Help: Fallout 3 Crashes

domthecondom

domthecondom

domthecondom

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Hi guys.

I am trying to replay thru Fallout 3 and try completed it before New Vegas is out.

I managed to get out of the vault but when I get to Megatron it randomly crashes when I am indoors.

I am on Windows 7
Patch 1.7
My GFX is a ATI 5870 on catalyst 10.9

Can anybody help?

Cheers
 
u tried deafault clock speeds if ur a overclocker as fo3 can be quite twitchy to overclocks.

btw megatron is transformers so i assume u ment megaton:D
 
I had this problem. It is a common one and i cant remember what i did to fix it but a google should solve it.
 
bigjimmyauk said:
u tried deafault clock speeds if ur a overclocker as fo3 can be quite twitchy to overclocks.

btw megatron is transformers so i assume u ment megaton:D
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Absolutely my advice too, FO3 seems to pick up tiny instabilities! Probably because it's such an unstable game once patched, somewhat ironically.

You can hit the Bethseda Forums, you and a bazillion other people complaining about technical issues. Good luck with that!

You can also try a new game to see if that crashes too. FO3 regularly corrupts its savegame files, so you could also try loading a few saves back to see if it does the same. Then you know if that's the problem.

Failing that, reinstall unfortunately.
 
Unfortunately however good fallout 3 is, it is probably the least stable game ever created, there are dozens if not hundreds of random bugs and crashes that remain either unfixed of unexplained, some have been fixed by the modding community but the majority are just unfixable because no one knows what causes them.

Your best option is running the game unmodded, not overclocking ANYTHING and making sure every driver for every piece of hardware you own is up to date, including sound cards.

Also as Alexhull says, for some reason reinstalling can actually fix random crashes, no one knows why.
 
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Fallout 3 also has issues with triple/quad core cpu's. I managed to halt the random crashes by editing the ini file.

So if you have you have either of the above try the following.

Find the line in your fallout 3 ini file bUseThreadedAI=0 and change it to 1 - then add on the next line iNumHWThreads=2.

Worked for me.
 
That sucks :( mine crashes a lot on the xbox, seems ok on the PC with patch 1.5. Hope you get it sorted, it truely is a fantastic game (I'm also playing it through again before New Vegas)
 
Huddy said:
Fallout 3 also has issues with triple/quad core cpu's. I managed to halt the random crashes by editing the ini file.

So if you have you have either of the above try the following.

Find the line in your fallout 3 ini file bUseThreadedAI=0 and change it to 1 - then add on the next line iNumHWThreads=2.

Worked for me.
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Does that affect performance at all? (besides stopping the crashes)
 
alexhull24 said:
Does that affect performance at all? (besides stopping the crashes)
Click to expand...

No hardly noticeable at all unless ur running extreme texture mods.

Most of my steam version errors were fixed by verifying integrity of game cach or just re-downloading the game. Game saves are kept even after uninstalling so u can pick right up were u left off. Most of my crashes were due to overclocked gfx card and switching from a 5770 to a 5850 which took a whopping 5 reinstalls to sort itself out.Lost or crashes can be caused just by looking at certain angles. Best advice i give is to quicksave every few minutes and hard save every 15-30 minutes that way if u do CTD you can resume pretty much were u left off.

I'm just hoping we don't get these same issues in new vegas hence while i'm waiting a month or two to see what the community has to say about the game.
 
As per Huddy's post. I had the exact same problem that you had crashes especially in enclosed areas on the below rig which is more than enough to handle it.

I changed the ini file like he said after much forum trawling and it did the job, still crashed on occasion (once per day instead of once everytime i tried to move indoors).

This was only about 2 months ago, probably the most likely fix that will work tbh.
 
I don't have much to post in regards to fixing the OP's issue. I hear there's unofficial fan made patches out for the PC version which may do the trick if you can find the right one.

What I was going to say was Bethesda seem to be a right bunch of ******** when it comes to issues like this which are well documented on message boards yet they still refuse to admit or believe there's a problem. For example the incredible slowdown that a lot of users experience on the console versions of the game, I had to play through the latter parts of Mothership Zeta on the Playstation 3 at around 7-10 fps, it was painful. I've also had a lot of freezes and crashes when using the PC version. It was admittedly fully patched so maybe that was the problem but still, you'd think with the amount of evidence there is of these problems that Bethesda would at least apologise.
 
Hi Guys,

Cheers for your answer I will give some of these a go and report back later.

I ran this game on my E6850 and my 4850 with NO Crashes when I first bought it.

As I am on a fress install all my drivers are up to date.

Could it be Cat 10.9?

I will report back when I tried some of the fixes posted here. I finnish work at 4 so can't do anything before that


hehe and yes i did mean megaton :D and not megatron

Cheers

Dom
 
domthecondom said:
Hi Guys,

Cheers for your answer I will give some of these a go and report back later.

I ran this game on my E6850 and my 4850 with NO Crashes when I first bought it.

As I am on a fress install all my drivers are up to date.

Could it be Cat 10.9?

I will report back when I tried some of the fixes posted here. I finnish work at 4 so can't do anything before that


hehe and yes i did mean megaton :D and not megatron

Cheers

Dom
Click to expand...

Just thought you don't have asus smartdoctor installed anywhere do you? As this program stops fallout 3 working at all on my system
 
Huddy said:
Fallout 3 also has issues with triple/quad core cpu's. I managed to halt the random crashes by editing the ini file.

So if you have you have either of the above try the following.

Find the line in your fallout 3 ini file bUseThreadedAI=0 and change it to 1 - then add on the next line iNumHWThreads=2.

Worked for me.
Click to expand...

Does this disable 2 cores?
 
then add on the next line iNumHWThreads=2.

the number represents how many cores u want the game to use so if u set it to 1 it would use 1 core etc etc i believe setting it to 0 uses all available cores
 
domthecondom said:
Hi guys the bUseThreadedAI=0 and change it to 1 - then add on the next line iNumHWThreads=2. helped a lot Cheers again :D no crashes since
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Yep this is the one that worked for me, I still had about a crash once per day which i decided i could live with but it solved 99% of the issue.

Enjoy the game :)

I realised today i have accidentally (no sarcasm) booked off 9 days after the release of New Vegas, I had no idea what I was going to do (probably CivV) but this is the perfect excuse to get the game
 
domthecondom said:
Hi guys the bUseThreadedAI=0 and change it to 1 - then add on the next line iNumHWThreads=2. helped a lot Cheers again :D no crashes since
Click to expand...
Wish I new about that, at one point I had to take my saves to my work pc with a Nvidia in it(I was using 4870 at the time), installed it there to complete the Tranquility Lane level! Then got totally fed up with it when it started the same at point lookout and chucked it.
 
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