Fallout 3 and New Vegas Won't Run on Custom Build

[IronhideLivesOn]

So I recently built myself a new computer, as my old one was dying, and was old technology anyway. I don't remember much about the system specs on my old computer - other than the operating system was Windows Vista - but it ran games like Fallout 3, New Vegas, and Skyrim perfectly fine, albeit at lower graphics settings.

 

It wasn't until after I built my new computer that I discovered that Fallout 3 is not compatible with Windows 7, which is the operating system I got. I've since been looking all over the place trying to find fixes. I've tried pretty much every tutorial I could find, and nothing has worked so far.

 

I noticed a bit of a difference between what was happening with me, and what other people reported happened in their cases. In general, it seemed that for other people, the game would start to load, but then crash before reaching the loading screen or anything like that. For me, however, it didn't even get that far. When I put the FO3 GOTY CD in, it doesn't autorun. I can manually go into the disc and activate the Setup.exe to install the game, but whenever I try to run Fallout3.exe, FalloutLancher.exe, or FOSE (even if I try running it through FOMM) nothing happens. I've tried it both modded and unmodded. The cursor shows something loading for a couple seconds, but then goes back to normal, and the screen doesn't change or anything. Again, I've tried editing the Fallout_Default.ini, I tried switching the exe's to Windows XP (Service Pack 3), I've tried to run as administrator, and nothing is working. I even attempted to reinstall the game on different drives (I have an HDD and an SSD, as well as an external hard drive), but it didn't work anywhere.

 

After giving up on that, I decided to try Fallout: New Vegas instead, since it is apparently compatible with Windows 7. However, the results were exactly the same. Modded or unmodded, it would not run at all. At this point, I noticed that when I run the Task Manager and click on the Processes tab, it shows multiple processes of the aforementioned exe's running at the same time (as in, there were about four Fallout3.exe's running, and same with all the others, including New Vegas). I closed them all and then went back and tried starting both games again separately, but they still would not open up, yet are shown as processes currently being run. The GECK seems to work fine, although I didn't take the time to play around with it at all, but at least it opened the program like it should.

 

I've been playing Skyrim on this computer for several weeks now, as well as other games like Guild Wars 2, Mass Effect 3, and a few others, all of which work perfectly. So I'm pretty confident that this situtation is isolated to Fallout 3 and New Vegas. Normally, I'd be able to deal with it, but the main reason I'm upset about this is because on my previous computer, I've spent a HUGE amount of time working on a personal project for Fallout 3 that would add a furistic sci-fi setting similar to Halo or Mass Effect to the Fallout universe. I have tons of mods from other users, and a lot of my own modifications that I've spent months developing. My biggest desire (as far as video games are concerned) is to have an open rpg game similar to Fallout 3 or Skyrim, but set in a futuristic setting like Halo or Mass Effect, like I said. I was nowhere near finished, but I feel like all of that effort I've put into was all for nothing now, and as far as I'm aware, there are no other games in which I could accomplish this (unless I heavily modded Skyrim into a futuristic setting, but I don't think ANYONE would have the motivation to pull that off).

 

SO, before I completely give up, I want to consult with the community and find out if there's anything else I can do at this point to save my games (and, possibly, my sanity). I suspect that the issue isn't necessarily Windows 7, because 1) My brother's computer is W7, and it runs fine on his, other than crashing a couple times when first trying to start the game. And 2) New Vegas is supposed to be compatible with W7, yet it won't open at all on my computer. So I'm beginning to think that it might have to do with something else in my computer, possibly a specific piece of programming or hardware that isn't compatible with the engine that both games run on.

 

Here are the specs to my computer, if this helps anyone figure out what is wrong:

 

-OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601)

-Processor: Intel® Core i7-3770K CPU @ 3.50 GHz (8CPUs), ~3.5GHz

-RAM: 16384 MB

-SSD (C:): ATA Samsung SSD 840 SCSI Disk Device (125 GB)

-HDD (E:): WDC WD10EZEX-22RKKA0 ATA Device (1 TB)

-Optical Drive: ATAPI iHAS 124 W SCSI CdRom Device

-Video Card: Gigabyte NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 (4 GB)

-DirectX Version: DirectX 11

 

I'm not sure what else to put besides that. I'd really appreciate it if someone could help me out with this. If you need to know more about my system specs, let me know specifically what to look for, and I'll update the above list.

 

My brother mentioned the possibility of setting up my computer to run both Windows 7 and Windows XP at the same time. I didn't even know that was possible. Is it worth considering?

Edited August 6, 2013 by IronhideLivesOn

[JimboUK]

Have you been through this? http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/202013-fallout-3-crashes-fixreduce-guide/

 

Both FO3 and NV run fine on Windows 7 so it's not the OS.

[IronhideLivesOn]

I already tried solution 1, and it didin't do anything. I'm trying to do solution 2, but I can't find any folder or programs on my computer like the ones listed there (ffdshow or Audio decoder configuration).

[M48A5]

Did you install the game in a location other than "Program Files"?

 

Did you download and install the 1.7 patch from Bethesda?

 

Did you download and install the latest GFWL client from Microsoft?

 

Did you make the changes to the correct .ini (not default .ini)?

 

When you first installed the game, did you launch it so that it would auto detect your graphics card and set the game graphics?

 

When you installed your OS, did you setup Auto Run?

[bben46]

Did you make the mistake of copying the files from your old computer to the new one? That will not work as they must be installed on the new one to work.

 

Next, did you copy the ini files? If so , ini files are dependent on the computer hardware - and will not work with different hardware ( easy fix - just delete the ini files and they will be recreated using the new hardware the next time you start the game.

 

You can copy over the data folder, & saved games folder - so you will have your mods and saved games. BUT - wait until after you have tested the game without them before doing this.

 

Both games work fine on any version of Windows whether 32 bit or 64 bit from WinXP on.

 

Next, where did you install? (Path) What game version do you have? Do you use Steam for both?

[IronhideLivesOn]

Did you install the game in a location other than "Program Files"?

 

Did you download and install the 1.7 patch from Bethesda?

 

Did you download and install the latest GFWL client from Microsoft?

 

Did you make the changes to the correct .ini (not default .ini)?

 

When you first installed the game, did you launch it so that it would auto detect your graphics card and set the game graphics?

 

When you installed your OS, did you setup Auto Run?

 

Yes.

 

Yes.

 

Tried downloading that, but it is similarly not opening, yet it says that it's running on the task manager. Hmmm... suspicious...

 

Yes.

 

It wouldn't even open the launch menu, so I wasn't able to do that.

 

I don't recall seeing anything like that when I installed the OS, so maybe not.

 

 

Did you make the mistake of copying the files from your old computer to the new one? That will not work as they must be installed on the new one to work.

 

Next, did you copy the ini files? If so , ini files are dependent on the computer hardware - and will not work with different hardware ( easy fix - just delete the ini files and they will be recreated using the new hardware the next time you start the game.

 

You can copy over the data folder, & saved games folder - so you will have your mods and saved games. BUT - wait until after you have tested the game without them before doing this.

 

Both games work fine on any version of Windows whether 32 bit or 64 bit from WinXP on.

 

Next, where did you install? (Path) What game version do you have? Do you use Steam for both?

 

I didn't do that initially. I installed it the regular way, but it didn't run. After that, I copied all of the old files (including the ini files) to the new folder. Like I mentioned above, I installed it in a different path (my documents/games/bethesda softwords/fallout 3). But based on what you said, I may have made a mistake by copying the ini files.

 

I downloaded the latest game version. I have Steam for New Vegas, but Fallout 3 was from a disk (Game of the Year edition, Games for Windows Live, etc.).

 

I'll try reinstalling and following all of the instructions you guys gave me. One of the problems is that it doesn't even open the launch menu. It will autorun the CD, but when I select the option to run Fallout 3 Launcher, it doesn't do anything. I was starting to wonder if I was missing some kind of video format that is important to the game, and that was causing it to ctd without any message or whatever, but I wouldn't think that would have any effect on the launch menu, would it?

 

EDIT: I just noticed, I don't think my computer does Autorun. But even so, would that matter if I just manually go into the CD and try to launch the game by clicking on the exe?

 

Also, I got the GFWL client installed and running, but that doesn't seem to have had any effect on anything.

Edited August 13, 2013 by IronhideLivesOn