How to fix fallout 3 freezing and crashing (worked for me win7 64 bit)

[kumoro]

thanks, and i added +rep for you

[Samurai Sue]

After trying several fixes, adding the iNumHWThreads=1 line completely stabilized my game. Thanks for this tip! :)

[AlexRiddle]

The fix worked for me as well. Thanks OP.

[Shiuman]

I have 60 hours of play, and problems started short time ago. Got freezings every minute. Tried all, nothing works.

Before hour 58, I had nothing more than eventually crashes. Now it's almost unplayable, and none of the solutions worked.

[Nahel]

The same with me, win7x64 Radeon6870 ddr3, same trying that hotfix:
http://support.amd.com/br/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalyst115bhotfix.aspx

S.O. and Game originals

[Bubba_Gum]

Should I do this even though I don't get crashes?

[madribub]

I do'nt know how to thumbs up this, but this finally got me past 1 year old and out of the vault. Thank you!:D

[Grooove]

I finally was able to play the game

thanks a Lot!!!!

[JoeB]

Should I do this even though I don't get crashes?

Probably not necessary then. If you have a dual core processor, you have nothing to worry about. This is an issue with quad cores specifically. It doesn't seem to prevent random crashes to desktop though (at least for me) but it's a LOT better than how it was before.

[Rebel4ever]

EDIT: Spoke too soon. Still crashes for me. :mad:

[Stoop!d Monkey]

I'm glad to help :)

[Bibs]

Thank you so much, it worked, finally :D!

[Nahel]

I solved the freezing here disabling 2 cpu's of my phenom 2 x4!

[chih]

I managed to get my version of Fallout 3 to work (was running fine WITH mods, FOSE, etc) after painstakingly going through all the options and checking to see which mods were breaking things (EVE and Pipboy replacers were the culprits). The opening video had issues, but it wasn't anything gamebreaking. Then I decided that one of my mods wasn't what I wanted so I uninstalled it and tried to create a new game.

NOW it's back to crashing, only this time it's when I create a new game.

I have tried:
Adding the d3d9.dll file to the Fallout 3 directory
Making the fallout3 executable compatable with old versions, run as administrator, with themes and desktop composition disabled.
Editng fallout.ini to only use two threads.
Reinstalled .NET 3.5
Running a windows update and rebooting.
Installing the K-lite codec pack, and disabling ffdshow
Disabling Games for Windows Live.
Disabled my second monitor
Updated my Nvidia driver

I know that my mod edited the beginning of the game so that could have been preventing it from crashing. But aside from trying to re-install that mod, is there anything else I'm missing?

Oh right, my system

4x Intel Core i5 CPU 3.2 GHz CPU
NVidia GeForce GTX 560Ti Graphic Card
4 GB of 1600Hx DDR3 RAM
Windows 7 x64 Operating system

dxdiag available upon request.

Edit x2:
After uninstalling and re-installing all my mods and eliminating a few more questionable ones, I got it to when the intro is finished. Then I crash when I exit Vault 101. Minimizing the resolution and setting the quality to "Low" doesn't help.

[keano312]

Thank you so much!

[ecristobal10]

hey everyone I'm thinking about buying this game but. i know ppl have a lot of problems with this so I'm just wondering if anybody manage to run this game on macbook pro late 2011 13inch running boot camp win 7 ultimate 64bit

2.8 GHz Intel Core i7
8 GB Ram
Intel HD Graphics 3000 512 MB

TIA

[Inzababa]

I have 60 hours of play, and problems started short time ago. Got freezings every minute. Tried all, nothing works.

Before hour 58, I had nothing more than eventually crashes. Now it's almost unplayable, and none of the solutions worked.

that happened to me once, problem was relate to over heating and power (as in, hardware problem)

[sN1pz0r]

Thanks so much mate. It used to freeze on me like every 1minute. I used your method and it hasn't crashed once. :)

[TheBlackPrince]

cant find this line bUseThreadedAI=0

[Peckpogydah]

cant find this line bUseThreadedAI=0

While in notepad press "Ctrl+f". A window should pop up, enter "bUseThreadedAI=0" (with out quotations) in the field. This should take you directly to it.

[chucknorris101]

so, I made the changes to the .ini file, but i still get freezes.

i7-2600k, 6970, 8gb ram, plenty of hdd...

what else can i try? i have the klite codec, i saw some people recommend it, but havent changed anything...

[Fenlnir]

I made the same changes, reinstalled, still not working.

i3-2120@3.30GHz
EVGA 430 video card
6 GBs RAM
All drivers, directx and what not are all up to date. Downloaded the codec thing, but have no idea what it needs to be doing.
Thanks in advance.

[RB_Crash]

This works but stopped working after like a week or so and I went back to the fallout.ini thing and it changed back. :s
I changed it again but don't no how or why it changed?

[RB_Crash]

now it crashes soon as I start the game....

[Torvault Deezil]

I just got the GOTY edition but it crashes immediately after I hit the "Play" button on the opening menu. I've tried the suggestions in the OP, disabling the opening video, disabling vsync, and removing Games for Windows Live.

Core i7 930 2.8 GHz
6.00 GB DDR3 RAM
Windows 7 x64 Professional
NVidia 9800 GT

I hesitate to reinstall the game because I'm not sure if Steam keeps a local copy of the installation files or if I have to re-download it. Took me like, 7 hours to download it yesterday and I'd really rather avoid that

Edit:
I read a bunch of other websites and somebody mentioned that having a second monitor could mess things up. I noticed that every time the game crashed, all my non-maximized windows were being moved over to my second screen. I just unplugged the video cable from the second monitor and the game works now. Weird but alright.

[AntarouDono]

I ran into this issue as I was entering Rivet City. It's a good thing I had thought to look at the forum while I was downloading the game. I went in knowing I might run into an issue thanks to this post. The fix was quick and easy. Thanks much for supplying it! :D

[joetruhan]

This is the third game I've downloaded from Steam that did not work properly. The other 2 are Mass Effect 1 and Vampire the Masquerade. You would think Steam would fix this problem but they don't seem to care.

[AlizarinCrimson]

I'm not sure it's actually a Steam-related problem. I had the same issue with Oblivion which in my case doesn't have any connections to Steam.

But yeah, it's quite annoying that there seems to be no solution, at least not one that helps everybody.

[ccccccccccccccc]

I crash at the "please stand by", which I think is hilarious. It really suits the nuclear wasteland theme where nothing works :D!!

[Samzig]

Does nothing for me. Still crashes all the time.

[zubith16]

I made a post like this with a few more fixes on Gamespot, but I banned and the thread was deleted. I just had to reinstalled FO3: GotY, and lost those fixes, so thanks a lot for posting this! It helps a lot.

[mass09]

This thread should be a sticky.

It is required to edit the .ini to play the game.

Why won't you replace the default .ini Bethesda?

[SniperInABush]

lol This is a fail, mine still crashs.

[sadsensei]

So I read through a few pages of this thread and did not see anyone posting about running Windows7 on a partitioned HD on a Mac. I'm not sure if that makes a difference, but I have tried the OP's fix, as well as disabling visual themes/desktop composition, and turning on compatibility mode for the Fallout 3 app (in the folder: program files (x86)/steam/steamapps/common/Fallout 3 goty/Fallout 3). I have tried all these fixes individually and separately, to no avail.

The game allows me to get to the main menu, and click "New Game," and begins to load, then crashes.

Has anyone run this on a MacBook Pro and found a fix that works?

[Johnny Bhoy 123]

OMG this game was doing my head in!It was constantly crashing and freezing.I tried your fix and now it runs perfectly, thank you so much.

[Makronette]

This worked a charm, had installed Fallout 3 on my new PC and it kept crashing when I was trying to start a new game (always as your character was being born) but thanks to this solution I no longer have crashing issues, thank you so much for this! :)

[capsela]

Fixed my crashes, sticky this thread.

[thehermit2]

This fix worked for me for a while, and I was able to get through the main game and a couple of DLCs. Then I stopped playing for a while, and when I tried to play it again this week it was crashing again. Not sure why, and now neither of the Fallout3.ini fixes mentioned at the beginning of this thread work anymore, nor does restoring the original .ini.

I was eventually able to get the game running by having it run in windowed mode instead of fullscreen. Don't know why it works, but it does. The .ini fix is still in place.

[perfectcr]

Core i5-3550 here (Ivy Bridge) Win7 64 and was having lockups every 2 min. applied the fix in the OP and it worked! yay!

[FrankG360]

I made the appropriate changes in both 'Fallout' and 'FalloutPrefs', I changed to windowed mode, and still nothing, I'm just left straggling outside of my mother's womb...I really want to play this game, please help!

[ruiptaurus]

to work in windows 7 you must do this:

Open up the .ini file located in Documents>My Games>Fallout 3. *Do not alter the one in the actual game directory in Program files labeled Fallout_Default_ini*.

This file is where the save games etc are at. You might have to turn on show hidden folders or extensions, but it is 1 of the files as soon as you open my games- fallout 3.

Look In the FALLOUT.ini find the line

bUseThreadedAI=0
change the 0 to a 1

then below it add the line

iNumHWThreads=2

and make winxp compatability service pack 3: launcher and fallout.exe

To me it worked!!!!

[RulingRura]

Thanks man!

[Rovald]

Not even finding those ini files, not a problem, I love tinkering with it, so long my pc itself doesnt get hurt, however I noticed when it installed first it gave an error away. Going to reinstall now to see what kind of error.

[pliable]

Mods/Admins: I agree with the sentiment that this thread needs to be stickied. It helped me out...just played for about half an hour with no freezes :)

[Rovald]

Tried it, survived it longer then the ~2-3seconds normally, fingers crossed. And it died, with a 800k kb. which is alot. However changing the iWin thread to 1 made it crash right away.

[omniux]

Thanks, this worked perfectly. My game was crashing during the birthing scene. Now everything runs fine.

[pirishlad]

Still doesn't work for me.....

I've tried everything I could find, nothing has helped.

Does anyone else have a suggestion that isn't already out there? As I said, I've tried everything I can think of.

[CROOOOW]

Still doesn't work for me.....

I've tried everything I could find, nothing has helped.

Does anyone else have a suggestion that isn't already out there? As I said, I've tried everything I can think of.

This worked for me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqrveIiMKsc&feature=related

[Jordan94jb]

This worked for me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqrveIiMKsc&feature=related

You mean the first post in this thread?

[CROOOOW]

You mean the first post in this thread?

Yep. lol. but people kept changing the fallout_default.ini not the fallout.ini. A visual might help some people.

[HalfMurrayLife]

Stoop!d Monkey, I will never look at primates the same way again. + Rep for you hairy sir. 6 hours straight without freezing once. :)

[Izidor]

You're the man Stoop!d Monkey.

[intensity254]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKa71cMgPJI&feature=g-u-u This is me and my friend, Peter, fixing the game in the oddest way possible.

[HalfMurrayLife]

^ WTF,,, Hilarious :D

[mikey42782]

all hail! you just saved me a ton of headaches! thanks so much!

[Razgriz2099]

So I take it its still worth it to buy the game for $12, despite the disclaimer on the games steam page.

[Irken]

I make a mistake lol

[JJDrakken]

Tagging this for future reference


JJ

[Gaugler323]

Is it safe to edit the ini file, as far as GFWL and Steam accounts are concerned?

Like... does it jeopardize my accounts to edit the ini, as if they think im cheating (which yes its single player, but i guess achievements mean something to some people)

[King_Pin999]

I don't know why this works. I don't know how this works. All I know, is that it works. All I know is that I can now play Fallout 3 uninterrupted. +rep, I only wish I could give you more.

[Zenisher]

Thanks Monkey! Using this fix stopped my game from freezing when inside the Wests' house. +Rep!

[GoodManBadTimes]

Its true it works..

++++rep for you..:)

[HasimirFenring]

Worked like charm; thanks a LOT!

[Mcshalepants]

A million thanks, dude. I got the game on sale for $5, having loved it on console. I don't have the best gaming PC, and I thought something was wrong with my computer that was causing the game to crash. Thank you so much!

[Fideous]

Thank you very much!

[BogLin]

2011
First post fixed my issue that occurred when I go back to a kid's house and would crash when going into that house.

2012
Something I noted when starting the game again in 2012 is that I was using a Steam beta update and when I got to a certain boat area or near a place near that there was lag and after opting out of a beta update (because it changed the game to French) and loading the save, there was no lag any more.

This also happened in the game Cryostasis, that lagged badly when I loaded a save and then later on after opting out of that beta update it wasn't so laggy.

[Radical_Danny]

Just got the game, and this game randomly freezes my PC at completely random times... needing a full reset.
Though before opening the fault, it never freezes as of yet... Weird...

Playing with windows 7 ultimate 64 bit with a pretty high end PC...

[UnrealEck]

Still crashes randomly during operation anchorage.

[Invader115]

Just got the game, and this game randomly freezes my PC at completely random times... needing a full reset.
Though before opening the fault, it never freezes as of yet... Weird...

Playing with windows 7 ultimate 64 bit with a pretty high end PC...

Is this before or after you tried the fix in the OP?

[davorj]

Why isn't this a sticky?

[SuperJawes2112]

Why isn't this a sticky?

It ought to be.

I got the game on the Steam sale, went all the way down to one core (as OP recommended) and I am still getting crashes. Contemplating a reinstall...

[DeWe]

I just bought Fallout 3 - GoTY from Steam and installed. But i cannot sign in to GFWL in game, it acts as there is not internet connection.

GFWL asks me to update it, i allow it then i get the following error code:

0x80072751

I have the latest version of GFWL & Marketplacee,
I have allowed Fallout 3 from Windows Firewall manually,
I have disabled Windows Composition and Runned the fallout.exe as admin,

No luck.

[left me dead]

I just bought Fallout 3 - GoTY from Steam and installed. But i cannot sign in to GFWL in game, it acts as there is not internet connection.

GFWL asks me to update it, i allow it then i get the following error code:

0x80072751

I have the latest version of GFWL & Marketplacee,
I have allowed Fallout 3 from Windows Firewall manually,
I have disabled Windows Composition and Runned the fallout.exe as admin,

No luck.
you need to install that windows messenger thingy i never use it just install it then update your microsoft net frame work then install games for windows lives that worked for me plus if this all fails use windows live desabler from fallout nexus

[Mysteria9]

Very nice, thanks for posting! +rep

[dmanthey]

Why isn't this a sticky?

My thoughts exactly. Bought it during the sale and had it crash multiple times, which is very annoying. This fixed everything, not a single crashes in hours! Huge improvement over randomly crashing every few minutes.

[Gamefriendly]

I kept freezing fight before leaving vault, to be more exact It kept freezing while the vault was opening and the 2 guards came after me. I applied this fix and I was able to get past it. I haven't had time to play much farther than that yet but so far so good.

For anyone's reference:
Game settings were on ultra
Comp Specs:
Win 7 Pro 64bit
i5-2500k 3.3
8GB RAM
GTX 580

[IsaacHunt]

My game freezes randomly...or rather it is almost like my input into the game ceases. I cannot move or use any keyboard key but the games moves on until I die or it goes into 3rd person. I have to shut the game down and restart but it always happens again a little later, around 5 mins.

Tried the fix in the OP, running in WinXP compatibilty mode, running as admin, windowed mode etc

OS is Win7 32bit.

[tehweave]

Alright steam users. Ponder this inquiry:

(I run windows 7 64 bit)

I had the game freezing every 10 minutes no matter what. I applied the fix to limit it to 2 cores, it worked and I put in a good 30+ hours into the game.

I didn't play for a year, then started up again. Fix was still applied.

After about an hour of gameplay, whenever I got into serious combat (multiple enemies, usually using the hunting rifle or combat shotgun) the game would crash. An error message would appear saying "Fallout 3 has quit unexpectedly" and windows would try to find a solution.

So I did the fix to limit it to 1 core. Glitch still occurred.

I then uninstalled the game, and started playing it again. Full 4 cores in use. For a while, it worked. Then, after around 30 minutes to an hour of playing, anytime I went into vats, the game would freeze. Music still playing, sound effects still going, video completely frozen, and I can't move/exit without opening up the taskbar.

So here's my conundrum. Without the fix, the game freezes, with the fix, the game crashes.

Any ideas?

AMD Phenom II X4 965 Processor. 3.4 GHz.
8gigs of Ram
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570

[awzum]

Well, it looks like this fixed it also for me. At least no crashes so far.

But now my problem is that Steam doesn't say I'm playing this game and therefore it won't count the time I've played :D Purely "cosmetic" but if anyone knows a fix for this.. feel free to share.

[vetriz]

Bump. This worked along with this video posted by a user a few pages back.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqrveIiMKsc

If this doesn't work for you make sure you're following instructions accurately.

You absolutely have to make sure you're editing the files in the Documents/My Games/Fallout 3 folder. NOT the files in the programs/Steam folders! This got me the first time. After changing the files in the My Games folder, I immediately noticed a difference. My game still crashed, but not as quickly and not as often.

If that doesn't work, download the .dll in the video above. This didn't really make a difference to me at all, but it's worked for some people.

If that still doesn't work then download the patch from the video above. This was the nail in the coffin here for me, along with the file edits mentioned in this thread. After manually downloading and installing the patch, my game ran smoothly. No errors or crashes what-so-ever.

[SuperJawes2112]

I tried a fresh install, which didn't work, but then I went back to OP's fix and set cores to 4 (the physical number of cores on my machine) and things work just fine now.

So maybe your best bet is to try that with physical number of cores or less until you get things stable.

[Quemical]

Just got the game a few days ago. 1st time played it for 1 hr fine. 2nd time, froze on me 2 times in less than 20 mins. Did the stuff from OP + disabled "Steam community in game" and so far no crashes after playing another hour :)

[mlbfan]

Thanks OP!

[azaraxzealot]

Doesn't work at all for me. I still freeze on startup and I have to shut down the game with the task manager every time.

[BDelacroix]

I still have this crash (GOTY version) every single time I reach the crossoards in Springvale facing the school.

[hellcat5]

you might also want to mention if you run an i7 4 core processor, you can set iNumHWThreads=2 to 4 for better performance.

[Killjoy]

Sadly for basically the last week, I've tried all of these, and none of them work, even reinstalled and kept trying. It got to a point where the game wouldn't even turn on once I click start on the launcher. I ignored the game after that, hoping more tips would come in as days go by, and by then bought other games, notably GTA4 (A game also sadly enabled with GFWL). Since me and my brother wanted to play online with it, we have to use it. So I got the idea that since I am forced to use it for online play in another game, I decided not to use the disabler and didn't bother doing all these other tips cause I was tired of doing it for the fifth time and this time, the game starts. It goes perfect, no crashes, nothing gone wrong, and I just made it out the vault.

I still say for those who wish, use all these tips and try to get GFWL off of it, but for those who need it for other games anywho or after doing all this, it still won't run, just try to run it like if you just downloaded it. (I mean for those who like me didn't even try the game first and went straight to adding all these so we wouldn't have to see errors but in the end, did)

[aegix drakan]

:D You have another satisfied player! That fix worked perfectly! Now I can actually play the game. Thank you.

[-Elite-]

Didn't work. Gets to the "Please Stand By" screen and pops up the GFWL bar and then freezes. Any suggestions? Like maybe compatibility settings?

Windows 7 64-bit
AMD A4 3300 2.5 GHz Dual Core
ECS A55F-M2 Motherboard
4Gb AData RAM
XFX GeForce GT 240

EDIT: Ok, running as Admin fixed it.

[Captain943]

Doesn´t work for me. Still get random freezes / fps frops to 0 :(
Which is kinda strange, because i played the game a year ago just fine on Windows 7.

[Bsct1988]

Might not be the same issue, but this fix didnt work for me.

Still occasionally crashing on initiation of combat.

[-Elite-]

Ok, it stopped working again after I played for 2 hours. Back at the same point in time that it freezes at.

[Naetholix]

Guys, if you're still crashing at "New Game" and you've tried the .ini fix, try this:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2831127

[maciej433]

Ive got Win 7 64 Bit and i changed the fallout.ini and still doesnt work. i tried literally everything i could find.

2600k
8gb Ram
gtx 570

[redscab69]

Works!! Spot on

[cheezey-E]

I have a problem, i start the game up and before i can even start a new game it crashes, i did what you said to do, but it still crashes. I really want to play this game as i have it on ps3, and want to play on this, any help would be nice

[Dark_Novak]

Works great now. Thanks a lot man

[callipygous_tp]

Dam, a two year old post with relevant data. The quad-core issue seems to have been the demon I was dealing with and the succinct details in the first post cleared it all up.

Cheers

[Hedy Lamarr]

Dam, a two year old post with relevant data. The quad-core issue seems to have been the demon I was dealing with and the succinct details in the first post cleared it all up.

CheersSame here. Belated +rep to OP.

[lawbreaker]

thanks this fixed it for me.

[Wigoff]

Actually it still crashes for me even with this fix :(

[AGMZ]

So far, so good. Thanks

[eullogy]

looks like I found a different crash/freeze bug.
seemed to have the same problem, crash on game start, tried the suggested fix, did not work.
hoping for alternate solution.

windows 7 64bit
intel i7 920

--EDIT--
the game asked me to turn something off about the .NET framwork or something in the control panel. problem is the prompt only came up once and I can't find what it was talking about.

[Ralelen]

Thanks for the fix! (Win7 64bit).

[jacozard]

non of this fixed my crash issue.

oddly enough the game runs fine in windowed mode, but refuses to run fullscreen

[Darcalus]

looks like I found a different crash/freeze bug.
seemed to have the same problem, crash on game start, tried the suggested fix, did not work.
hoping for alternate solution.

windows 7 64bit
intel i7 920

--EDIT--
the game asked me to turn something off about the .NET framwork or something in the control panel. problem is the prompt only came up once and I can't find what it was talking about.

same thing happened here. it won't let me install .net fw 3, none of the fixes posted here has worked thus far, except for jacozard's suggestion of running in windowed mode.

[Prodigy258]

Thanks, this worked!

[wreyjm]

Worked for me, thank you! Had to use iNumHWThreads=1 though. Setting it to 2 didn't work.

[jacozard]

i think i may have found another possible fix (aside from the windowed mode wich isn't a fix).

Try to disable your second monitor if available, this allows me to play fullscreen without mayor hickups

[BigNutter]

i think i may have found another possible fix (aside from the windowed mode wich isn't a fix).

Try to disable your second monitor if available, this allows me to play fullscreen without mayor hickups

In many Windows Vista and Windows 7 PCs, "Windows Key" + P can bring up a menu to disable/enable screens, without going in to the Set up menu every time you want to Disable the second screen.

[tygrandis]

Hmmm, when I went to fix this in mine the changes had already been made and it was still giving me framerate stutters and crashes. I guess its outrageous of me to expect a game I pay for to work reasonable well rather than be plagued by constant game crashes. I can't even get past the birthday party when starting a new game.

I have this problem as well on the autosave and on the actual save (Which i did right after shooting the radroaches with the bb gun) i sometimes get past getting the photo taken and then it will freese while getting examined by the dad. I've tried everything that I could find and I posted a thread about it, so any help will be gladly accepted.

Thanks.

[Tzelph]

I've just got the one monitor. I've tried several of the fixes, from setting the cores from 4 down to 2 down to 1. I've tried it in Windowed mode (got a good 20 minutes of play as opposed to the 2 minutes). I've got Windows 7. Have I missed any fixes that might do me some good?

[AlizarinCrimson]

Have you tried running it in compatibility mode, for instance Windows XP SP 3? And disabling desktop composition?

[Armorinarmor]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKa71cMgPJI&feature=g-u-u This is me and my friend, Peter, fixing the game in the oddest way possible.

This worked. This ♥♥♥♥ing worked. I can't believe it. I can't access my Steam Overlay, but I'll be damned if it didn't work. Thank you, Mr. Intensity. The original solution posted didn't help, nor did uninstalling/reinstalling the game, updating drivers, whatever. None of that worked. Renaming the .exe (Not the launcher, oddly enough. It says there's corrupt files if I rename and try to launch that) worked. Thank you! :D

[Jay221]

I tried this still didn't work ♥♥♥♥ing game.

[Cantpikusername]

Try this. This worked for me after everything else failed.


Go to this website- http://fallout3.nexusmods.com/mods/17209#content And download the file "Fallout 3 Intel bypass package."

This video will give you step by step instructions on what to do after you have done so- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwb0Gijaj2A

Good luck.

[BlackAndHuge]

+REP, I LOVE YOU. Was about to just call it quits, and go buy this game for PS3. After hours of reading bull♥♥♥♥ fixes, this did it in one quick edit :) Thank you, Thank you, THANK YOU!

[JMantis]

Thanks for the fix! +rep :)

This really needs a sticky btw!

[KaL976]

Edited the My Docs/My Games/FalloutGOTY/Fallout ini & disabled the aero desktop.
No crashes as yet & alt-tab works again.

Win7x64pro. Quad i7. N460GTX primary@1920x1080 260GTS second/third. 6GB DDR3.

[Wex67]

Alright I tryed this and it didn't work.

I run windows 7 64bit

Its a crappy computer but it should work.

The computer is a Acer Aspire 5733Z-4633

[Jreid]

where do I find the line I need to edit? There's a lot of text to wade through...could someone give me a heading to look under? Thanks.

Btw, my game crashes as soon as it starts to load a new game. Anyone else have that exact problem?

[Bambamshablam]

I have i5 quad core laptop with windows 7 64 bit and tried just about everything to get this game to work. Downloaded the intel graphics workaround, edited ini doc, manually ran only 2 cores from task manager, tried renaming exe, ran as admin, ran under windows xp service pack 3 compatibility mode, and also disabled .net framework. The game crashes around when you are born and I usually don't get much further than choosing my gender. I'm not sure if makes a different but I have the regular Fallout 3 as opposed to the GOTY edition. I would really love some feedback since I know this is widely regarded as one of the best games around.

[pa1kia]

I was hesitant to buy Fallout 3 after reading of the crashing with windows 7 thing, but after trying this it worked perfectly. Thanks for posting this up.

[7thHanyou]

I have i5 quad core laptop with windows 7 64 bit and tried just about everything to get this game to work. Downloaded the intel graphics workaround, edited ini doc, manually ran only 2 cores from task manager, tried renaming exe, ran as admin, ran under windows xp service pack 3 compatibility mode, and also disabled .net framework. The game crashes around when you are born and I usually don't get much further than choosing my gender. I'm not sure if makes a different but I have the regular Fallout 3 as opposed to the GOTY edition. I would really love some feedback since I know this is widely regarded as one of the best games around.

I have GOTY on Steam, but same situation here.

I finally did load up a file I had from right before I exited the vault--but the game doesn't go more than 5 minutes without freezing.

I've tried every single fix. None of them work.

[AlphaOmegaOne]

Fallout3_pref.ini NOT Fallout3.ini

[Bambamshablam]

Fallout3_pref.ini NOT Fallout3.ini

What do I edit under pref? There is no bUseThreadedAI since that's what I changed in the other file.

[IDefectedI]

I wish this fix would work but nothing is working .

i7 3770k
GTX680
SSD
16GB

[Wendigo]

I wish this fix would work but nothing is working .

i7 3770k
GTX680
SSD
16GB

What is this fix you are talking about?

There are alot of fixes in this thread here.

[Killaer911]

I have windows 7 64bit and i cannot find the file. I have started the game and everything. i edited it under fallout_default but i dont think this is the right file. help

[Mansa]

Fallout3 would run for me a couple minutes then it would hard crash (i.e. screen went blank, I heard the last sound effect echo a few times, Windows 7 was long gone, could only turn off the computer). I tried the most common suggestions (edited ini, downloaded dll, tried compatibility mode, disabled themes and desktop composition, ran as admin, ran the game in a windowed mode). This extended the uptime from 2 minutes to 5 minutes, at which point I could get to the next stage of the vault, save and then restart there after the computer rebooted. Then randomly, without changing any additional settings it, it stopped crashing and I played for 2-3 hours at a time over a 24 hour period. I then made the mistake of turning the machine off. When I turned it back on, it went back to crashing every 5 minutes. I then tried the other suggestions (uninstalled all codecs, installed K-lite codec pack 32bit AND 64bit, made sure ffdshow had an exception for fallout3.exe, stopped using auto/quick-saves, Large address aware enabler for FO3, etc. etc.). I then ran across the idea of checking the temp on my CPUs and my GPU. Sure enough my graphics card was overheating, exceeding 105 degrees Celcius (220+ Farenheit) at 5min of gameplay (no matter what I was doing, but especially when I moved to a new area). The failsafe would then kick in and turn the GPU off. I must have ran it that hot 20 times trying different configs before I realized it was overheating, and I probably did a ton of damage to the GPU in the process. When I opened up the case, it looks like the fan had stopped working awhile back. Problem finally identified. The whole thing was pretty fried after a couple days of Fallout with metallic dust scattered everywhere. Looked like it belonged in the game.

Anyway, I had wracked my brain for days trying to figure this out, and was going crazy. I write all this now in case this turns out to be a similar problem to what anyone else is having. BTW, I used RealTemp (http://www.techpowerup.com/realtemp/) to do the measuring, though in order to get the GPU temp I had to add a new line in the RealTemp.ini file that was simply:
GPU=1

Since I was running the game in windowed mode, I could see the temp reading in real time. That's how I knew it was getting up to 105C. I couldn't resurrect the fan using nVidia's nTune Performance Tool; it was long gone. On to NewEgg to buy a new card...

Hope my pain is instructive to at least someone else out there!

[CitrusCannon80]

This still doesn't work for me, somebody please help:mad:

[Mitch349]

This still doesn't work for me, somebody please help:mad:

Same here, edited the file but it still crashes within 30 seconds of starting the game.

[stealthking95]

worked for me, awesome!

my hardware:
-Intel i7 2600K
-Asus HD Radeon 7970 DirectCUII
-12gb HyperX DDR3 @ 1600Mhz

and software:
-AMD Catalyst 12.8
-Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit

[yenwoda]

Working beautifully for me. 40+ hours of gameplay w/1 freeze vs. always freezing at some point during character creation. Windows 7 home 64-bit. Is OP a wizard? I think he might be.

[DaAtte]

Can't find fallout.ini :(

[Aracella]

Hey! This really worked for me when I started playing Fallout 3. That is until I started modding it. :T Do you have any problems with FO3 with this fix and mods by any chance?

[Jack McFist]

I have done so much to try and get this game to work. It used to, then I strayed away from it. now it will, without fail, crash when I try to start a new game. I have tried every fix in this thread and from multiple others, from IT friends, from youtube and nothing works and I'm starting to get despondent about it.

[Snake Liquid]

Thank you so much for this fix!

I can, in fact, confirm that this does work for Windows 8 as well! I just had to get a new computer, and was able to get Fallout 3 to work with the Live disabler, but was not able to run ArchiveInvalidation to get my mods to work. Thanks to this, that is no longer an issue. All my mods are running smoothly, and the game is working great.

[BlackoutBrad]

So I was like raging because I spent money on something that wouldn't work but THIS FIX IS AWESOME. Game runs perfectly now. Thank you so much.

[xybolt]

i'm impressed about this solution. i never didn't think about the multi-core problem. Since i've applied this solution, i didn't experienced freezes, while i had freezes during combat / entering cells / ...

a big thank for you ! :)

[Samzig]

This doesn't work. No change at all.