Fallout Studios Forums

As the title says, Fallout 3 keeps freezing on my pc. Odd is: on the older pc it run without any troubles. It freezes mostly about 10-30 minutes ingame, and can be when I interact with something, or just randomly. I patched the game, but that doesn't help.
PC specs:
XFX GTX280
Intel Quad Core Q 9550 2.83 GHz
Kingston 2GB DDR2-800 x2

I already tried WinXP compatibility mode, but it doesn't help.

Have you updated your graphics card drivers to the latest version?

The latest driver I have is from 9th February this year.

Have you checked your System For Viruses?

Last scan was about 2 weeks ago. Also, why do Tiberium Wars/RA3/Supreme Commander/FarCry2 run without problems then?

Well you definately have the specs to run it. Maybe something went wrong during installation. Try re-installing the game.

Hmm, I just noticed that my driver is old already. Downloading the new one now.
EDIT: hmm, seemed that getting the latest driver fixed it. I've been playing it since 3 o'clock and no freezing at all.
Edited by Dutchygamer, 12 April 2009 - 16:50.

Also Fallout 3 is fairly new. Turn off the compatibility mode.

I had the same problem as you. I had to rollback my video driver to an older version in order to run FO3. Google for what version you need.
Edited by Overdose, 12 April 2009 - 23:17.

The gamebryo engine is infamous for crashing randomly.
Edited by Dr. Strangelove, 13 April 2009 - 02:48.

Overdose, on 13 Apr 2009, 0:15, said:

Well, I have updated mine to the latest version and now it runs perfectly.

Okay, scrap the above: freezing is back. Any suggestions?

Ok the thing to do is update everything to the newest you can.

Directx
Graphics Card
Mobo
Sound (if indep)

Then start back dating them one at a time to the previous version if that doesn't work.

If you're running any mods, try to keep the mod count under 80 or so, you might see a drop in performance or regularity of crashes after that. This also applies to Oblivion, as it happens.

An easy way to increase performance as well as severely reduce crashes and freezing is as follows:

After opening Fallout 3, press ctrl+alt+del to go to Task Manager

On the top tabs, go to Processes, right-click on Fallout3.exe, go to Set Priority, and set it as Above Normal or higher.

When I first played it on my outdated computer, it kept choking even at lowest settings. Now it works quite well, with occasional (mostly data-related) crashes and some lag out in the Wasteland.

My system specs are as follows:

Pentium IV 1.89 GHz processor
768 MB RAM
150 GB Hard Drive (Nominally rated at 120 GB but now it's at 150 for some reason)
256 MB GeForce 6200

Be advised everything from draw distance to details was set to the low for me, but for functional and aesthetic reasons, I set textures to medium, which makes a deuce of a difference against low.
Edited by AllStarZ, 16 April 2009 - 02:24.

Dauth, on 15 Apr 2009, 20:46, said:

That should be all up to dat now, but I'll recheck that

AllStarZ, on 16 Apr 2009, 3:22, said:

Thanks for that, I'll try it.

Anyways, I'm going to reinstall the game (not before making a backup of my save game) and see what happens.

And still it ain't working... What I've tried:
-install K-Lite codec pack
-set priority to Above High
-use several compability modes and options

I just found something that may be usefull, but it involves editing ini files, which I ain't a fan of (at least, not for normal games). I'll try it and report back here.

EDIT: above fails too. It said that Fallout 3 doesn't work well with quad cores and you should edit an ini file to let it only use 2 cores. Did that, and instead of the game freezing it plain crashes with the Windows message: 'Fallout3.exe has stopped working'
Edited by Dutchygamer, 28 April 2009 - 09:01.