FALLOUT 3 : Crashes and freezes in game??? Different from others

I have been trying to find someone out there with the same problems as me in Fallout 3, but have not found anyone.

A lot of people say that they find checkered squares, but I haven't encountered that. When I open pip-boy, or VATS it has a chance of completely freezing, no squares, just a frozen screen. The background music continues to play, and there is no sound loop if I just shot or what not. I cannot ALT + TAB out, ALT F4, WINDOWS + D, WINDOWS + M, CTRL + ALT + DEL, anything. Basically, I have to restart.

And that is only sometimes.

Other times, it will just crash. The Fallout window will just close immediately, going to desktop, as if nothing had happened. Everything runs fine.

And then sometimes it crashes and messes up the desktop. It will crash, and the resolution will be like 640x480, and color all messed up, similar to when you first install windows without any drivers. There will also be a Microsoft Error report saying Fallout 3 has encountered a problem and closed. After pressing Don't Send, I just restart the comp and the res and color is back to normal.

I have never encountered a time where it has crashed with squares everywhere.

It appears to be random, but NORMALLY happens when I do something In-Game, like open pip-boy 3000, or go into VATS, similar to what others have said.

I have EAH4870 ASUS (which I am now regretting after all these FC2, and fallout crashes), 6600 intel quad, mobo is p5ql-e, 2 gigs RAM.

I doubt it is my card overheating. The fan on it is working fine, and my case has two fans, both pretty close to the card. There is no lag as well. Havent checked fps in fallout, but my fps in fc2 is above 40's and in crysis its low 40's.

My drivers are all up to date, I updated them maybe 2 days ago.

I would not be surprised to hear if this is because of the video card, because I had the same problem in FarCry 2, which I fixed by installing the VGA hotfix 8.1.

Anybody know what to do?

Specs again: ASUS EAH4870 1G DDR5, 2GB RAM, Q6600 INTEL QUAD, P5QL-E Motherboard.

tl;dr = fallout is crashing, i have a 4870, no squares

You could always use driver cleaner 3 (free) to fully uninstall all nvidia or ati drivers. Reboot and then re-install the latest drivers and see if that helps.

Good Luck.

GPaddict

I just installed on my drivers like a week ago, HIGHLY doubt thats the problem

Qixote

I dont know what ASUS utility youa re speaking of, but it is one of the optional things like AI doctor or what not, I did not install any of the optional tools.

thanks for the insight though

on the official fallout 3 forums, there are HUNDREDS of posts of people's game crashing like crazy. There is such a huge difference in mobo's, video cards, ram, cpu's, os, etc and numerous of different types of crashes and locations. There are tons of user fixes that work for some and not others. I too am having problems but it seems we're just going to have to wait for a patch to fix this mess up.

It's a shame because what I have been able to play has been very fun so far.

zaku,

I understand that they are going to patch it, but how long will that take? IMO they should have thought about tis before they released the game.

Treflis

That comment did not contribute at all. Thanks for trying.

aschuhart

thanks for the info. Didn't know that this was so widespread.

I'll prolly check the official forums for something similar to my problems.

I have nearly identical crashes on my pc as you have on yours, and sadly it corrupts windows with that crash for me atleast.

the game will randomly freeze, background sound will keep playing (like music, wind effects, ect.)

after restart my windows will act up doing the exact same thing as the game did, randomly hangs...

Ive reformated, reinstalled all other things, works fine, installs Fallout 3 again, it crashes, and again my windows begins to hang 1-2 mins after boot up.

as said there are hundreds of people who have different problems.

but take a look at my specs and see if you have something similar specs as me, to see if we have any common things

Intel 6850 @3.00 Ghz

Windows Vista 64.bit

4gb ram

Creative X-fi Extreme audio (there are other problems with this card and fallout 3 I know)

Gf 8800 Ultra

and a Msi p33 motherboard.

Edited- Patch out very soon, in the next few days, but will only fix a few minor crashes (like crash on quitting) A major patch is bieng worked on aswell but no ETA on it.

2nd edit- diddnt see your specs untill now :s kinda odd that they have very little in common tho...

Maddie_Larkin

Thanks for the info

Our situations are quite similar, but I found that Windows does not bug up on restart. When I restart, it is as if nothing happened.

And forgot to mention in original post, i have Windows XP Professional.

Lets just hope that patch seals the deal

best of luck fixing your comp

If you have the k-lite codec pack or anything similar which uses ffdshow, make sure fallout is not being processed through ffdshow... just an idea as it has caused lots of problems if you have not checked that... I've also not had a single crash since disabing xfire, but that doesn't seem to be a widespread problem.

i have all kind of crashes.

so the first one was when i exit the game. a pop-up comes saying that fallout3.exe stoped working. what doesent matters because i already exited the game. so no problem. i played a few times with same thing for a couple of hours with no problems. then the game started to lagg crutialy when i open v.a.t.s. it hapend many times. some sort of a frezze and i cant do anything. then the game started crashing randomly in game. always the same report: fallout3.exe stoped working. it hapends randomly by time and places. i searched many forums and tried to find a solution but nothing helped.

my comp:

4gb ram

8800 gts - 512mb

amd dual core 2x2.5 ghz black edition

windows vista ultimate 64-bit

There are many people with bunch of random crashes and frezzings:

1. crashes randomly (like mine)

2.crashes when exiting the vault 101

3. crashes when your being born

4.crashes in menu

5. freezing instalation

6. freezing in vats

7. freezing with sounds and graphic glitchs.

i just read this:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Fallout-3-Patch-Coming-97223.shtml

i really hope that this patch will fixes the problem because the game is super but it doesent work for many people!

Game crashes for me are usually linked to savegames. Either autosave or quicksave. When the game tries either I get a CTD. But it has also frozen a few times at random. Such a shame. The game is so good and its ruined by this BIG issue.

pyr0m4ni4c, I have the same EXACT problem. Game freezes, music goes on the back ground, desktop resolution and color gets totally screwed up and restart of the system is the only solution. For me this is really getting to be a game stopper, I simply love playing this game. The freeze usually happen in V.A.T.S, NPC Conversations and at Random moments.

System Specs:
Operatiing System: Windows XP Professional SP2
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.40Ghz
Video Card: MSI NX8800GT
RAM: Corsair Twin XMS2 2GB
Latest Drivers on everything

I tried the ffdshow fix but did not help.

Yup i get The same bloody problem...even tho i upgraded from GeForce 6200LE to 9500GT....still no bloody luck although the graphics tons better....WHAT THIS THE FREAKING PROBLEM WITH THESE CRASHES? I want to play Fallout 3....I payed good Money for it and it crashes...even with a high standrad top of the range Graphics Card...yes i got all the drivers and stuff...but A Error has Been caused...gos to desktop...either in the low 3 color bit or standrad bit....And yes I reset too..

Damit Bathesda.........You should of let Interplay have a look at it,.....They did come up with The idea after all. idiots

I have freezing with music still playing as well. Sometimes, if I wait, it turns into a stutter and will recover after about 2-4 minutes. I get the problem under the following conditions

1) When more than one CPU AI defined scripted story in some occasional situations. ie. when entering the mother ANT in the "Those" script, but going through the hallway outside the cave quickly without looking in has no freeze/stuttering. Another example was at the super-mart where there are 3 raider guys in a patrol. Attacking them at once where they all turn on you immediately gets a freeze. But I decided to snipe from a distance so that one would come at me at a time and was able to kill each one individually as they came closer with no freezing or stuttering.

2) Quicksaving or Manual save sporadically. Deleting the recent temp save and 1 or 2 previous saves and then starting from there sometimes got me going again. I haven't toyed with waiting for a suspect really slow quicksave. Perhaps I'll wait 5-10 minutes to see if indeed this is true. Recovering from a previous or most recent save sometimes locks up the game when I select load/continue from the most recent and upon clicking "Yes" to continue loading, I get the a total freeze of at least 2 minutes. Haven't waited longer. Deleting the saved game manually and going with a slightly older save will run ok.

3) Random freezes/stuttering have ONLY happened when an opposing foe is in view who has spotted me and a 2nd or 3rd foe comes out from behind a building as such and rush me. When nobody is attacking me, I have never had a freeze/stutter problem whether in a building or outside.

Hardware specs:

Asus P5k3 motherboard, Q6600 intel CPU

EVGA 8800GT SC

4 GB Corsiar dual Channel memory

using onboard audio

3rd party fans were installed on the Video card and each hard drive. Even the memory has heat sink 2 inch long fins on them.

Case is a Thermaltake Tornado with 5 fans running. CPU at max run is 42C and motherboard at 45C.

Hard Drive Seagate 400GB, 2 1.5 GB and other external drive

My current problem is that quicksaving or saving manually freezes the game completely and requires a C+A+D to quit the game.

The most irritating thing about this whole thing is that I had Fallout 3 installed and went through the game already and loved it A LOT. One of the few games to come along in a long time that triggered this reaction in me and has resulted in this post to look for help and inform others of possible resolution of their own issues. But after a Vista crash resulting from a dead hard drive, the new install of Vista ( that is really clean with no SW installed other than MS Office and Firefox) has all kinds of problems when running Fallout 3 with this freezing thing.

Through other board entries and my own troubleshooting, I have tried the following things:

1) Using the FPS Limiter 0.2 Java app to change the frames down to 30. Seemed to work for an hour, but now no longer works and same symptons exist.

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33935231

2) Installed Vista 64 ultimate with no SW on a new partition on got the same problems.

3) Installed Windows XP Professional with all patches including SP3 with no other software and Fallout 3 froze and stuttered.

4) Installed Windows 7 Ultimate Beta and had the freezing and stuttering and now save freezing as well.

5) Installed the latest Fallout 3 patch and didn't change anything on all 3 OS installs.

6) Installed the latest Nvidia video drivers (non-beta), audio drivers and motherboard drivers.

7) Used a shortcut on the desktop rather than launching from the folder of the main executable.

8) created a managed path exception for the Fallout3 game folder and the preferences folder in the My documents\my games folder for AVG to not scan.

9) Uninstalled cleanly and manually removed all folders left, rebooted and reinstalled.

10) Manually installed Direct X 9c rather than have Fallout3 try it.

11) Tried playing windowed instead of full screen

12) Force vsync on rather than auto on the NVidia control panel for the Video Card.

13) Took into account known Fallout3 bugs at http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_3_bugs and my freezes and stuttering occurances don't match up.

14) Edited the Fallout.ini for performance with the following changes (Note: if you don't find the entries, then add them)

NOTE: Not every entry listed here is found in Fallout 3's ini, but most are.

First, locate your ini for Fallout 3. Usually at:
C:Documents and SettingsYourNameMy DocumentsMy GamesFallout3

The settings won't affect your image quality, but they do help with in-game stuttering. You can double the default values if you have 1GB of RAM, and then double them again if you have 2GB of RAM. The first two values (uInteriorCell Buffer and uExterior Cell Buffer) determine how much memory Fallout 3 dedicates to buffering these areas. You can leave these values at default if you wish, but if you have the RAM to spare, crank it up to at least the 1GB level. iPreload ****Limit determines how much RAM Fallout 3 gets to play with when it has to load levels.

Default:
uInterior Cell Buffer=3
uExterior Cell Buffer=36
iPreload****imit=26214400

1GB of RAM:
uInterior Cell Buffer=6
uExterior Cell Buffer=72
iPreload****imit=52428800

2GB of RAM:
uInterior Cell Buffer=12
uExterior Cell Buffer=144
iPreload****imit=104857600

If they aren't already set to 1 in your .ini file, change the following settings to 1 for some preloading goodness. These settings allow the game to preload textures and other files related to where you are. Load times might increase a little bit if you do so, but the change should noticeably reduce in-game hitching.

bBackgroundLoadLipFiles=1
bLoadBackgroundFaceGen=1
bBackgroundCellLoads=1
bLoadHelmetsInBackground=1
iBackgroundLoadLoading=1
bBackgroundPathing=1

If you happen to have a dual-core CPU, enable the following settings. They, too, will help with loading and give slight boosts to performance.

Multithreading Tweaks:
bUseThreadedBlood=1
bUseThreadedMorpher=1
bUseThreadedTempEffects=1
bUseThreadedParticleSystem=1
bUseMultiThreadedTrees=1
bUseMultiThreadedFaceGen=1
iNumHavokThreads=5
iThreads=9
iOpenMPLevel=10

15) Edited the Fallout.ini to lower graphic quality to see if that would get rid of stuttering.

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,666878/News/Fallout_3_Better_graphics_with_ini_Tuning_-_comparative_screenshots/

16) Tried resetting codecs by using the guideline at http://nightmare2013.brashendeavors.net/

17) Some peopel have reported issues with Quad CPU's, especially the Q6600 to be suspect. Disabling the 2-4 core cpu's has no affect according to those who have tried. In fact, the computer is far less stable as a result. I didn't bother trying.

========================================

But after reading the article at http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3171464 my hopes were dashed because it became clear to me that the freezing thing is a known problem by Bethesda and that they are currently working it. Gads!Try any of these solutions. I hope they work for you. They didn't for me, but I've heard of many who have tried some of these and it worked for them.

What an awesome game that I have to stop playing. Sucks! Best wishes to you and I hope you can continue to play this screwed up wonderful game for many hours.

Game crashes for me are usually linked to savegames. Either autosave or quicksave. When the game tries either I get a CTD. But it has also frozen a few times at random. Such a shame. The game is so good and its ruined by this BIG issue.

Lord_Norr

This man is correct. Call Bethesda and they'll tell you to stop playing off your auto saves. Only time my game crash is if I Alt+tab or right after I go through a door and it auto saves.

For XP users you need SP3..

I have had it crash on me a few times...maybe 5 times out of 100+ hours of game time...( and they were driver errors)

I have had it freeze for a few seconds but that is due to the VATS issue..

Playing at 19x12, All ultra,4AA,16AF etc on a E6700, 4giig DDR2,8800GTX...

And I use GFWL all the the time...

The Game Works Fine For Me

Might be the draw distance.. if you've put it any higher than that ofthe default settings it can often cause crashing, for me anyway. I just put it to high and it worked fine. I also have a Q6600 and a 9800GTX+. lower the settings oratleast the draw distance a bit and see it it helps.

when i play fallout 3 and load my current game i end up in vault 101 and i dont have my jumpsuit and i dont have any quest objectives when i do have objectives when i played and then im level 1mcalic

i too have that same problem but it is where i am in the town of megatown i can walk around fine every thing high running above 60fps but when i go outside it just blanks out at the same resolution with messed up colors causing me too restart i have tried every fix out there and no luck.

wow, I have the same problem as mos of you, and this forum is really wierd, Just people saying their problems, bethesda needs to actually answer this. Why is their game so buggy? Why don't they release patches that ACTUALLY FIX IT?!

I'M SORRY FOR BUMPING THIS THREAD BUT I FOUND A SOLUTION!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZvZrbn3NW8

DO IT!! IT WORKS!!!

I'M SORRY FOR BUMPING THIS THREAD BUT I FOUND A SOLUTION!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZvZrbn3NW8

DO IT!! IT WORKS!!!

Flavorysoup

[QUOTE="Flavorysoup"]

I'M SORRY FOR BUMPING THIS THREAD BUT I FOUND A SOLUTION!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZvZrbn3NW8

DO IT!! IT WORKS!!!

Raxzor

I hope it works for you. And damn, 2x GTX 580s....I'm very jealous :)

[QUOTE="Raxzor"][QUOTE="Flavorysoup"]

I'M SORRY FOR BUMPING THIS THREAD BUT I FOUND A SOLUTION!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZvZrbn3NW8

DO IT!! IT WORKS!!!

Flavorysoup

I hope it works for you. And damn, 2x GTX 580s....I'm very jealous :)

I was thinking about getting a GTX 580 or 590 when I get back home. I'm in the netherlands now and I only have my laptop with me. But when I get back, new graphics card for me. My laptop has an ATI Raedon 6770 2gb. by the way, did the fix work for your fallout 3?

I was thinking about getting a GTX 580 or 590 when I get back home. I'm in the netherlands now and I only have my laptop with me. But when I get back, new graphics card for me. My laptop has an ATI Raedon 6770 2gb. by the way, did the fix work for your fallout 3?

Flavorysoup

[QUOTE="Flavorysoup"]

I was thinking about getting a GTX 580 or 590 when I get back home. I'm in the netherlands now and I only have my laptop with me. But when I get back, new graphics card for me. My laptop has an ATI Raedon 6770 2gb. by the way, did the fix work for your fallout 3?

Raxzor

awesome, I'm gonna play some too. Somehow I'm lucky in this game, I was a level 2, and went wandering into the city, found the brotherhood of steel. A guy des in front of me, so I took his stuff. I got power armor, a fat man, and 8 mininukes. Hells YEA