continue in it during certain key dialogue scenes before the thing crashes. I don't know if this forum has spoiler tags. If it does, I'll use them if me being more specific about where I'm at in the game really matters.

Yup, I'm also using Vista 64.

Hardware: Intel q9650, 8800GT 512, Creative X-Fi soundcard, Asus Maximus Formula, 4 GB Ram, latest Bios and updates all the way around on everything.

I did get the K-lite codecs and set that properly. I also fiddled with a handful of suggested tweaks from the Oblivion guide that match Fallout 3. My next step will be reset that. ini and see if that helps.

EDIT:
^^ (Resetting any config files and such back to normal got me past this one hump for now.)

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1360204

^^ I'd done a few things mentioned in this thread.


EDIT: Nope, still crashing albeit at a latter point than what I was before.
 
I have had 1 crash since I started playing it, averaging about 5-6 hours a day. And the only reason it crashed was I alt tabbed out and it didn't like it.
 
[H]ea\/y B;1033245133 said:
I have had 1 crash since I started playing it, averaging about 5-6 hours a day. And the only reason it crashed was I alt tabbed out and it didn't like it.
Click to expand...

Yeah, this game hates ALT-TAB big time.


I'm going to do something stupidly simple and see if it helps: I'm going to restart my computer and come at it clean and see what that does for me.

EDIT: Didn't make any difference. I'm stumped. I guess I can't really play this game much more until a patch. What a shame...

http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=892770&st=80

^^ Plenty of threads like that out there and on their boards. We're not alone, folks! ;)

Bethesda is usually pretty good about patches and such.
 
I just got the game. I thought I was spared from the crashing issues because I was able to play it for about 1.5 hours. But now it keeps crashing when I approach certain characters, walk to certain places etc. It's always the same thing that triggers the crashes each time - same line of dialog, same location or the same action.

Why did they bother putting landmines in the game when some locations or actions are "mines" in themselves, bringing up the standard Windows crash message and exiting the game? It's no ffdshow/K-Lite issue because I've already excluded Fallout3.exe from those and like I said, the game was stable up until I exited the vault.

These types of crashes, triggered by certain events in the game like a line of dialog or walking into certain locations, are very common in Oblivion, especially when running mods. The solution is to disable individual mods and change the load order until the crashes go away. But with Fallout3 I'm obviously not using any mods so that can't be the problem.
 
I've been having my own problems with Fallout3 locking up, not crashing the system, I can alt-tab out and wait for it to minimize, then tab back in and it'll run again, for a little while...

I thought I'd put all the suggestions I've read from various places into a single place... Obvious options are newer/older video drivers, but this didn't help me at all, neither did enabling or disabling eax on my X-Fi.

Vodei codec is apparently a possible cause of problems, so I uninstalled it, and all my freezing issues went away. Now Fallout3 won't close without being forced closed, but at least it's not freezing... one problem at a time.
 
I tried it again this morning and I've resigned myself that it's time to go play other games until a patch or some kind of workaround comes along. :(
 
the only crash i've had is if i listen to any radio station.. after a while when i go and Sleep i tcrashes..

i'm so glad they ahve lots of auto-saves in the game .. it saved me about 2 hours worth of playing..


so i basically just don't listen to the radio (too bad IMO)
 
H-street said:
the only crash i've had is if i listen to any radio station.. after a while when i go and Sleep i tcrashes..

i'm so glad they ahve lots of auto-saves in the game .. it saved me about 2 hours worth of playing..


so i basically just don't listen to the radio (too bad IMO)
Click to expand...

^^ I wish my problem were that simple and isolated.
 
Q-BZ said:
^^ I wish my problem were that simple and isolated.
Click to expand...

In the process of trying to fix my initial crashing problems, I have:

0) disabled ffdshow for 'fallout3.exe'
1) updated my motherboard bios.
2) enabled dotnet 3.0 optional elements.
3) disabled those same dotnet 3.0 optional elements again.
4) associated .ogg files with windows media player.
5) tinkered with 'FALLOUT.INI' for several hours, trying different combinations of settings.
6) Enabled Catalyst A. I. (I normally keep this disabled because it can make certain apps crash).
7) tried different settings in my X-Fi control center.

None of these things have helped. All the while, everything else on my rig works just fine.

I have noticed that my X-Fi does sometimes almost seem to crash on its own but never in games. It tends to happen while I'm using firefox, especially with youtube. Basically, until I reboot, or change the current audio mode, the card will SCP (static, crackle, pop). The SCP becomes especially bad during high-CPU utilization.

Fallout 3 is causing my audio to get stuck on a particular sound (probably the length of the buffer or something) and repeat it until I either reboot or try to change X-Fi mode. If I try a mode-change, the card will report that the device is in use and the mode can't be changed, but fallout3 will already be closed. From there, the sound will work again as normal, but the mode still cannot be changed until I reboot.

I've never had any other games cause these sorts of problems. What could be the problem?
 
tpfaff said:
Alright guys, using vista x64 oblivion would always crash on startup for me, well what do you now, fallout does the same exact thing, I can't even play the damn game.
Click to expand...

I have both Oblivion and FO3 installed to Vista64 and don't have this issue at all. I sometimes get a crash when exiting to Windows is all. What sound card and video card you you have?
 
Gigas-VII said:
In the process of trying to fix my initial crashing problems, I have:

0) disabled ffdshow for 'fallout3.exe'
1) updated my motherboard bios.
Click to expand...

Done these.

2) enabled dotnet 3.0 optional elements.
3) disabled those same dotnet 3.0 optional elements again.
Click to expand...

Don't know what this is. Haven't done either of these things.

4) associated .ogg files with windows media player.
5) tinkered with 'FALLOUT.INI' for several hours, trying different combinations of settings.
6) Enabled Catalyst A. I. (I normally keep this disabled because it can make certain apps crash).
7) tried different settings in my X-Fi control center.

None of these things have helped. All the while, everything else on my rig works just fine.
Click to expand...


Done most of these things to a degree. Frankly, I know there's nothing wrong with my rig whatsoever but the game so I haven't killed myself over it. ;)

I have noticed that my X-Fi does sometimes almost seem to crash on its own but never in games. It tends to happen while I'm using firefox, especially with youtube. Basically, until I reboot, or change the current audio mode, the card will SCP (static, crackle, pop). The SCP becomes especially bad during high-CPU utilization.
Click to expand...

To my own pleasant surprise, X-Fi with Alchemy has worked perfectly for me in Vista 64.

Fallout 3 is causing my audio to get stuck on a particular sound (probably the length of the buffer or something) and repeat it until I either reboot or try to change X-Fi mode. If I try a mode-change, the card will report that the device is in use and the mode can't be changed, but fallout3 will already be closed. From there, the sound will work again as normal, but the mode still cannot be changed until I reboot.

I've never had any other games cause these sorts of problems. What could be the problem?
Click to expand...

That's odd. Obviously I trust you've updated all relevant drivers?...
 
, ou
Gigas-VII said:
In the process of trying to fix my initial crashing problems, I have:

0) disabled ffdshow for 'fallout3.exe'
1) updated my motherboard bios.
2) enabled dotnet 3.0 optional elements.
3) disabled those same dotnet 3.0 optional elements again.
4) associated .ogg files with windows media player.
5) tinkered with 'FALLOUT.INI' for several hours, trying different combinations of settings.
6) Enabled Catalyst A. I. (I normally keep this disabled because it can make certain apps crash).
7) tried different settings in my X-Fi control center.

None of these things have helped. All the while, everything else on my rig works just fine.

I have noticed that my X-Fi does sometimes almost seem to crash on its own but never in games. It tends to happen while I'm using firefox, especially with youtube. Basically, until I reboot, or change the current audio mode, the card will SCP (static, crackle, pop). The SCP becomes especially bad during high-CPU utilization.

Fallout 3 is causing my audio to get stuck on a particular sound (probably the length of the buffer or something) and repeat it until I either reboot or try to change X-Fi mode. If I try a mode-change, the card will report that the device is in use and the mode can't be changed, but fallout3 will already be closed. From there, the sound will work again as normal, but the mode still cannot be changed until I reboot.

I've never had any other games cause these sorts of problems. What could be the problem?
Click to expand...

indulge me for a second,

I had crashing every 5 minutes in the beginning of the game. I combed the bethesda forums and came out with a list of things to correct to get fa3 from crashing. Before I list the things I changed; I know the securom has some blame in these issues. Some issues may be genuinely Bethesda's mess. I haven't had one crash since i did the following

removed all emulators( i think this is the biggest problem with the game, at least it was with Oblivion)
removed all plugins from nero
Reverted video codecs back to defuault( I am on basic vista codecs right now)

There are also issues with directx in Vista, specifically direct sound.

My build
Vista ulitimate 32bit
E6600
8800gts 640
audigy 2 zs
4 igs of ram
intel 975x chipset

If this doesnt help you guys, you may need to camp out at the official forums, hopefully you guys can find a fix for your issues there.
http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/
 
Eggothewaffle said:
Those with the music playing but video stopping crash might want to bookmark and check this thread:

http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=894046&st=0
Click to expand...

Additionally, I decided to run the game at a windowed resolution (1440x900 I believe) instead of at native fullscreen (1680x1050), and I still got the crash...But this time, I got actually got an error dialog to pop up!

Description:
A problem caused this program to stop interacting with Windows.

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: AppHangB1
Application Name: Fallout3.exe
Application Version: 1.0.0.12
Application Timestamp: 48d194b3
Hang Signature: 23c6
Hang Type: 0
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Hang Signature 1: 7007f5e07190ea61ac6b9f0c2af62441
Additional Hang Signature 2: cfdf
Additional Hang Signature 3: ea7f00a12f8d3c3c87ee147c876f224d
Additional Hang Signature 4: 23c6
Additional Hang Signature 5: 7007f5e07190ea61ac6b9f0c2af62441
Additional Hang Signature 6: cfdf
Additional Hang Signature 7: ea7f00a12f8d3c3c87ee147c876f224d

Can those of you who are getting the music playing, everything else frozen crash try this out and see if your error dialog matches mine?
 
Folks, there's nothing wrong with your systems so you may as well stop trying to reinvent the wheel.
 
So far I've had 9 or 10 hours of gameplay, and only had one crash. That was when I came out of my house in Megaton and hit the doors to enter the wasteland, I got a CTD with no error message. Started up the game, did it again, no problems.

I did have another "crash" that was always common to Oblivion. This was the "hit exit game, game unloads, error message comes up while it's closing". Never seemed to make a difference since I had already saved my game and was exiting anyway.
 
The weird thing is, I can play this on the computer I'm using to type this up now (7950gt, Intel Bad Axe 2 mobo,onboard sound) but my brother's computer gets the constant crashing and it's running an Asus P5B board or whatever it's called and an Asus 4850. Weird.
 
Eggothewaffle said:
You are correct in that it is a Creative product but I have *never* had any problems playing games with it. Whether it's Crysis Wars or Far Cry 2 at the highest settings, this thing is just amazing for gaming..
Click to expand...
E-MU and Creative drivers are done by separate groups and have very little in common.
Where Creative's drivers are often considered a POS, EMU drivers are one of the things E-MU's pride relies on.
There is just no comparison between the two.

EDIT: on topic, I got FO3 on steam and can't even get past the launcher, I get this in the app log:
"Faulting application fallout3.exe, version 1.0.0.12, faulting module fallout3.exe, version 1.0.0.12, fault address 0x00225070."
And the "bethesda log" video is where I crash.
I tried all the codec solutions, and all the possible emulation solutions (Though I'm pretty sure secure rom isn't in play on the STEAM release. I've googled, and read most of the Bethesda forum, I'm stumped :( .
I'm using 4400+ X2 , 2 GB Ram, 8800GTS 640mb, Nforce 4 Sli chipset, Audigy 2 ZS and XP 64.
I mailed them, we'll see what happens. For now I'm playing FC2....
 
the problem is with their graphics and/or the drivers, since stability changes drastically when you turn off things like vsync and AA. I would blame nvidia since their drivers suck now, they got many more problems than this. but ati people are having problems too so who knows. running the game on an 8800gts with settings all maxed out and vsync off with no AA it's pinned at around 100 fps. as soon as I turn any of that on it starts dipping below 30, and single digits when using vats before crashing. with the 180.43 drivers it stays stable with 2x AA and no vsync at around 80 fps but still crashes once in a while, that's my tradeoff for now till someone puts out a patch/driver.

also I think nvidia screwed something up in their 180.43 beta. it fixed the crash on quit bug for me but it still crashes once in a while in game, something is wrong with off screen surface scaling which I'm pretty sure is important for the game's graphics, since any time I try to play video in the os using overlay rendering the scaling is all messed up. as soon as I switch to something like vmr9 it all works fine, so something is definitely wrong with nvidia drivers.

altcon said:
E-MU and Creative drivers are done by separate groups and have very little in common.
Where Creative's drivers are often considered a POS, EMU drivers are one of the things E-MU's pride relies on.
There is just no comparison between the two.
Click to expand...

the problem is creative still got their grubby fingers in everyone's os through openal and eax. openal is a standard everyone uses now, since it's hardware agnostic, that's why creative took over the development pending their imminent obsolete hardware. which also gave them a chance to use it for keeping eax alive, now we have to have eax installed too since creative somehow kept the standard going with devs, and they made it compatible with all hardware. this way people who have no creative hardware in their machines have to have some creative drivers installed either way. they played it smart, and now we all have to suffer from their incompetence.
 
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