Fallout3 Starts Now, But Freezes

[KarlMonster]

Windows 7 Pro x64 (6.1, Build 7600)
E8400 Wolfdale 3.0 GHz
ASUS Rampage Extreme
8192 Mb RAM
ASUS EAH 4870x2 ATI Radeon
Bigfoot Killer M1 NIC
ASUS X-Fi (licensed from Creative but not in a useful way)

When I first installed Windows 7, I installed Steam and FO3 almost immediately. I had problems getting it to start at all until I discovered that ASUS Gamer OSD conflicted with it, and uninstalled that program. I think FO3 worked after that, but I don't remember clearly. I think I was more involved with STALKER at the time. Recently I've tried again. I installed FO3, and it didn't work at first. I still had K-Lite codecs packs installed, but that didn't seem to matter. I hunted for another conflicting program, but after removing a lot of fluff programs, FO3 still didn't work.

FO3 seems to have serious codec issues. I checked my Media Player settings, and FO3 was listed as "Do not use ffsdshow for", so that was right. (Its worth a look to make sure, but there is a complete list of games already there.) Then I saw another post which referenced the codec utility located here (http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Video/Codec-Packs-Video-Codecs/InstalledCodec.shtml). Its great because you can turn off the codecs one at a time to find out if one or more are causing a problem.

It took a while, but I found the one codec (MPEG-I Stream Splitter) that was causing my first problem. What's screwwy is that it is a codec that is needed for Media Player to play media files. The K-Lite codec packs do not replace this file, and I may have to dig deep to find an older version. I'll report more on that when I figure it out.

So FO3 runs properly now... but now there is no theme music at start, I'm not hearing some radio music,after about 4 minutes I can no longer control FO3 with mouse and keyboard, but FO3 keeps running without me. It doesn't seem to matter where I am in the game. It's as if the mouse and keyboard just stop working. If I was moving forward, I keep moving forward. If something was attacking me, they keep attacking me and I die. If it freezes when I'm swinging a pipe, I keep swinging the pipe. I can TAB out of the game and shut it down, but sometimes I don't have a controllable mouse pointer when I get to the desktop.

I've tried replacing the 'threaded' lines in Fallout.INI, and some more codec tomfoolery, with no results. My next steps will be changing to older ATi drivers, and re-installing mouse drivers. This kind of 'freeze' is just weird - I'm used to FO3 crashing, not FO3 continuing to run.

[Boba Phil]

I just dl'ed this from STEAM, and I have exactly the same problem.

I got as far as my 'Birthday Party' and then the game started to slow down, then just freeze. I lost the mouse and with the keyboard, I could get System Manager up, but cannot shut down the 'Not Responding' FO3. I have to CTRL+ALT+DEL and restart the puter.

I put the settings on to 'medium', then 'low', but still the same thing happens, the game plays for about 1, maybe 2 minutes, then freezes and stops responding.

I have :
Windows 7 Home Prem.
AMD Phenom 9850 Quad-Core Pro 2.50GHz
7gb RAM
64 Bit Operating System
Nvidea GTS 8800

Any help would really be appreciated.

[KarlMonster]

I no longer think that its a keyboard or mouse issue. Windows 7 assures me that my drivers are up to date - which doesn't mean anything really, since I have no way to verify that the drivers are in place. Its not a graphics card issue, either. I know because there are new Catalyst 10.7 drivers, and I ran the game AFTER I UNINSTALLED drivers, but before I installed the new drivers. Is that wild or what?

So I'm back to codecs. Or trying to figure out what happens after 4 minutes of gameplay that can cause this loss of response. Does a stack overflow?
Gametime lasts between about 4-5 minutes with shortest being 3 min 50 secs and the longest was just over 5 min - that included the chat with Uncle Roe of CC, so dialogue or menu sequences may prolong the pre-glitch time. That could mean that the freezes are not random, but doesn't do much to narrow down the possibilities.

Boba: I'm not yet certain that you're getting the same kind of freezes as I am - though I did have a single hard lock-up just after installing new video drivers. I have the old 'vanilla' FO3, and I expect that you have the Game of the Year version. I think my actual play time is significant, but when I find my fix, that may not help you if your issue is different. Character building can take a long time if you fuss over what your toon looks like. I did a quick random build because I knew I was running out of time. Can you please test how long your playable time is? It sounds like you have about 2x the play time that I do. Who made your motherboard? Since you are running a quad core, try this fix (http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1328904&highlight=bUseThreadedAI%3D1) and see what happens.

The central problem with codecs is that installing other applications can cause a change/update to a codec that FO3 may have been perfectly happy with before. The big problem is that it can be very hard to tell which application messed with your codecs.

It is too bad that nobody stickied the fixes that worked for a few people, because now those fixes are buried under 8-10 pages of forum traffic.

[Boba Phil]

Since you are running a quad core, try this fix (http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1328904&highlight=bUseThreadedAI%3D1) and see what happens.

This did the job, thank you. Seems to be running fine now.

Sorry you're still having problems, hope you sort it out.

[KarlMonster]

I've had moderate success. Meaning that something that I did worked a little, but I'm not sure what that something was. I've managed to somehow increase my average time-to-freeze from 4 minutes to 6 minutes. At this rate I might be able to play for 10 minutes one week from now.

Warning to Windows 7 users:
One of the suggested fixes is to re-install the .NET framework. Do NOT uninstall .NET 3.5 SP1 (or lower) from your system for any reason. You will have one hell of a time trying to install them again. .NET 4 can be uninstalled and re-installed fine, but all the lower versions will cause you serious difficulties. I'm still looking for a way to get 3.5sp1 re-installed so that it shows up in my list of programs.

I've updated or reinstalled DX9, Visual C++ redist, plus a lot of other fixes with no results. Re-installing .NET 4.0 just now got me a choppy playtime of 8 minutes (multiple small hangs). 6 minutes of smooth playtime might have been better.

[KarlMonster]

Disabling audio in FALLOUT.INI causes it to run fine for at least an hour - except that I can't search the corpses of about 90% of the hostiles that I kill. Its weird; I can pick up loose items, but can't 'open' raider corpses or ash piles. So I have to restart the game with the sound turned on, then I have 4 minutes to pick up loot before it freezes. I'm going to keep looking for a fix so I can play with sound.

I tried all the other fixes posted in these forums, found some other fixes that aren't even mentioned here, and uninstalled a lot of programs, but disabling the audio was the only thing that seems to (mostly) work. I tried running Creative ALchemy with FO3 (that's been reported to fix stuttering in some cases) but that cut my game time from 6 minutes to 3 minutes. I've tried editing the audio options in FALLOUT.INI; increasing the audio buffer and the cache-able sound size. I've disabled all the Win 7 codecs that it is possible to disable with InstalledCodec. Nothing has made any difference yet.

Next step is to disable the last of the Win 7 codecs if I can, and make the game use other codecs.

[KarlMonster]

Y'all won't believe this, but it works now.

The problem is that, since the last time I was tweaking it, I didn't *do* anything to make it work.

What I did do was take advantage of the weekend STALKER deal, but I installed and ran STALKER in Windows 7 x64 first to see if they would work satisfactorily. I've installed the Complete mod for STALKER, it runs fine in Win 7, and I'm still playing it.

Then I tried FO3 again today, and it works. With audio, too. Not only does it work, but the codec that I had to disable before to get FO3 to run at all - FO3 now works with that codec enabled. I haven't been getting the title music, or any of the MP3 files to play, but I expected that was part of the conflicting codec. Having the MP3 files play is an unexpected bonus.

So what's the difference?
I can't say for sure. Some part of STALKER or the Complete mod made a change to my system that FO3 likes. I can make a pretty shrewd guess though. I suspect that it has to do with either dated Direct X files, or the .NET framework. It is possible that a new version of Direct Sound (or something) that conflicts with either my audio drivers, or the codec, or both. When I installed STALKER, it may have done like most games, and installed its version of DX over existing files. STALKER was finally released in 2007, and FO3 in 2008... so it makes some sense that they would use similar support files.

Now I actually have to undo some tweaks, because the audio debugger is actually causing the game to not want to shut down...