Frequent Crash to Desktop

[emperorawesome]

Topic says it all, Fallout 3 is crashing to the desktop all the time, and I've tried all the fixes and suggestions I've seen out there, I'm not sure what variable is causing it, so I'm hoping someone who's had similar problems spots this.

The game crashes frequently out in the wasteland, and when loading interiors. I don't have any problems when loading saves or autosaving, like others have.

 

I'll start with the relevant setup info:

i7 3930k (I'm not sure if it's affected by the busethreadedai ini file fix, but I tried that anyway.)

2 560ti's SLI

16GB RAM, I've got my paging file on, 16MB, allowed a max size of 8GB

I'm running windows 7 pro 64 bit

 

As for settings/fixes:

I'm running the goty edition, fully patched.

I've disabled the game in ffdshow a/v codecs.

I've got graphics set to ultra, 8x AA/AF. Max distance sliders. I've tried switching effects between none, hdr, and bloom, with similar crash behavior no matter what.

See below image for my mods, I've tried launching the game from FMM and steam.

Not visible in the manager: NMC full texture pack, I've run archive invalidation, and used fo3edit.

Also! My grass flickers.

 

Any ideas I haven't tried yet? There's gotta be something I'm missing.

 

 

[M48A5]

Reduce your graphics, disable AA/AF, distance sliders to minimum and everything else to minimum. Disable all your mods. Start the game. If it runs, than gradually increase the game settings until it starts to ctd, than reduce the settings to the last where it worked. Gradually add your mods one at a time and check in game to ensure they work. If your CPU has more than 2 cores, you must change the .ini. The one in the games folder with your saves, not the one in the Bethsoft/Fallout folder. Also, look on Steam for the method to move your steam file outside Program Files.

[kevkiev]

...i7 3930k (I'm not sure if it's affected by the busethreadedai ini file fix, but I tried that anyway.

 

I'm assuming you mean the "bUseThreadedAI=1" thing in "[General]"

 

Have you tried inserting the following line

 

iNumHWThreads=2

 

at the end?

[pleasenoname]

I solved Oblivion stutter on my own machine and now I'm tired of seeing Fallout 3 crashing(or reading about it crashing), so I've decided to work part time to fix this once and for all.

 

Okay, here is what I posted else where:

 

"Windows Intelligent Background Transfer service" downloads data on your game which it puts into something called "games explorer"(type it into search to see what i'm talking about).

As far as I can guess, it might be able to change windows 7 UAC settings. Because the Windows 7 UAC may have prevented the above quoted posters game from running.

 

I installed fallout 3 to its own folder in "C:.

So it looks like: "C:\Fallout 3". I have the disc based version though. I was kinda annoyed that steam installed New Vegas into the program files(x86) folder, because it can cause problems like refusing to execute code or saving changes. Most modders install the game outside of the program files folder in Windows 7.

 

Also, yes run it as administrator every time,the falloutlauncher.exe. Set it to run as administrator in properties make sure to click the make changes shield first. That way you can launch it from steam. I am unsure if Steam allows running the fallout.exe in administer directly or not.

 

Whenever a process tries to access the CPU at the same time as the game, it crashes. New Vegas and Fallout 3 are relatively free of crashes for me. However crashes will eventually always happen for fallout 3, if you play longer than a few hours.

 

Crash causes

Random(silent) background anti-virus scans can crash it.

Steam updating itself while the fallout.exe is running

Windows UAC("program files" and other personal folders block it)

RAM filling/overflowing (When you play for a long time.)

Need newer audio drivers (Fallout 3 uses XP audio,7 can't read it correctly)

Emulators of any kind.

 

Fallout3 cannot detect Intel Integrated graphics and will crash(Needs a D3D9dll)<not sure how well it detects newer cards either

 

also, "tweak guides" website has multi-threading tweaks listed that help with muti-threading efficiency on multiple/dual core CPUs(Oblivion seems to run a little more efficiently if iNumHWThreads=2 or 4 and fallout 3 crashes less if iNumHWThreads=2).

In the ini:

"bUseThreadedAI=0

 

change it to:

 

bUseThreadedAI=1

 

Add another line after it and insert:

 

iNumHWThreads=2

 

This will limit the game to 2 cores."

Oblivion can be set from 2 to 4, Fallout 3 must be 2 though.

 

Last but not least, defragment your hardrive or at the very least the fallout folder. If the fragmentation of your games files is very severe, the game can hang and crash because a CPU request to the hardrive might time out. Also by doing this the game loads faster.

 

Most of the problems with Windows 7 64-bit and bethesda games may be because the SecuRom DRM that is packaged with the game blocks the game from running while emulators are running and Windows 7 64-bit has to run 32-bit Windows XP emulators everytime we play, because that is what the Gamebryo engine was built in(because it was licensed, so they have to use the version they licensed).

 

Disabling Windows 7 Aero in the fallout 3.exe's properties helps too. If you run in compatibily mode, run it as XP SP2. Make sure to click the shield in the properties before you make these changes. Apply them. Then hit OK.

 

Original poster try putting an exclusion of your anti-virus from scanning fallout 3's folder on the machine and exclude .fos and .bak from scan, only if everything above doesn't work.

 

I Actually set Windows classic theme and shut down the process dwm.exe. The result was a better working GECK in Windows 7(It didn't stall when loading the ESM like usual).

Edited September 9, 2012 by pleasenoname

[davycrockett]

at the op for some strange reason having two or more cards in either SLI or crossfire mode causes certain games to crash maybe fo3 is one of them , a paging file with 16gb of ram is not needed reading from ram is faster than HDD a paging file on a modern system can slow it down might even be the bug you seek . ( rule of paging file RAM+300mb for lower limit RAM times 3 for upper like i say only really needed on older machines )

 

 

 

pleasenoname

 

you forgot to mention one very important thing in the crash cause section of your post FO3 is NOT windows 7 compatible both bethesda and microsoft say so ,might wanna relay that fact to the masses .

 

edit check your compatibility patch for RH_IS and EVE dont think i saw it listed !

Edited September 12, 2012 by davycrockett

[emperorawesome]

Thank you to everyone who responded, so far so good, I played for nearly two hours today without a single problem. A few things that I took from these posts, and found out on my own, in case this thread shows up in someone's google search in the world of tomorrow.

 

-I had no idea the gamebryo engine handled Windows 7 so poorly, so far fallout is the only program I've used compatibility mode for, and the difference is noticeable.

-Limiting the game to only use two processor cores is a must.

-I can't believe this one, but the only way to force SLI to run is to edit the "My Documents/My Games/Fallout3/RenderInfo.txt" file. Wow, Bethesda, wow. I checked and this goes for Oblivion and Skyrim too.

-Audio drivers/settings should be double- and triple-checked. I had ffdshow turned off, but still needed to tweak some other stuff, would be more specific but it's particular to my system.

-I kept shrinking my paging file until eliminating it entirely. Turning off the paging file is a controversial move, but in my case it was the final nail in the coffin for my crashes.