Fallout 3 Freezing Fixed! ... but NO SOUND

[TCat]

Hi all, experienced troubleshooters please help ... I'm dying to move on to trying some new Mods ...

 

Using a suggestion from THIS thread, I was able to fix the "Freezing" problem, i.e. loss of input from mouse/keyboard but Sound continues along with Enemy/NPC dialog/movement/even attacks. I edited the FALLOUT.ini [Audio] bEnableAudio= to 0 and was able to leave the Vault and cruz to Megaton with "complete stability" with "Ultra" settings, everything maxed @ 1920x1080 res ... BUT of cource I have NO SOUND :(

 

I PM'd "Daishi13" to see what he did next (no answer) and wanted to PM "GrindedStone" for more advise/step by step explanation(s), from his post but couldn't. Any help / advise / and/or links would be greatly appreciated ... with clear directions I'll try anything, though I'm inexperienced with sound codecs. Today I may even try to install an old Audigy 2ZS I have laying around, but when my onboard Realtek ALC892 is working it sounds pretty decent running through my 5.1 Logitech Z680 even in Fallout 3.

 

New build (Oct 2011) Z68/1155 (Realtek ALC892 Audio, onboard)/ i5-2500K / 570gtx / Win7SP1-64bit ... Retail Fallout 3 GOTY v1.7.0.3 (2 dics) game installed in it's own folder not in default "Program Files x86" ... tried w/without Unofficial_Fallout_3_Patch_-_Installer_Version-3808.exe ... NO Mods yet :(

 

[ini. edits]

 

Documents / My Programs / Fallout3 / FALLOUT.ini

 

[General]

 

bUseThreadedAI=1

iNumHWThreads=2

 

[Audio]

 

bEnableAudio=0

 

 

Windows "Aero" is disabled. All in game save features turned off. "ffdshow" file not removed, apparently it was never originally installed. "AGP Texture Acceleration" NOT set to "DISABLED" because it is grayed out.

 

 

 

 

Edited June 6, 2012 by TCat

[MichikoUnknownFox]

Try updating your audio codecs. Choppy audio and freezes as the game tries to play audio files, is often caused by codecs being unable to decode the file for playing efficiently. You can try the K-Lite Codec Pack, which is what I use.

 

The ffdshow trick is only for choppy radio (but otherwise working background music and sound effects).

 

Try that first and let us know how it turns out.

[TCat]

Try updating your audio codecs. Choppy audio and freezes as the game tries to play audio files, is often caused by codecs being unable to decode the file for playing efficiently. You can try the K-Lite Codec Pack, which is what I use.

 

The ffdshow trick is only for choppy radio (but otherwise working background music and sound effects).

 

Try that first and let us know how it turns out.

 

Thanks much! I won't have time until tomorrow though ... Just to be clear should I install this on top of/over my current Realtek (R262) drivers? Or should I uninstall the Realtek drivers 1st? Also I could never find the ffdshow folder period, don't have a media player installed on my dedicated gaming/modding rig, if that makes sense? Should I have or should I INSTALL the ffdshow program/folder? Thanks Tom

 

Edit: Which one do you recommend from K-lite? http://www.codecguide.com/

1) K-Lite Codec Pack 8.8.5 ... This on looks like just an update of 8.8.0

 

2) K-Lite Codec Pack 8.8.0 ... looks like I need this one as a base package, but which one Basic / Standard / Full / or Mega?

 

3) OR this 64bit one??? K-Lite Codec Pack (64-bit) 6.3.0

 

My apologies as I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to "codec"(s) not even sure why they aren't just called driver packages?

Edited June 7, 2012 by TCat

[MichikoUnknownFox]

Codecs are not the same as drivers. They won't overwrite or conflict with your drivers.

 

In simple terms, drivers are instructions for your hardware to interface with your software. Codecs are instructions for your software (like Windows Media Player or even games like Fallout) to be able to read certain file media file formats (like MP3 files and OGG format).

 

 

 

Codec stands for "compressor-decompressor". Media files are generally compressed to save disk space and allow them to be read more quickly and fluidly by other programs. This compression of course changes how the file is written. Think of it as a typewriter versus a stenograph. An untrained person will be unable to read the output of a stenograph. In a nutshell, that's what codecs are for. They read the compressed file for you and translate it so your other software that needs the information can do something about it.

 

 

I suggest you get the latest stable for 64-bit. You can get the latest "test" version if you want, because they're generally not all that buggy, but if you're paranoid just get whatever the latest non-test version is.

 

The different size versions (basic/full/mega) will only determine which codecs you need (and some additional optional software like Media Player Classic). I recommend you get all of the codecs. Even if it's not necessary for Fallout 3 to work necessarily, it'll prevent problems down the line with other software when you find you need those codecs.

Edited June 7, 2012 by HosokawaTakuya

[TCat]

SHAZAMM ... I think it worked! I played appx 30min in and around Megaton, went in and out of interiors, had conversations, the Pip boy radio sounds fine! What I noticed 1st off is the crisp clear intro music in the loading menu, that was never there initially.

 

Here's what I did ... left all my other settings as described above ...

 

Re-enabled the Sound ... FALLOUT.ini [Audio] bEnableAudio=1

 

 

1) loaded K-Lite_Codec_Pack_880_Mega.exe

2) loaded K-Lite_Codec_Pack_64bit_630.exe

 

3) loaded klcp_update_885_20120522.exe

 

Holy cow theres a crapload of configuration files, I did the default, which is advanced installation for all, the only configuring I did was to enable the audio codecs I think in the "Windows Classic Player", disabled all tray icons and thats it ... I ended up with 2 programs installed ..

 

1) K-Lite Mega Codec Pack 8.8.5 ... 62.1MB

 

2) K-Lite Codec Pack 6.3.5 (64bit) ... 43.1MB

 

NOTE: I still don't have "ffdshow" file on my system, even though there were some references to it in the above programs/Codecs ...

 

But who cares right ... EVERYTHING WORKS!

 

 

I'd spent hrs upon hrs trying to fix this ... ie. Several complete installs/uninstalls w/different file locations / w/without compatability modes / enabling/dis-abling multiple combos of the DLC & patches / different VGA driver sets / Windowed mode w/every resolution/graphics setting imaginable, to even disabling in the bios all but "one core" for confirmed single-core CPU operation.

NOTHING FULLY WORKED TILL NOW ... thanks just doesn't say enough, I hope all those other frustrated Fallout 3 fans see this!

 

 

Edit: And have now even reset my overclocks on the CPU/GPU!

Edited June 8, 2012 by TCat

[shadowfx78]

oops wrong thread Edited June 8, 2012 by shadowfx78

[TCat]

As a follow up after resetting my overclocks I ran Fallout3 for 2-3 hours uninterupted with complete stability! ... now I can move on to modding!

It would be nice for others if the forum moderator could incorporate the word "SOLVED" into the title, I couldn't change it myself :(

 

After spending hours-->days on all the traditional fixes ie. ini.edits / "AGP Texture Acceleration" / ffdshow / windowed mode etc etc ...

 

It would've been nice if this thread came up in my search(S) ...

 

AGAIN THANKS to "HosokawaTakuya" and this forum for taking the time to help me ---> Karma ... Full!

[MichikoUnknownFox]

Glad to be of service. :) I actually had this same issue when I first got FO3 too, which I thought to be weird. It wasn't easy finding this information out, and I don't even remember how I found it. But I'm glad I did. :dance:

[kiingsiick]

I know this post hasn't been visited in a while but I hope some of you smart people get back and see that this has helped people.

 

I'm fairly new to PC gaming so when I first got the game I made sure to get on and check to see what people had said so I could do some preemptive fixes, so after changing the FALLOUT.ini file, changing things to run with vista instead of win7, and updating and patching the game I got to play for about a whole day with only one hiccup.

 

But then, out of the blue it just dies, seemingly at random, I couldn't go through doorways because it would boot me during the load sequence. So I see someone mention on here or the other crash guide saying with the FALLOUT.ini file you had to put the two values next to each other instead of underneath, boom fixes my doorway loading issue but then my game decided to just freeze after a minute. So I see a comment on here about not overwriting saves...and guess what I had been doing the whole time? So I'm praying that I had just corrupted that save to the point of no return and not actually broke the game.

 

But when I tried a complete uninstall/reinstall, with the same pieces that made it work in the first place, now were causing me to freeze up before I could even get out of the birth scene, so after all that I went and downloaded the audio codec files, went into programs and associated the .ogg and other .og files to windows media player, also couldn't find the ffdshow files people had been talking about but I did see that the codecs switched things to LAV which I also read would help and I'm in the process right now of playing through the child sequences with no issues as of yet

 

So I just wanted to post on here that I'm pretty sure you guys saved my game because I was at my wits end because as I mentioned I'm a scrub when it comes to this kind of thing but I'm fairly decent at following directions so I felt that I had done just about every fix I could read about on other crash guides until I found this and saw the bits about codec files and the .ogg files. So from the bottom of my nerdly heart thank you for being smarter than me haha.

 

And for the love of god people when you post on these things make sure you read the prior comments, this one wasn't bad but I had to sift through so much stupidity on other forums because people couldn't be bothered to read everything before they posted some nonsensical rambling about AH MY GAME WONT WORKZ IT SUCKS AND EVERYTHING IS STUPIDS BECAUSE I HAS NICE COMPOOTER...when 5 minutes of reading would usually fix their issues

 

Again thank you all for taking time to help the more clueless like myself

[Rono]

Seemed to have worked for me................

 

Thanx.