Game freezes, but sound continues

[Drackion]

Hiya,

 

I recently got myself a nice new Dell Studio 1749 laptop with Windows 7, but for some reason whenever I try and play F3 GOTY, it always freezes after about 5 - 15 minutes. I have to forcibly restart the computer, I can't get out of the game at all. The odd thing is though the sound still continues when it does crash though. Originally I was trying to play the full thing with a couple of mods installed, but even when I try and play the vanilla game it still breaks. I also tried running it in Compatibility mode and as Administrator, but without any luck. Even tried the FOSE, but that didn't help either. I'm guessing it might well be a 64-bit issue, but I'm at a loss as what to do? Anyone else had this problem who can help?

 

Specs:

Dell 1749 Studio Laptop

Intel Core i5-530M 2.4Ghz (2 cores, 4 threads)

4GB DDR3 RAM

ATI Mobility 5650 1GB

 

Load Order:

00 - Fallout3.esm

01 - PointLookout.esm

02 - Anchorage.esm

03 - ThePitt.esm

04 - BrokenSteel.esm

05 - Zeta.esm

06 - CubeExperimental (EN).esm

07 - GalaxyNewsRadio100(M).esm

 

It's not a case of the laptop not being able to run the game, for the few minutes it does work, I get about 40-50fps on highest settings. Any help would be appreciated.

 

Thanks, Drackion

[paintrain04]

I am having the exact same problem too. I don't know how to fix it.

[Nadin]

Looks like you only have a gig of RAM. That causes it to overload and crash, because it's too freaking stupid to purge memory every now and then.

I think. :confused:

Try enabling hard drive cache--it's kinda worked for me.

Be nice if there was a mod that forces it to purge memory every 5-10 minutes.

[paintrain04]

I have 4 gigs of RAM. Would that be the same problem for me?

[Nadin]

I don't know. Probably-- I had to do it, and I have 6 gigs.

[Drackion]

Hey. I think you got confused, I've got 4 gigs of RAM, but the graphics card has 1 gig of it's own VRAM (not shared with the main stuff). I tried enabling the hdd cache, but it had no effect :/ Any other suggestions?

 

Thanks, Drackion

[AlexxEG]

If you already done some of the steps, just ignore it.

 

1. Change "bInvalidateOlderFiles=0" to "bInvalidateOlderFiles=1" in Fallout.ini. Located in My Documents\My Games\Fallout3

2. Patch the game at: http://fallout.bethsoft.com/index.html

3. Activate http://fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=944

4. Use this: http://fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=7529. It's a .ini tweak so read the ReadMe

 

If you still have problems, I need your load order. To get it easy, download: http://fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=640 ( However, I realy recommend getting it from: http://sourceforge.net/projects/fomm/files/ as it has the latest versions. Then in FOMM go into "Load Order -> Copy to clipboard" and paste it here.

 

Optimal:

Go through this site: http://www.tweakguides.com/Fallout3_10.html

It describes some .ini tweaks to increase performance. I gained 10-20 fps from it.

 

Also, you can use this tool. Learn it and you will get a realy realy realy stable game. http://fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=637

 

EDIT: Also note that the GOTY edition have been very bugged.

Edited April 11, 2010 by Alexx378

[Nadin]

Actually, until you get this fixed, you can just start up a process explorer and kill Fallout3.exe after it crashes.

[Drackion]

@Alexx: My load order's in the first post ;l) I used the Oblivion Mod Manager back in the day, so I've used FOMM pretty much from day one. I did manage to fix it, I think. I went in to all the Fallout.ini and set all the threaded options to 1 (apart from audio), and set iNumHWThreads=2 , and for the half hour I played it didn't crash. Just wondering, can you set iNumHWThreads=3, or does it have to be 1 or a power of 2? I know there are tri-core processors available, so I was just wondering if it would work for a possible performance boost.

 

@Nadin: I couldn't though, that's the thing. I tried opening process explorer/task manager before I started playing, but I couldn't get out of the game once it froze.

 

 

Thanks for all the help guys :D Looking forward to playing the rest of the GOTY content.

[AlexxEG]

I realy don't know much about it, I'm afraid. I was going to tell you to try, but I don't know what affect it can have if it dosen't work^^