Fallout 3 crashes

[d00d]

Edit: As its from Steam, its up-to-date (patch 1.7.0.3).

 

Well, I have some free time coming up so I thought I'd download Fallout 3 from Steam and give it a try as I've heard nothing but good things, and want to play New Vegas later.

 

I downloaded and played it for a while but after you get out of the vault and into Megaton, the first town (actually, there were a couple in the Vault too) I've been experiencing crashes. Mostly random, but frequently when I'm entering or exiting an area (passing through doors/load screens).

 

Looked into it and apparently the biggest culprit is "ffdshadow", and adding it to the exception list helps - but I don't have this on my machine (its a fresh build, I know pretty much everything thats present on it). Updated to the newest drivers (which have performance increases for F3) - still no luck, although improved.

 

I've also tried turning the settings right down, lowering the resolution, disabling AA and AF, running it in windowed mode (all recommended), still no luck.

 

Also I'm not using any mods, cracks, no no-CD exe's (its from Steam) and I'm not using any interfering programs such as trainers or the console. No overheating detected and the system was recently degfragged, and I defragged the game cache files too.

 

Thanks in advance for any help, guys. Spill your brains out, I'll try all your solutions out when I get home on Monday.

 

Specs:

Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit

Abit IP35 Pro motherboard

Q6600 @ 2.4GHz

4GB OCZ Reaper DDR2 @ 1GHz

Palit GTX460 2GB

500GB Seagate Barracuda (installed on with OS and Steam)

1TB Samsung Spinpoint (nothing related here)

[Wolf68k]

Did you do any of the normal other things like virus and spyware scan, reg cleaning, chkdsk /fix, system defrag?

If it's a game that requires you to be connected to the net like AC2 is, it might crash due to some network issue. AC2 did that to me a few times. It just exited out and no crash report.

Speaking of which you don't mention anything about any kind of crash report; whether there is or isn't one and if there is what it says.

 

Have you checked the Steam forums to see if anyone else is having the same issue? Same for the game's official forum.

[d00d]

I've seen this thead on the Steam forums, but the problem is after I finish at work here, I'm out of the city for the weekend and won't be able to try it until Monday. I was hoping anyone with similar experiences could gather their ideas and I'd try them one by one en masse when I get back Monday.

 

I regularly scan my system and defrag it, did it a few days ago. But after the problems, I did a set of full scans again, nothing came up.

 

There's no network connectivity (as part of the single player campaign, as far as I'm aware) but I've also tried taking the LAN cable out and completely disconnecting it, while setting Steam in offline mode - no luck there either.

 

Sorry about the lack of description with the crash, I guess its more a freeze. The game just locks up the display, no background sound plays - just a total lockup. I have to kill it in the task manager to exit, no crash reports follow.

[kaptainkoolkat]

Are you using windows 7

[The-King]

You have a quad-core processor, that's the problem, Fallout 3 (along with Oblivion) were designed to only work well on dual-cores and are only capable of utilizing 2GB of RAM (look for Fallout 3 RAM Booster for a fix to that) and anything more than that and the game becomes buggy as all holy hell and crashes regularly. There should be a way through the BIOS to disable two of your cores and as far as I've read that's the only real way to fix the issue (though with the abundance of mods I wouldn't doubt there being some other fix floating around somewhere).

Edited October 29, 2010 by The-King

[d00d]

Oh dear God. Please tell me that's not true. That's the worst hardware design I've ever heard of. =p

 

Edit: leaving this here, relevant.

http://www.sevenforums.com/gaming/20199-fa...-quad-core.html

 

On a train at the moment. Delayed like there's no tomorrow.

Edited October 29, 2010 by d00d

[anus]

I don't know about the quad core issues with Fallout 3, but why not try disabling two cores in Task Manager and then running the game?

 

I myself had complete system lockups with Fallout 3 before, but that was because I had overclocked my card to speeds that Fallout didn't seem to like. If I take the speeds even a few MHz above what I have now, it locks up. Doesn't happen in other games.

[d00d]

Just to tie this thread up:

 

I tried disabling two cores, that didn't help at all.

 

I tried what was in the Steam thread I posted (downloading and installing 32 and 64 bit k-lite codec packs) and it seems to have done the job, no problems from 90 minutes gaming.

 

Thanks for your contributions, guys.

[Function-X-]

I really had a lot of problems with FO3, bad performance, weird artifacts, windows font turns purple after playing for a long time...

Game is optimized like crap in my opinion.

But anyway see if this helps, Click.

Found it a long time ago while searching for some mods, just incase .

[GTA3Freak-2001]

So does this issue with quad cores also relate to New Vegas? If so that would explain why I've been getting pretty average fps in New Vegas despite my old PC running Fallout 3 much better. That's a serious issue if true, my current system is like twice as capable as the old!

[d00d]

Well I played for a good few hours last night after I disabled two cores and had the codec packs installed. After work today, I'll try re-enabling all the cores and see the effects.

 

Even if it doesn't affect me, it is an issue that people are having.