Operation Anchorage end runtime error

[GamerChas]

I am getting a runtime error crash near the end of Operation Anchorage.

 

I have Win 7 Home Premium 64bit and the Steam GOTY edition. I have all the DLC's enabled and the unofficial patch. No mods. My F3 has been pretty stable up to now. This is the first really hard crash I have had. I am near the end of Operation Anchorage, to take down the force field. I am at a point where you exit the trench. There is an open area with a bunker ahead of me with two turrets, several enemies off to my left, and a lot of barbed wire. Every time I try to enter this area, the sound goes very loud and then I get a runtime error crash. I have never had a runtime error crash before with F3. I do have the 2 cores .ini fix and I stripped my windows down to a gaming level. I run F3 from the Fallout3.exe directly without running Steam and I have the network connection disabled.

 

Edit: OK I got it fixed. This info is for anyone else if they need it. I tried lowering graphics, window mode etc. That did not help.

 

The problem is with the ASUS Xonar DX card and with Win7's optical output flux up.

 

I am using the optical output from the DX card to a receiver to get Dolby 5.1 surround. It looks like selecting optical output from the Windows audio properties is the right way to go. But Win7 only supports stereo if you select optical output from the Windows audio properties. The work-around from ASUS is to select 5.1 speakers in Windows playback devices, then select Dolby optical output from the ASUS sound card control panel. The sound card then takes the 5.1 speaker streams being fed to it from the game/Windows and converts to Dolby before outputing on the optical S/PDIF. I am not sure where the actual error was. It was a runtime error in whatever C++ redistributable was being used. By Windows for the speaker output or by ASUS for the conversion? Don't know. I tried disabling all sound devices but FO3 will not run without any sound support. My fix was to disable the 5.1 speakers and enable S/PDIF pass-through from Windows playback devices. Then you only get stereo sound but at least I can play through the area and finish Operation Anchorage. Then I went back to my previous settings - telling Windows that I have 5.1 speakers attached and letting the Xonar DX card convert to S/PDIF.

 

 

Edited March 9, 2013 by GamerChas