Had this written for over week now but have been debating posting it. Finally decided to post shortly after waking up and not thinking clearly yet Prepare for long post...

I would like to try and gather some information here regarding Fallout 3 and stability. I'm hoping members of these forums will come forward and share their knowledge and hope that others that seek to have a stable game could benefit from this thread. I've seen some claims that there's no in-between stability for Fallout 3 only very stable or crash-ridden. A stable game of Fallout 3 is certainly intriguing to me and maybe others that visit these forums. I'm not saying people are wrong that make these claims nor crazy saying that Fallout 3 can be very stable, I just haven't seen it myself and others may not have either.

Yes I know there are websites and even some threads on these very boards regarding how to make Fallout 3 stable but they all tend to cover the same very basic steps. I'm curious as to what steps you take in order have a stable game of Fallout 3. Personally I haven't experienced either extreme and have been stuck with an in-between stability for all my games of Fallout 3, though it does tend to lean towards crash-ridden more often than not. Yes this is somewhat of thread to maybe help with my unstable game issues but I don't want you to think of this thread that way. I'd rather you think about it being a thread of helpful suggestions and tips for anyone that may have troubles with an unstable Fallout 3.

Is your Fallout 3 stable? Specifically can you play for several hours without a CTD performing a myriad of tasks like engaging in small to large firefights, changing cells often or even roaming the wastes for extended periods of time? I find myself quite fortunate to get a hour of play-time before getting a CTD. These can come from simply exploring the wastes, during cell transitions and probably the most aggravating is crashing during a firefight. I've fired a single-shot at a mole rat once and crashed! There are periods where my game time will go past the hour mark and yet there are moments where my game will CTD several times within half-an-hour. And this is all with more-or-less the same mod setup.

What's your practice for saving your game? Do you use a mod like CASM or do you just manually save the game yourself either through the menu or console? Do you make the extra effort to keep X number of rotating saves? I myself tend to keep 10-15 rotating “hard” saves. I define these as going to an interior with no NPCs, using the console and typing “pcb” to purge the cell buffers and then save, I could be completely wrong in doing the cell purge step, I don't know. I also tend to keep another 5+ saves for exploring the wasteland, I don't use “pcb” for these saves though.

Do you tweak your Fallout.ini in any way? If so what changes do you make? Does setting the various background loading and multi-threading tweaks help the stability of your game? I myself have to at least use the multi-core tweak since I have a quad-core otherwise my game will freeze within minutes. I've tried the various .ini tweaks myself but they have yet to increase stability or instability.

I do know it's good practice to clean the mods in you load order preferably from top to bottom, .esms and .esps. I do know that you don't want to clean overhauls however. Do you even clean the DLC .esms? If a non-overhaul mod uses an .esm and .esp which would you clean first?

If using Wrye Flash and upon creating your Bashed Patch, what do you import and what settings, if any, do you change? It seems you'd want to put a check next to all the “Import X” options with all the mods under them ticked as well as Leveled and FormID lists. Do you alter and use the various options under Tweak Settings? For example AI: Max Active Actors or Combat: Max Actors to help with stability using a mod such as Mart's Mutant Mod or any mod that may increase the amount of AI in a cell?

If on a 64-bit OS and your computer has 4 GB of RAM or more do use a program to enable the switch on the executable to allow the use of more RAM? If using Fallout Script Extender do you use the same program on it as well and perhaps even the .dlls for FOSE? Do you change the compatibility settings of the executable(s) to something else? For example your OS is Windows 7 do you change the compatibility to say, Windows XP Service Pack 3? Do you do the same for fose_loader.exe? Do these various changes help the stability of your game?

Do you use Fallout Stutter Remover? If so do you make any changes to stutter remover .ini? What have you changed specifically in the .ini and has it helped the performance and stability of your game?

Any other input such as personal practice to increase stability or something I missed would be very much appreciated for others that may look to this thread for ideas and suggestions. Thank you for your time.