Fallout 3, for me, kept crashing about once every 5-10 minutes, or 15 minutes if I was lucky. I found a wide myriad of "solutions" to the crashing issues that Fallout 3 brings to the table. Only one of the possible solutions I found actually worked for me, but I'll go ahead and list the rest just in case. First and foremost, the fix that worked for me. 1) Reduce your monitor's refresh from whatever down to 60, run the game in windowed mode, and turn off AA. - Again, this is the fix that worked for me. I found that I could have AA enabled and this method would still work. Needless to say, try it without AA first and if it works, feel free to fidget with your AA levels 2) If you have FFDShow, open the codec manager and tick "Do not use FFDShow in...". From there, click on "Edit" and select your Fallout 3 executable. - I don't have FFDShow installed so I cannot verify this. After surfing some forums however, I found that this resolved the issue for a few people. 3) From my understanding there are some sound cards that aren't fully compatible with Fallout 3. Disabling 3d audio and setting the speaker channels to stereo is said to help alleviate the issue - This didn't fix the issue for me 4) Set your computer's paging file to "None" by right clicking My Computer then going to Properties, then click on the Advanced tab. Then click on the Settings button under Performance, then Advanced again and the Change button. - This didn't help the issue for me either. Though I guess it makes a little bit of sense if the game has a memory leak issue. I hope this helps. Feel free to leave feedback. Edit: Also, I'm using ATI Catalyst 8.10 for my CrossfireX setup.
Another fix is to set the display settings to Default at the launcher, though this is just a temporary fix, it does seem to work for some people.
About FFDShow... There are 2 exclusion lists. One for the audio and one for the video. Exclude fallout3.exe from both. If you still have problems (like stuttering in intervals or random CTDs and such) you might want to try the K-Lite Codec Pack. But you should only consider that if you have these problems and software like Nero or Roxio. http://www.codecguide.com/download_kl.htm Some people claim that version 2.5.7 is more stable than version 2.1.7. However, I found that version 2.1.7 is very stable in combination with ALchemy and Vista x64. That version accepts a greater range of Alchemy parameters. If you upgrade then make sure to use the default settings for ALchemy and Fallout 3. Strangely enough setting these manually doesn't work as good as pressing the Default button in ALchemy and adding Fallout 3 again. There's also a beta which you might want to try. If ALchemy still crashes then forget about it. BTW: I am using 5.1 audio and it works fine. You will need to set your speaker configuration during installation of the K-Lite Codec Pack as well. Don't forget that. On ATI systems I think the real problem of stability is not the graphics drivers, but the codecs and DirectShow filters (which the K-Lite Codec Pack can fix). I am using CCC 8.10 and have every graphics setting maxed out. I use Bloom and not HDR (which I don't like), so I cannot comment on HDR problems. I have no crashes (except for the on exit crash), the game runs smooth without any stutter and can play for hours with the above settings.
There is one problem I have with exiting the game... No matter if the game crashes or not it seems that it doesn't return the GPU and GDDR5 clock rates to idle mode (i.e. PowerPlay doesn't work anymore). I suspect that this is either a driver problem or that the game is not properly cleaning up Direct3D. To fix it I have to run another game (like Half-Life 2) and exit that. Very unhandy.
Tried both the audio and video DirectShow fix, didn't work. Have the same system as you. I'm trying to play it at default settings now, see what happens. EDIT: Nope, that didn't work either.
I am now playing in windowed mode (1920*1200) and the game is far more stable (crashes once every ~20 minutes).
Oh my god, who originally made that suggestion? Take their computer away from them. Never set your paging file to none, no matter how much memory you have, your system needs virutal memory to function properly. Disabling that is a great way to cause severe system crashes and instability. I would edit that out entirely so no one even tries that absurd suggestion.
Eh, I generally don't use any paging file to begin with and I never have any system issues. I think the general line of thought behind this supposed "fix" is that if Fallout 3 has a memory leak issue, disabling the paging file might help remedy it. Dunno about you, but it makes sense to me in a bizarre way.
Would setting it to the minimum (50MB) improve the game stability or does it have to be no paging file at all? @ Syranetic I too can run WinXP without a paging file and it is stable. Never tried anything too intensive though.
From my understanding, it has to be no paging file. But since no one has confirmed the "fix" to be of much use, we can only speculate
didnt know this thread existed so i ll post my problem here instead of the official fallout3 thread.here goes: i got no CTD's and my surround sound 5.1 works fine.BUT: the volume controls dont work for me.even if i lower music volume to zero in the audio settings,its still at max volume,same with the radio.. i am using vistax64 and have latest audio card drivers.. plz any help would be appreciated,since its ruins the whole experience for me.i want zero music and only my radio at low / medium volume.. thx in advance
I played this game for like 20hrs with out many issues at all besides like bluescreens the whole time. And now once i have this water quest where i'm supposed to follow my dad back to the science lab then go to the water purifier... i literally cannot move more then 30 seconds in the game without it crashing. If i create a new character and start over i have no problems and can play for hours...WTF
What settings are you trying to play it at? Have you tried the windowed mode "fix" by any chance? Try opening your FalloutPerfs.ini file under C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\My Games\Fallout3 and manually setting the volume levels
I set music and radio volumes to zero in the preferences.ini ..but its still the same maybe its some codec issue?maybe somehow the codec responsible for my fallout 3 music needs some settings done
yeah i tried window mode.... but clearly i'm having some issue with the games build because i played for so long without any issues. I have also reinstalled Vista, because i just happened to need to and i use linux as my primary, and still its messed up. I guess i'll just have to stop playing until they release a patch that actually addresses these issues ya know
if i use the windowed mode my games hardlocks and requires a reboot i disabled ffdshow both audio & video and it worked for another 2hours without chrashes then i quit , so i hope thats the last off my troubles i also had a huge slowdown in the first village wich is devastated , lasted untill i got to megaton and inside it stopped and ran smooth again , very weird so try aa & af off , and check ffd codec and try it
I did had a crash at the point before i get out of the vault i tried every thing possible to fix it even with the new patch and it was always the same until i found a way u even not going to believe how it going to effect the game I just reset my controls to the default and i played with game default Controls since then i never had a crash when i modified it again it started to crash once more very weird huh I thought it might be helpful
Well you don't have to take my word for it but disabling your paging file is just asking for trouble. There is a reason why it exists and it can only hurt you by disabling it. This is coming from the mouth of an IT professional. Also, the "leak" everyone is talking about is related to vram (video memory), not system memory. In Vista there is shared graphics memory which dedicated a portion of your system memory to video memory. So technically the "leak" can spill over to system memory. However only a small "fixed" portion of system memory is dedicated to this (which is entirely dependent on how much video memory you have, the more video memory, the less system memory it dedicates... you can see this on system info under the nvidia cpanel). So disabling your pagefile isn't really going to do anything, you'd have to be running a high amount of system memory to begin with, and even then... the act of disabling virtual memory or lowering your pagefile size to something like 50mb is just going to cause your system to choke and most likely bluescreen, because once your system memory caps and there is no virtual memory, there is nothing else for your system to page to.
The "IT pro" deserves a cookie Have you tried disabling 3d sound and setting your speaker settings to stereo? Also, try disabling any audio codecs you may have. Bethesda's games likes to have issues with certain third party codecs and what have you.
Besides i don't see how disabling the page file will help with memory leaks, on the contrary really, if the process is leaking then a page file might help as it will just give you more VM space to work with. To the best of my knowledge there is no fix for a leak other then to fix the code responsible for it. Are you referring to memory mapped I/O or something else ? If it's MMIO i don't think the leak can spill over to system memory because it's just the card being mapped into system memory (in order for the CPU to access the card it needs to be mapped into system memory). But maybe it's something else your referring to
