Random CTD throughout game...

[beautifulagony]

I've been reading through forums about Fallout 3 crashes, but so far I haven't found anything that seems to remedy my problem.

 

I have extremely smooth framerates, even with most settings at, or near, maximum at 1280x1024, and load times are very, very fast. Sound and music are both crystal clear.

 

Unfortunately, I get random crashes that dump me to the desktop! It doesn't seem to be related to any one type of in-game action... sometimes it happens while walking, or while picking up an item, or when just waiting and looking around. This happens regardless of having mods installed or not. My character is level 6, so it's been happening somewhat infrequently, but enough to make me wonder what the heck is wrong. Maybe ever hour or two it happens.

 

I've tried unloading "extra" codecs (all non microsoft and creative) and it didn't seem to make any difference. I read a thread about codecs and checke dit out and there isn't much on my system other than Creative, MS and fraunhoffer MP3. Also, Oblivion runs perfectly and has never crashed on me, and I play it at maximum settings (even above max with ini tweaks) and with plenty of mods loaded.

 

I have no background tasks running, no antivirus or antispyware running when I play (I just run antispyware spyboy S&D on a daily basis seperately and manually). My services are mostly standard Microsoft stuff, with the only exceptions being my iTunes and iPod services, my Wacom Pen/Tablet services, and Truecrypt (encryption software) that are resident. I have defragged recently, and have Windows managing my virtual memory (and haven't had any problems withit in any other games). Any suggestions?? Or is the game just sort of... buggy?? I have installed the patch from Bethesda, it was the first thing I did after installing the game (I only got it a few days ago).

 

My system:

Windows XP SP3

Athlon 64 X2 4000

ASUS A8N-SLI Premium

2GB ram

Nvidia 8800 GTS

Sound Blaster X-Fi

[Obsessed117]

Like oblivion, this game sometimes gets random crashes for no real reason.