davidmount

OK so I recently purchased a new Video card - 1 GB Nvidia GeForce 8400 GS - up from a 512 MB 9400 GT. Initially the 9400 played at high video qualty. Recently it dropped to medium - no reason, didn't change anything except drivers since updated Nvidia drivers came out. That's why I bought the 1 gig 8400. Instead of letting me play at high quality again, it's gone to low quality and I'm getting freezing and crashing ala Fallout 3. I'm running XP sp3, 4 gigs ram, intel core duo 2.4 ghz and no mods on New Vegas. Any ideas why my video quality has suddenly tanked and I now get CTD's when I never had that issue before? Thanks in advance.

From the Fallout3 part of the board, in one of the pinned FAQ's I've seen some people swear to use both a bashed patch and merged patch, and just as many people say to never do that. Bashed patches apparently work a bit differently from merged patches. I'm going to try both just to see, can't mess up my Fallout 3 game any worse than I already have - didn't think modding would be this much of a pain.

You can't run Live and mods at same time. You actually have to deactivate Live to run mods. I have DVD GOTY and still get achievements without actually signing in to Live. I think there are mods here to keep getting achievements though.

Only thing I can think of is you would have to updated your patch if you changed your load order often or by a lot - have seen similar warnings in other threads and in my own bashed patches. By changing load orders you can change the sequence master files load, which I think can cause instability in an already unstable game.

FOOK and FO3 Wanderers edition don't really like to place nicely together either, the compatability patches that are out there should help, but they do much better on their own, also easier to make your patch with only one or the other running.

What version of Windows are you running? Is it the Steam version of Fallout 3 or DVD GOTY? DVD should load everything into 1 folder - mine did. You should have no issue with Windows Live. Place FOSE files in same folder as Fallout3.exe and Fallout3Laucher.exe, FOSE should be fine at that point, just check the boxes for the DLC when using the fallout3launcher or have the disc in. If you are using FOMM, same thing, check the boxes for the DLC then click launch from fose or just use fallout 3 like normal if you aren't running any mods.

Start by shutting down EVE, had too many problems making it play nice, including errors that I couldn't look at to correct, would lock up FO3edit. Next, I've seen somewhere around here that WMKAA12Shotgun.esp also conflicts with some mods - can't remember which, but try shutting that one off for now. If I read to FO3Edit guide book correctly a critical conflict is one that can cause a CTD, a conflict isn't quite as bad - depends on text coloring orange, green, purple, black, good or managable. Red on red - definite CTD (hence critical conflict). I've been going 1 mod at a time trying to updated my bashed patch to take care of any conflicts as they come up. At times it seems like I fix one part of a mod within my patch only two undo it a couple of spaces down.

Have you created a merged patch or bash patch? Didn't see one in your load order.

Try turning off EVE....looks great, but had nothing but problems trying to run it. See if that takes care of the lag. I went from 512MB of video ram - Nvidia 9400 GT to a 1 GB 8400 GS, 4 gigs ddr2 ram and still not running right. Used to play vanilla on high quality, tried EVE went to medium, upgraded card....low quality. Obviously something else is going on, but EVE crashed me quite a bit, and when I could run, the game lagged too much.

Any mods? What OS. XP is a bit different from Vista or 7. You have to deal with UAC on anything loaded with 7 & Vista.

Start by uninstalling UFOP3, you don't need it with 1.7 patch installed. Try that first.

Well if anyone has similar issue with even lightly modded and corrected patch - merge or bash.....I think it's the video card, noticed that all of a sudden fallout 3 switched to medium quality instead of high quality graphics and that I have more useable ram from my desktop....took bios update and chipset update for my mother board (never should have done it), I have a GeForce 9400GT 512MB card, guessing not enough so I'm installing a 1GB card, using Nvidia 8400 GS board. used system restore to go back way before I started trying to mod the game - that worked quite well by the way. I'll see how this goes.

How much memory do you have, how much pure video ram and how fast is your processor. My desktop was acting weird until I noticed video card was set differently after an update to BIOS. Too little video ram could be causing crash. Another thing is mod's could cause crash if not running correctly.

That's all you should need.

Retail DVD GOTY, no mods in that folder, and none loaded at this time. I'm freezing and crashing all of the time, but I think I touched something I shouldn't have - recently upgraded bios and video drivers, noticing other issues since none of my Bethesda games work anymore either - New Vegas, Oblivion - all same engine, all killing my video card....