Fallout 3 crashing thread

This is such a piss off... I can't even advance the story because once I cross some invisible line around the Memorial, it crashes automatically, no matter in what direction you approach.

If it weren't for these incredibly stupid technical issues, this would be one of my top 3 games of all time.
 
Skunt said:
Well, this game is unplayable for me. Once I make make it out of the vault the game will crash on me every single time. The furthest I can go is Springvale. I tried reinstalling the game, applying the patch and starting a new game and the same thing happens. I tried excluding fallout from the ffdshow audio and video config as well. The weird thing is when the game crashes to desktop, I get the usual error reporting dialog box. I hit "dont send" and then I lose my monitor signal. My computer is technically fine, just no signal to the monitor. I'm using the lastest nvidia drivers.
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Try turning the music audio level all the way down.
 
And I'm still having random CTDs to this very date post patches and everything else. BIOS and all drivers and hardware are up to date and in perfect form.

I say again to everyone: There's nothing wrong with your systems. No need to dumb down anything or turn it off. Turning down music doesn't change anything or do anything, either.

The game STILL needs to be fixed by Bethesda. That's the bottom line. There's no point or use in anyone trying to reinvent the wheel because there's simply no way to do it.

Incredible. How many weeks later after the game's release is this?
 
I got the game the first week it was out. It ran fine. Got my character up to level 10.

Decided I was long overdue for a fresh windows install. Backed up my FO3 save and reformatted. Ever since, the game freezes constantly. It's unplayable now. :confused:

This is one of the buggiest games to release on PC in a long time. The game simply needs a shit ton of patches and fixes. It's not our computers. The official tech support forum is a joke. A big wild goose chase telling people to tweak all this random bs, when the problem is the game.

I get the same error. It appears that even their Patches need some sort of testing before release too. I’ve tried the patch on the US version of the DVD as well as the updated exe from SecuROM. Get the same error on both. The patch does appear to modify some files in the Windows System folder through the Command BOX; however, it doesn’t do anything to the Game exe or anything in the directory.

I have found the primary issues causing the CTD and other crashes. I’ve sent 3 e-mails to Bethesda and no responses. My Computer Science Engineering department took a shot it. I purchased 320 copies and gave them the weekend to figure it out. Here are some of the results;

1.) Fallout 3 Installer installs an older version on C++ Visual 2005 that appears to affect the way the vidcard driver communicates with the game.

2.) Fallout 3 Installer installs a Beta release of DOTNETFX3.0 (.NET Framework 3.0). For users of .NET Framework 3.0 SP1 or even SP2 (Service Pack of the Framework not the OS), upon restarting their system (when changes take place), their game will be quite unstable. Users of .NET 3.5 or Vista should have even more random crashes.

3.) Fallout 3 Installer installs a non Plug’n Play DRM device manager (not driver but a manager) that doesn’t like any 3rd party codecs (ie K-Lite, WinAMP, etc) and will usually see a CTD when a Hardware codec comes online. This usually occurs when interactive audio (client controlled speech) initializes (ie baby walking to daddy).

4. Fallout 3 Installer installs SecuROM Root kit as well as 8 hidden non Plug’n play virtual drivers. Owners with more than one Optical drive or a sata drive may encounter random drive access issues. Also, Imaging software or any software that may use its own ASPI drive (ie NERO, Roxio, Daemon, ISO, etc.) will have one of the 8 virtual drivers causing the system to do a random CTD. Reason why clients using a cracked EXE don’t experience the same volume of CTD as those who bought the game. However, the SecuROM root kits are still on the system and active. Once the SecuROM is also purged from the system, 60% of the crashes disappear. Unfortunately, they must remain on the system in order to play the game as they are part of the EULA.

5.) Fallout 3 also has its own built in MP3 codec coupled to its DRM to protect MP3’s on the DVD (in game). Unfortunately, the codec was never tested fully with hardware decoders like those of an X-FI. This can be varied by the lack of a hardware audio switch in the game options.

6.) Fallout 3 has 14 memory leaks that we found. Most are small, but there are a few that are quite large. Some areas of the map, the memory counter just spins at over 100 MB/sec. Most memory leaks are around 5 to 10 MB/sec.

7.) Fallout 3 video graphics buffer needs to be adjustable in the options and an automatic cache purger installed for cards over 512 MBs as well as linked buffers from SLI and crossfire cards. I’ve seen areas where names on the screen start to disappear and all you see are “Input Text Here” instead of V.A.T.S. or range or etc. The cache doesn’t get dumped on some maps. Most games dump their cache when a map reload occurs. This can be noticed when fast reloads occurs from map changes. Most users will just see their graphics card run out of memory (CTD and stuttering).

8.) Most games were fault free with a basic XP Pro SP2 reload, and only Critical updates and latest stock drivers. Installed the game and played it error free for nearly 4 days. Upon a system restart, lots of errors showed up. This means that Fallout 3 significantly changes the operating system. Far beyond reasonable accounts as all you can do with the system in not to play MP3’s, watch movies, make a CD or DVD, or play other games.
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http://www.gamingnewslink.com/2008/11/07/fallout-3-patch-10015-download-and-patch-changes/
 
I just got this game, as soon as i try to leave the vault in the first level, it crashes...reallly anooying.
 
So turned down the graphics from High settings to medium setting and the game works flawlessly...but graphics sucks lol

They need to fix this
 
I'm not reading through 11 pages to see if this was already suggested, but this worked for me.

open fallout.ini in notepad
(c:\users\aaron\documents\my games\fallout3\fallout.ini)
(or for xp c:\documents and settings\aaron\my games\fallout3\fallout.ini)
find and modifiy the following two lines:

bUseThreadedAI=1 (set this to 1)
iNumHWThreads=4 (set this to the number of cores your cpu has)

Hopefully this helps, I'm not sure where I originally found it, but a quick google of the lines brought me to this page which appears to be a good reference.
http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=904778&st=40&p=13255832&#entry13255832

Goodluck!
 
It's odd that my problems with this game have actually gotten worse over time in regards to random CTD's.

I think I'm at the point now where I'm ready to just uninstall it, free up the space on my hard drive, and maybe come back to it in about 4-6 months when there are some compelling mods and maybe the game is finally fixed by Bethesda.

Just utterly unacceptable.
 
Q-BZ said:
Just utterly unacceptable.
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Start a thread on their official forum and you'll get 20 fanboys telling you that your fans are clogged with dust and you don't know how to defrag....:rolleyes:

Seriously though, the game has tons of memory leaks. I heard of people's game running fine and then crashing every 10 seconds inside Rivet City, and then back to normal out in the wastelands.

I can't play at all. Doesn't matter where or what I'm doing. It freezes up within 5 minutes of loading my saved game.
 
Stereophile said:
Start a thread on their official forum and you'll get 20 fanboys telling you that your fans are clogged with dust and you don't know how to defrag....:rolleyes:
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Yup, or you're "cynical" or "whine and complain" too much or "something is wrong with your machine." :rolleyes:

Seriously though, the game has tons of memory leaks. I heard of people's game running fine and then crashing every 10 seconds inside Rivet City, and then back to normal out in the wastelands.

I can't play at all. Doesn't matter where or what I'm doing. It freezes up within 5 minutes of loading my saved game.
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What's weird is...as time has gone by this situation has actually gotten worse for me instead of better.

I've basically quit playing it and moving on to other games. I know nothing is wrong with my machine or anyone else's and all this audio and video codec nonsense or dumbing down settings or reinventing the wheel is fruitless and pointless. None of that should be necessary and frankly, it isn't. K-Lite, FFDshow...all that is rubbish.

The only way the game gets "fixed" is by Bethesda, not everyone jumping through a bunch of hoops to try and make themselves feel better.
 
Wouldn't hurt to post a thread, or bump another random CTD thread, on the bethsoft forums under PC issues in case a dev comes across it. Seems like the common theme there is to post your dxdiag
 
i stopped playing the game about 3 weeks ago, I really really liked it and few games catch my attention like that, but then I started getting the crashes that would lockup my system and i'd have to restart, at some points It would take me 10 times or more to get past some invisible part that crashed the game. I would play for maybe an hour, and somehow find another invisible line that I couldn't get past without crashing . I pretty much gave up after the 3rd "line".
 
Q-BZ, running around the bethsoft forums and found this little tweak. It's steps 5 and 6 of a 6 step solution to this particular user's CTD problem, but the prior steps were addressing his codec pack, which I think you've already done. According to the poll, this resolved CTDs for about 1/3 of those who tried it.

Last Step (For Vista Service Pack 1 and XP Users): (Thanks to iago0)

5. Execute REGEDIT and navigate to : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management -> Double click on PagedPoolSize -> Change the value to hexadecimal = 18000000 (that's a 402 Mb paged memory file - It is quite different from your Paged File on your HDD).
- To maximize the value use 0xFFFFFFFF (auto max.) or 0x20000000 (manual max.) - That's approximately 536 Mb.
- DO NOT go below 0x0C000000 (approximately 200 Mb) aside the default value of 0.
- See HERE and HERE for more info.

For those of you who don't have that specific registry key, you can safely use HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet00X\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management where X is equal to the value of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Select -> Current, because HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet is pointing to it.

6. Close Regedit.
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I'm not sure if this has been posted, but I have read elsewhere that Fallout 3 installs a beta version of Microsoft .NET Framework and Microsoft Visual C++, which caused major instability issues. I was running it Fallout 3 on Vista, with no changes and I would CTD every 5-10 min. My computer needed reformatting anyways, so I install a clean copy of XP, and after installing Fallout 3, I uninstalled the .NET Framework and Visual C++ that Fallout installed, and downloaded the latest stable versions of both, and I can play for hours without crashing. I'm not sure if it also had to do with a clean install, and XP, but it has seemed to to work for me.
 
Finished the game, had around 20 crashes in all. Sometimes the game wouldn't load at all and I would have to retry. I think ALchemy was the cause of most of my crashes.
 
SPARTAN VI said:
Q-BZ, running around the bethsoft forums and found this little tweak. It's steps 5 and 6 of a 6 step solution to this particular user's CTD problem, but the prior steps were addressing his codec pack, which I think you've already done. According to the poll, this resolved CTDs for about 1/3 of those who tried it.
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Can't hurt to try this at some point. Thanks for the tip. :)
 
Adding iNumHWThreads=2 (despite running a quad) finally solved my freezing issue. Now I only get the relatively rare CTDs that others have mentioned. At least the game is behaving tolerably and I was finally able to enjoy it worry-free.
 
Like I said before most of the stuff seems to be related to vista or mostly 64 bit OS's. Of course your OS shouldnt dicate whether or not you can play the game but this type of stuff happens with games of such immense size and scale and with the literally tens of thousands of pc configurations there is only so much you can do.

I have had no issues after 150 hours of playing standard windows xp sp 3 install w/ onboard audio.
 
I discovered a fun CTD tonight. In the anthill next to the shire whatever bridge I can cause a crash. In the room where the ant queen is there are some magazines for the assault rifle laying on the ground in the back. If I try to pick only those up it CTD's. If I pick upa psycho from the very same spot it runs fine. Quite the nifty little feature. -_-
 
toymachineman19 said:
I'm not sure if this has been posted, but I have read elsewhere that Fallout 3 installs a beta version of Microsoft .NET Framework and Microsoft Visual C++, which caused major instability issues. I was running it Fallout 3 on Vista, with no changes and I would CTD every 5-10 min. My computer needed reformatting anyways, so I install a clean copy of XP, and after installing Fallout 3, I uninstalled the .NET Framework and Visual C++ that Fallout installed, and downloaded the latest stable versions of both, and I can play for hours without crashing. I'm not sure if it also had to do with a clean install, and XP, but it has seemed to to work for me.
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I initialy had no crashes for over a month. Then last week I started crashing (actually game would freeze and I could still hear the music playing) pretty often. I uninstalled and reinstalled. Did not fix it.

So tonight I tried uninstalling Dotnet Framework 3.5 and reinstalling that. also uninstalled and reinstalled Visual C++ 2005 redistributable and the Visual C++ x64 redistributable and son of a bitch ! :eek: I now appear to be crash free !!! woo hoo ! :D

Like my sig says I'm running Vista Home Premium 64 bit. This appears to have fixed me right up ! I just finished a 4 hour tour through the Wastelands, Megaton and Superduper Mart with zero issues.

Thanks toymachineman19.
 
Kangg said:
I initialy had no crashes for over a month. Then last week I started crashing (actually game would freeze and I could still hear the music playing) pretty often. I uninstalled and reinstalled. Did not fix it.

So tonight I tried uninstalling Dotnet Framework 3.5 and reinstalling that. also uninstalled and reinstalled Visual C++ 2005 redistributable and the Visual C++ x64 redistributable and son of a bitch ! :eek: I now appear to be crash free !!! woo hoo ! :D

Like my sig says I'm running Vista Home Premium 64 bit. This appears to have fixed me right up ! I just finished a 4 hour tour through the Wastelands, Megaton and Superduper Mart with zero issues.

Thanks toymachineman19.
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No problem man, glad to help. Hopefully it helps others too. I have no idea why Bethesda would at that to their installer. There's a whole host of other things they add, such as odd DRM for their music, and the windows LIVE thing, but unfortunately I'm not sure if there's a way around it. Oh well, that stuff doesn't seem to affect game play, it's just odd.

EDIT: Also it's comforting to hear this worked on vista x64 as well, because that is a less stable operating system than XP, so if it works on that, hopefully this will help everyone else with XP to vista, x86 or x64.
 
I was having CTDs and the occasional video stop with sound still playing. It wasn't until I updated the BIOS on my P5E to 1003 that the problem went away.

I've basically played a full 14 hours today without a single crash whatsoever. :)
 
If anyone has problems talking to Mr. Burke and then the game crashes instantly, there is a fix out there. Apparently the compressed audio files are screwed up, and this fix decompresses them.

The file is available from a torrent site, and it was included with a pirated version of the game, but it definitely fixed my crashing problem. Search for "Finalfix Skullptura Fallout 3" and you should find it right away. If you download ONLY the finalfix, it does not include any pirated versions of the game, only the hotfix for the sound crashing. Reminder, it does take awhile to unpack and install (around 2 hours at most).

The other crash I've had is whenever I try to quit the game it simply locks up and I have to reboot! Solved this by running in windowed mode, and this allows for ctl-alt-deleting to end the game.
 
Update,

A ton of people have had issues with Fallout 3. I did not originally. it was perfect for a month. Then all of a sudden it just started freezing. I tired replacing some windows files that Bethesda thought they needed to update with beta versions and that fixed Fallout 3 for 1 day. Now it's right back to the same lockups as before. I know it's not my system because Fallout 3 is the only game I have problems with out of many many games.

Looks like I'll just have to let my game cd gather dust on the shelf until Bethesda fixes the damn thing.
 
Runs flawless on laptop (vista 32 home prem)
crashes like a bastard on home pc (vista 64 home prem)

very similar specs on both machines:rolleyes:
 
Consistently freezes in the immediate area outside the Vault and requires a hard reset. I can't even get a full 5 minutes of play in before it hangs. I've played countless hours of many, many other games on this PC without a single problem so it's pretty clear that FO3 is a piece of crap at this particular time.
 
stereoD said:
Consistently freezes in the immediate area outside the Vault and requires a hard reset. I can't even get a full 5 minutes of play in before it hangs. I've played countless hours of many, many other games on this PC without a single problem so it's pretty clear that FO3 is a piece of crap at this particular time.
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Have a look at the Bethsoft forums. After hours of trawling the forums I managed to sort out most of my issues. Stuttering, crash on exit, wabbling radio, VATS slowdown, crashing inside buildings, missing save games, missing input controls etc. Still get CTD occasionally though. Pretty shoddy QA from Beth, but I'm not surprised at this. All Bethesda games have been notoriously buggy and their support with patches is a disgrace.
 
After playing this for probably like 10 hours this week.
I have:
2 crashes to desktop
1 forced reboot since game freezes
2 game freeze where it minimizes itself back to desktop and I have to kill process in Task Manager.

These are the "achievements" I'm getting.
 
spicey said:
Have a look at the Bethsoft forums. After hours of trawling the forums I managed to sort out most of my issues. Stuttering, crash on exit, wabbling radio, VATS slowdown, crashing inside buildings, missing save games, missing input controls etc. Still get CTD occasionally though. Pretty shoddy QA from Beth, but I'm not surprised at this. All Bethesda games have been notoriously buggy and their support with patches is a disgrace.
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I've been to the forums. Don't take this the wrong way as it isn't aimed at you, but I would rather get a refund than spend my personal time trying to fix a game that is clearly broken for so many people in so many different ways. I wasn't even aware of all the other problems you mention because I can't get past these freezes that occur right outside the Vault.

If I don't see a patch that fixes the crashes before the DLC arrives then I will most definitely be getting my money back. Bethesda has made a horrible first impression on me and I doubt I'll be purchasing another title from them in the future.
 
Since updating to the latest patch I'm having terrible crashing issues. The game is no longer playable. The game will normally CTD within 5 minutes of starting.

I wonder if this is a Windows Live issue as the latest patch installed it without warning. I played and completed the main quest before Xmas without Windows Live.

I was looking forward to the DLC but no point in downloading this with the game in this state.

Edit

I may roll back my Nvidia drivers to what I was using before as the latest may be the issue. I can't think of anything else that has changed since.
 
Are you using xfire when playing? There was an issue with the latest xfire update causing the game to crash when loading areas, but it can be fixed by opening a friend chat window and typing /forceupdate and restarting xfire.
 
Gabriel said:
Are you using xfire when playing? There was an issue with the latest xfire update causing the game to crash when loading areas, but it can be fixed by opening a friend chat window and typing /forceupdate and restarting xfire.
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No, I've never used Xfire. I think it's related to Windows Live somehow. I think there is a way to disable it in Fallout 3. I'll have a look around.

Seriously this game has been nothing but trouble, too many 3rd party add ons is a major factor in this
 
Yeah check your drivers. It was unplayable for me with 180.20 but the 180.22's are stable now.

spicey said:
Since updating to the latest patch I'm having terrible crashing

I may roll back my Nvidia drivers to what I was using before as the latest may be the issue. I can't think of anything else that has changed since.
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I was initially surprised that people were having so many issues. I picked it up on release and up until this last update, i was relatively crash free (vista x64, reliability monitor shows ~8 crashes w/ about 60hours into the game). since the last patch, it's gone to complete shit. i have had 13 crashes in the last two days alone, with about 4rs of gametime. not very good. loaded it up in Win7, and still crashing.

I'm going to try the ini changes and see if that helps, then the .net fixes. thanks for all the suggestions in this thread.
 
I disabled Windows Live and my crashes have decreased to around 2 a week compared to unplayable at all. I also installed several mods now and everything is somewhat stable (except Rivet City outdoors fps drops below 25).
 
I rolled back my drivers to 180.48 from 181.20 and my crashes have gone.

Played 30 minutes last night without a crash. With the 181.20 drivers I can't make 30 secs without it bombing out.
 
spicey said:
I rolled back my drivers to 180.48 from 181.20 and my crashes have gone.

Played 30 minutes last night without a crash. With the 181.20 drivers I can't make 30 secs without it bombing out.
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Same here. Rolling back to the 180.48 driver did the trick for me, so far ;)
 
i7 920
GTX 260-216 (180.48 drivers I think, MIGHT be the 181.20's @ work now, I'll update later)
Bloodrage (drivers that came with it)
onboard audio (drivers that came with it)

-ffdshow audio & video have fallout3.exe on their exclude list
-I've done some minor .ini tweaking (need to disable the loading videos & splash, faster start sounds nice!)
-rolled .net back to 3.0 from 3.5 beta (I think, haven't done much testing since doing so)
-I NEVER changed any of the key mappings, might go into the menu and reset to default for giggles though

Crash issues:
-In vault I had maybe 2 crashes? I might have even gotten through without issue.
-Megaton is generally okay, maybe 2 crashes in 5 hours?
-When heading from Megaton up past Vault 101 to (forget towns name, it's near Minefield) when I go over the hill and come upon a lone house with a few bandits attacking it I crash ALWAYS



Scanning through the thread, the audio chipsets that seem to be most bugged are:
Realtek ALC1200 (Foxconn Bloodrage)
Realtek ALC889 (most Asus boards, P5Q, P6T based; many others use this too)

I know the E-Mu had issues too, can any X-Fi or Xonar users chime in and say how they're doing? I'm curious to see if this might be a conflict with the Realtek drivers

(I also checked the Intel mb audio since I recall an Intel MB user saying they were fine, it seems to be either Realtek ALC888 or some Intel chip, thus maybe just newer Realteks have issues?)
(This in conjunction with turning the radio off helping seems to suggest that how Bethseda coded the background audio / audio layering has issues with how the ALC899 & 1200 handle layered audio)

anyways, just my thoughts...
 
Arkangyl said:
i7 920
GTX 260-216 (180.48 drivers I think, MIGHT be the 181.20's @ work now, I'll update later)
Bloodrage (drivers that came with it)
onboard audio (drivers that came with it)

-ffdshow audio & video have fallout3.exe on their exclude list
-I've done some minor .ini tweaking (need to disable the loading videos & splash, faster start sounds nice!)
-rolled .net back to 3.0 from 3.5 beta (I think, haven't done much testing since doing so)
-I NEVER changed any of the key mappings, might go into the menu and reset to default for giggles though

Crash issues:
-In vault I had maybe 2 crashes? I might have even gotten through without issue.
-Megaton is generally okay, maybe 2 crashes in 5 hours?
-When heading from Megaton up past Vault 101 to (forget towns name, it's near Minefield) when I go over the hill and come upon a lone house with a few bandits attacking it I crash ALWAYS



Scanning through the thread, the audio chipsets that seem to be most bugged are:
Realtek ALC1200 (Foxconn Bloodrage)
Realtek ALC889 (most Asus boards, P5Q, P6T based; many others use this too)

I know the E-Mu had issues too, can any X-Fi or Xonar users chime in and say how they're doing? I'm curious to see if this might be a conflict with the Realtek drivers

(I also checked the Intel mb audio since I recall an Intel MB user saying they were fine, it seems to be either Realtek ALC888 or some Intel chip, thus maybe just newer Realteks have issues?)
(This in conjunction with turning the radio off helping seems to suggest that how Bethseda coded the background audio / audio layering has issues with how the ALC899 & 1200 handle layered audio)

anyways, just my thoughts...
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X-Fi had an issue with wabbled sounds, GNR sounded underwater. Lots of crackling in VATS too.

The latest patch resolved the issues with the radio being garbled. I used ALchemy as a temporary fix but this in itself caused instability and CTDs
 
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