So just had the new patch and well the game crashes on start up now, and I know its the patch because i made a copy of the other exe before the 2nd patch and just reverted back to that one and now it runs, so whatever Bethesda did, it isn't mixing well with my game.

What's the version number of the new patch?

I was getting CTD from the latest patch as well. But once i put the d3d9.dll back in place, all was better.

Pre-patch, I could make it to the opening cinematic and the game would then crash at loading the level.

After the first patch, the game crashes to desktop while displaying the opening credits while it loads the title screen.

After the second patch, there isn't any improvement on my end.

the latest update that i got about 20 min ago was 1.1.1.271

See what porting a console version to pc does? Bethesda/Obsidian, you would have been better off building this from the ground up for pc. Instead it's one step forward, two steps back. They don't care as long as they hear the "jingle jangle" of our money in their pockets.

I'd actually like to be able to go ahead and create my character... then maybe I could see what the patches fixed XD

EDIT

Btw, I tried some of the fixes that were posted by the forum's member here and on Steam's forums to no avail (.ini tweaks, .dll files, etc) to no avail... so I'm hoping Obsidian comes up with a fix to New Vegas so that those, like me, who can't EVEN play the game could at least enjoy it regardless of what other glitches there might be.

Ooookay... I just tried something crazy that... somewhat fixed my problem. I removed the d3d9.dll file fix thing that was proposed. Now, like before the patch, the game makes it to the title screen. However, if I try to start a new game, like before, the game crashes to desktop when it's loading the level (after the cinematic) as it did before.

I'm... puzzled?