NEW (July 2015) Crash Fix. (Soundcard setting + Dolby)

[Draxavior]

This is a fix confirmed to be working towards direct crash (with and without crash message) to desktop and game freezing.

 

 

Note that these fixes are likely to change how 3d sound works in-game (low generic voices (outside of direct convo), low footsteps etc..)

On 1 test computer the sound was changed, on the 2 others it had no other effect than to remove crashing.

 

 

 

Alright! So I thought I had found a stable mod setup for Fallout 3 after days of crashing, turns out my worst crashing had nothing to do with mods.

 

Essentially I run F3 on this rig;

Win7 64bit

AMD FX 8320 - 8 Core 3.5ghz (Overclocked to 4ghz per core)

16gb Ram

Nvidia 660 GTX 2gb

Motherboard with built-in Realtek soundcard /w Dolby surround.

 

Having been doing some research and exhausted all possible crash fix solutions out there, I decided it was time to dig a little deeper - and boy did i strike the motherlode!

The fix I post here will of course not work for -everyone- but it works on my main computer, and solved the exact same problems on my other 2 (HP Elitebook 8530 laptop. Core 2 Duo 2.66ghz, 8gb ram, ATI 4350 or somesuch, and a fairly generic Intel i3 rig with specs i don't even care to remember. Common for them all is that they crashed the exact same way, and all run Win7 64bit)

 

 

 

I am posting two separate solutions, but they may well both be necessary (if you have a Dolby supported soundcard).

 

The first attached pic is a generic solution which is applicable on any windows 7 system (Possibly on others as well, but I don't have any other windows versions to test or verify)

Edited July 5, 2015 by Draxavior

[Draxavior]

Part 2:

 

If the above fix was not enough, it's likely that you have a Dolby-supported soundcard and the software bundled with it is crashing F3 for you.

Two of the three test computers have this (due to integrated soundcards etc) and it was interfering quite a lot.

Disabling it changed the sound quite a bit, and made me dependant on generic subtitles as generic voices became quite low (Such as hearing Dad over the intercom in project purity)

It did however remove crashing by disabling it.

 

Note that stability was gained by using solution #1 and I did not need to do this step - However, this solution worked as well but was more detrimental to the in-game sound effects.

It might be that only one of them will work for you, or that you need both at the same time. I don't know - highly dependant on your system.

Edited July 5, 2015 by Draxavior