1.6 w/ all DLC, no mods, crashing after a few steps

[DrMetzger]

As the topic says I have the 4 dlc packs installed, 1.6, retail copy online with GFWL.

Out of the blue the game just started crashing all over the place.

My character is very evil and he just hit level 21 so maybe patching the game failed? I tried downloading it from several sources, reinstalling game, patch.

Tried various console commands, disabling and killing people involved in recent quests, still crashed when I took a step forward, toggleAI made it so I could walk around but would crash on quicktravel or reenabling AI.

I've put my save up on rapidshare if someone wants to jump in and see if they get same errors, if it works for someone I'd appreciate a new save inside tenpenny suite or something.

I think only 10 can download it or something though, here is the link:

http://rapidshare.com/files/252374991/myfo3save.rar.html

 

Any help would be appreciated as my previous save is a while back, though it is looking like I may have to go back there.

Thanks

[mechine]

What the H8LL is GFWL

 

 

Good Fight *censored*it Later

 

 

 

What's a Retail Copy Online?

 

 

 

Patching the game failed?

 

 

What mess are you talking about.

 

 

A patch either works or doesn't work.

 

As in you either install it or don't install it.

 

 

 

I mean if you ran a patch then started crashing then it's not so much up an out of the blue.

 

 

Where is your load order?

 

 

 

When was the last time you updated your grapics drivers, defraged the hard drive?

 

What chance is there that something is running in the background of the windows shell that you didn't put there?

spyware, viral, ect

 

 

 

 

Did ya just run plain old 1.6, or 1.6 plus FO3edit master update?

 

 

 

How many grapics cards do you have? SLI crossfire?

 

 

 

How old is your computer? What if it's burned or about to break.

That would cause out of the blue. But then a virus could too

or even Nvidia's firewall program, plus anything that puts the

CPU to 100% duty.

 

 

 

How would anybody use your save game if they don't know your load order? Pfft.

 

 

 

You know if you didn't master update with FO3edit

 

It would probably help you.

 

 

All you would have to do since you already have everything else done

is download FO3edit, then find the FO3edit.exe, right click, properties

create shortcut, right click the shortcut, Add space -masterupdate

to the target line after the quotes, "C:/FO3edit.exe or something" -masterupdate

Then run the shortcut, it will prompt, hit okay watch it working

if there is a error the process will be stopped, then you either ask the

mod that caused the error's maker to fix it, or open it up with GECK set to active

hope it prompts to auto fix which you say yes then save it , run master update again

if it still errors then delete it an move on, get master update to finish then

click the X to close the window which auto saves the process, then repeat

master update if you add any mods in the future.

[DrMetzger]

GFWL = Games For Windows Live

Retail copy = not steam

 

Game ran fine for first 30 hours, then started crashing, then tried reinstall, repatch, just thought it was strange that it opened the game without closing the patch so I tried from other sources.

 

My PC is clean, CCleaner, Spybot S&D, Norton2009, older saves work, other games work, etc

 

Q9550 @ 2.83, 8800 GTX, 4x1 Gig ddr2 on Vista Ultimate 64

 

Using 181.22 nVidia graphics at the moment, I don't install the network access manager or whatever for windows firewall either, it always gave me serious problems. I've used different video drivers too up to 186.16 I believe but no real difference except for 181.22 performing better.

 

About the load order I wasn't aware it mattered when dealing with just the official content and no 3rd party mods installed but the dlc is all in the Data folder now and I installed the unofficial patch after installing 1.6 when I reinstalled the game again. Defrag several times a week, and after reinstalling.

 

I didn't try the FO3edit method you mentioned but I will try that now, not too familiar with the tools, last time I played the game none of them existed.

EDIT: the master update didn't find any issues, so I guess the save is just screwed eh?

[VerbalEarthworm]

you need to disable GFWL.

 

a 1.6 vanilla game with all 4 DLCs and no mods will still CTD (achievement counting failing) due to MS's "finger in the pie".

 

to do this you must move your DLC files from where GFWL hides them and put them all (even the .biks) into your Fallout3/Data folder, like you would a mod plugin etc.

 

you will also need to move the LIVE saves from where they are stored and put them into the vanilla Saves folder.

 

do that and you need never use the LIVE menu again and will stop CTDing because of that.

 

the actual location of the DLC files differs with OS and version (retail/steam), check these forums for "disabling GFWL".

 

i am an XP Steam user myself, so unsure of Vista etc.

 

you do not need to use FO3Edit for this (not yet at least) and you don't need to do MasterUpdate.

 

when someone opens with "what's GFWL?", that should have been a clue. :P

 

hope that helps.

[DrMetzger]

Thanks, though it doesn't seem to help the problem with this save for me, just need to remember to save often again, got kind of spoiled by 30 crash-free hours I guess.

 

Only lost 13 hours on the save so it could have been a lot worse.

[VerbalEarthworm]

saves can and do get corrupted, i had one myself last night that took a few hours to workaround (caused a graphical glitch on my favourite armour).

 

only full saves are to be used (autosave and quicksaves are not full saves and should be avoided/turned off) and you should make regular backups of the saves (into an entirely seperate folder) to ensure their trustworthiness.

 

sometimes a glitch in a particular save can "reverberate" seemingly back in time and "infect" past saves, hence the fiddly nature of it all.

 

i once lost around 20 saves in that way.

 

the "Save Bug" is a known and as yet unfixed vanilla bug.

 

basically, don't trust your saves, be paranoid about it and make constant backups (your favourite player character's life depends on it).

[mechine]

Games for windows live, oh gosh I'm such a tard

 

I guess I was too busy trolling.

 

So what we use is a Retail copy offline or steam/D2D retail offline for the most part.

Also turning of autosave, which I kind of missed. Maybe the fast travel crashes.

Out of the blue kind of makes it harder to figure out.

 

So did you get it fixed?

 

 

 

What's toggleAI, just wondering

[DrMetzger]

I just went back to the save I had, I'm way past where I was now with no issues though.

The toggleAI just disables AI processing, people are there and will talk to you but wont attack unless attacked it seemed. For whatever reason when I tried it it stopped crashing but would crash right after reenabling it.

[gsmanners]

ToggleAI by itself turns off the AI to all actors, thus stopping their anims (although their navi anims might take a few seconds to stop in this situation). Animation bugs has always been a notorious rumor in Gamebryo. I imagine they might have trouble with null-pointers or garbage collection (or something like that), and in that case it would be surprising if the application *didn't* crash at some point, with all the animation going on in FO3.

 

I think this particular problem can be mitigated by tweaking the settings for when Actors and Objects appear, although that's just my personal experience. I haven't seen any confirmation of that.

[billypnats]

quicksave too much = slowly corrupting files, I learned to use normal saves more often the hard way =.=