I've seen a lot of posts around the place about people having a crash-at-startup issue with New Vegas: the first screen of credits appears, and then the program bombs out with an error.

If this is happening to you and you're using BitDefender anti-virus software, it may be due to BitDefender's "Real Time Protection". First step would be to disable it for 5 minutes and see if New Vegas will start up properly (you'll need to be in Advanced Mode of BitDefender in order to turn it off).

If it's the real time protection setting, and you want to keep it turned on, go to the Antivirus tab and click on the 'Scanner Settings' button. This'll bring up the Behavioral Scanner settings and the cause of your crash. Either turn it off, or add FalloutNV and FalloutNVLauncher to the list of excluded applications.

Hope that helps someone!

I just tested your theory and it worked. However, I have Bitdefender 2011 and the settings are not quite the same. This is NOT the first time I have had issues with Bitdefender...good to know

If you've got a sec, could you post the instructions for the 2011 version for those who may not be as completely awesome at stuff as us?

Thanks

/J.

I tried to put the launcher and the .exe in the exclusions tab and that doesn't work. The ONLY solution with 2011 is to disable realtime protection and tell it to stay off until next reboot. Once you do that....the game is playable.