Fallout 3 Message Board  

i just got this game and downloaded the patch for it but it still crashes like crazy. i have a new Dell xps 420. it shouldn't be crashing on a new pc like that. any ideas would be nice.

What video card did your order with it?

If it's one of the ATI HD cards that Dell shows on their webpage, that could be the problem. They only offer them in 128 and 256mb models and Fallout 3 requires a 256mb card minimum.

Mine crashes insanely too...I've read on other websites it does this. You could try disabling ffdshow if you have it (Start > all programs > ffdshow > audio configuration/video configuration (do both). Here you will see a list of programs next to a box that says "don't use ffdshow in". Type in fallout3.exe if there is nothing there, and if there is, separate them with semicolons. [;].

Download the Unofficial Fallout 3 Patch here: Link

Download the SecuROM patch if you are using emulation tools (Daemon Tools, Alcohol 120%, etc) Link

Doing that toned the crashes down a bit for me, but they're still there. If I find any other remedies I'll post them.

[Edited by Ho-Oh2224, 2/28/2009 6:24:47 AM]

I tried those fixes (good advice and I thought it would work)but it didn't make any difference to my game. Fallout 3 still crashes after only 1-2 minutes (pretty severe) which is frustrating because I'm nearing the end of the game.

Is there any other fixes I could try, like would disabling MS Live sort the crashes out and what is the best/safest way to do this? Thanks


Vista comes up with this error...

Description:
A problem caused this program to stop interacting with Windows.

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: AppHangB1
Application Name: Fallout3.exe
Application Version: 1.1.0.35
Application Timestamp: 49381c2b
Hang Signature: 23c6
Hang Type: 2048
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Hang Signature 1: 7007f5e07190ea61ac6b9f0c2af62441
Additional Hang Signature 2: 041e
Additional Hang Signature 3: 629d3276ff56c3fc6f747fbdcc5ab4cc
Additional Hang Signature 4: 23c6
Additional Hang Signature 5: 7007f5e07190ea61ac6b9f0c2af62441
Additional Hang Signature 6: 041e
Additional Hang Signature 7: 629d3276ff56c3fc6f747fbdcc5ab4cc

Sorry, I don't know how to disable Live. Everything I posted before was a compilation of things I found on a few forums yesterday, so that's all I know. The only thing I can think of is to reinstall, but keep your saves. :/

yeah, I wish I had a dollar for every time fallout 3 has crashed, I would retire and be able to play games all day every day.


Anyway, the only way I found to stop this game from crashing so much was to lower the AA and AF settings. By default Fallout 3 set my system to High Detail with AA (AntiAliasing) set to 4 Samples and AF (Anisotropic Filtering) set to 8 Samples.

I halved these, I set AA to 2 Samples and AF to 4 Samples.

Now at least I can play the game longer then a few minutes.

I also just found that if you turn down the water transparency by a lot it helps. I haven't tried that because when I disabled ffdshow I get maybe one crash every two hours.

I found that it did help, btw its called Transparency Multisampling so I just turned this off completely. Also turned off Depth of Field, AA 2x + AF 8x = no more constant crashes, just every couple of hours like you. I did also do another OS tweak but I'll leave that out because for some people it may cause serious issues if you don't backup your OS often and I don't want to get flamed.

The above basics should work and install Fallout Mod Manager to make sure any mods are unticked. I found that I can do without mods which may be causing 'some' of the crashing.

I'm starting to enjoy this game again so thanks for the tips here everyone

[Edited by FMTopFan, 3/1/2009 4:28:13 PM]