Hi,

after ~10 minutes of gameplay, Fallout 3 freezes and I have to close it with the control panel (no mods installed).

So far I've tried the following, without success:


- "iNumHWThreads=2 " (.ini Quadcore fix)
- Installing patch 1.7
- Reinstalling codecs, audio and video drivers
- Using the "Fallout 3GB enabler" tool
- Enabling Vista compatibility mode
- Disabling AV programs
- Disabling GfWL
- Installing older DirectX versions
- Cleaning up the registry
- Defragging etc.


On my old rig (Windows Vista x32) it ran like a charm. Don't tell me I can't play my all-time favorite game anymore D:

Anyway, thanks in advance!



Dxdiag:

Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (6.1, Build 7600) (7600.win7_gdr.100618-1621)
System Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
System Model: X58A-UD3R
BIOS: Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7 CPU 930 @ 2.80GHz (8 CPUs), ~2.8GHz
Memory: 6144MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 4094MB RAM


---------------
Display Devices
---------------

Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce GTX 480
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_06C0&SUBSYS_075F10DE&REV_A3
Display Memory: 3294 MB
Dedicated Memory: 1503 MB
Shared Memory: 1791 MB
Current Mode: 1920 x 1080 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Driver Name: nvd3dumx.dll,nvwgf2umx.dll,nvwgf2umx.dll,nvd3dum,nvwgf2um,nvwgf2um
Driver File Version: 8.17.0012.6099 (English)
Driver Version: 8.17.12.6099


-------------
Sound Devices
-------------
Description: Digitaler Ausgang (ASUS Xonar D2 Audio Device)
Default Sound Playback: Yes
Default Voice Playback: Yes
Hardware ID: PCI\VEN_13F6&DEV_8788&SUBSYS_82691043&REV_00
Manufacturer ID: 1
Product ID: 100
Type: WDM
Driver Name: cmudaxp.sys
Driver Version: 5.12.0001.0008 (English)

Hello there,

Can I just add that I too am having exactly the same problems (sorry this isn't a fix, Fenix44),

I love the game, and played it all the way through back in 2008, no problems at all. Now however I have encountered the dreaded "indoors freeze glitch", it is completely ruining the game for me. I too have tried the various fixes that can be found when desperately scouring the internet for a solution, as many discouraged fans are doing.

The indoor freeze glitch plagued me in Greyditch, and I only just managed to complete the "Those!" quest after endless re-starts. I'm now in Tranquility Lane, in the Abdandoned House, and can hardly move an inch without the game freezing and locking up completely. The 'popular' multicore fix to the ini file didn't work for me either - sadly. I also tried the DEP fix, too - but to no avail. Patched to 1.7, no mods.

I've tried running it in Windowed mode; running it with Vsync, without Vsync; with various compatibility features enabled and disabled and so on. I even removed all the codecs I had installed on the system. So far nothing has worked. The freezing is now so bad when inside the Abandoned House I don't see how I can continue the game - yet I can wander around outside in Tranquility Lane for as long as I like with no freezing at all, yet enter the Abandoned House, or go inside any house for that matter, and the game will freeze at some point despite my best efforts to fix it. I'm currently spending far more time trying to find a fix, than playing the actual game. I'm now of the opinion that I haven't found a fix because there isn't one. Desperately hoping someone will prove me wrong.

Windows 7 64bit. Core i7. 6GB RAM. ATi HD 5870 - latest drivers.
Running in Vista (SP2) compatibility mode, with Desktop Composition disabled.

DDR3? I had to manually set my memory settings in my BIOS and clock it back from 1333 to 1068 (or whatever the lower clock rating was) before Windows itself stopped screwing up. To keep FO3 humming along without crashing every 30 minutes or so, I had to disable HDR & Bloom as well as AA. I also updated my motherboard chipset drivers. I don't know if any of that will help, but it's worth a shot.

Having the exact same issue on Win 7 64 Bit, this game ran really well on a much lower end rig than what I'm on now. The box I originally ran FO3 on was a P4HT 3.2ghz with 2GB of RAM and a 6800 GT Nvidia graphics card on Windows XP SP 2 and it had no problems with Fallout 3.

Fast forward several years later and I'm running a Quad-Core Q6600, A Geforce 470 GTX and 8GB of RAM and Windows 7 64 Bit and no matter what I do, even trying to run Fallout 3 plain vanilla, no mods straight up nothing but the Fallout.esm and the DLC esm's this game will just randomly freeze up for no apparent reason at all forcing me to terminate the application process.

I can get around 10 - 30 minutes of play before this occurs but it happens every time.

I have done just as much as the original poster has done in regards to attempting to "tweak" the situation to make FO3 work on Win 7 and it simply WILL NOT WORK at all for any extended period of time, mods or no mods.

When I terminate the process I notice its using well over 1GB of memory and I'm suspecting its some kind of pervasive memory leak with the exe in regards to 64 bit operating systems.

The game otherwise, with all settings maxed out, runs like a charm other than this consistent freeze where the game just freezes completely and the only way out is to terminate the process at the task manager.

Bethesda really needs to address this, FONV was doing this stuff at release and running like crap too but they actually worked in a fix. Bethesda needs to look at fixing FO3 as well for 64 bit system using modern GPU chipsets because its a damn shame a game this good looks like its been designed by inept designers to the people who MIGHT have not played FO3 but decided to go buy the GOTY cause they enjoyed FONV...only to find FO3 won't run consistently on their systems.

Now heres the deal, I can run FO3 right now on my secondary box, my secondary box is Windows XP SP 2, 2GB of RAM, a P4HT 3.6ghz single core processor and a Geforce 8600 GT and guess what....Fallout 3 runs smoother than a baby's ass on much less capable hardware.

They need to patch this, especially with all the potential resale they'll have on FO3 from FONV's fair success on the market.

Seeing as I bought the FO3 CE prior to release, and bought the Steam DDE with all the DLC's and bought a GOTY for my wife, and two Fallout New Vegas preorder CE's, I figure someone at Bethesda owes me a working [censored] game. And the simple facts are is if I can take the game and put it on a lower end computer and it works fine but it doesn't work on my higher end computer then its not MY hardware its the engine having trouble UTILIZING my hardware.

Figure it out gamesas. Seriously. Type "Fallout 3 crashes" into Google and try not to crawl into a closet in shame right now, cause its pretty [censored] obvious there is a problem. And its NOT user error.

Just as a show and tell, I just had a freeze while attempting to play, while I had the Task Manager open I noticed that the game's memory footprint was nearly a gig once more, and while the game was "frozen" and I was watching the memory usage, the memory continued to increase by 32 Kbytes every five seconds as I watched. And I watched it for a good five minutes after the freeze before terminating the process. The game itself wasn't doing ANYTHING, it was frozen, but the memory continued to increase regardless of the total full stop program not responding state FO3 was in, I suspect had I just let it run it would have just kept going up.

http://gr0undzer0.com/incfootprint.jpg

Just curious, have you tried disabling your multi-cores? I had a similar problem, (and I know it doesn't work for everyone, as shown above) but then I did http://www.sevenforums.com/gaming/20199-fallout-3-windows-7-w-quad-core.html and I haven't had the freezing issue once. In mine, the game froze, btu the sound didn't.

If that sounds familiar do try what I've posted. The game is designed to use a maximum of 2 cores; anything else and it gets confused.

I do have the iNumHWThreads=2 in my ini. It has not fixed the issue.

I too have the "iNumHWThreads=2" line inserted into fallout_default.ini this did not stop the freezing.

Incidentally, when I first played Fallout 3, way back in 2008, I ran it straight out of the box, completely unpatched. I ran it on a quad core Q6600, with a nVidia 8800 GTX, running under Vista (can't remember if it was 64 bit or not) - anyway, it ran like a dream. The problem may well be the 64bit version of Win 7 - I don't know, but my gut feeling is, that this is a memory problem.

Anyway Tehpro is right, with a game as good as this, with a strong and loyal fan base, Bethesda need to address this problem, and quickly.

Since it wasn't fixed when Fallout: NV was released, and it isn't a universal failure, my own assessment is that it will continue to be ignored, unless in addressing the much more substantial failure regarding the high end recent Geforces versus the two newer Windows versions, they happen upon a general change that not only helps alleviate that problem, but would also deal with the older game's less-pressing (fewer player complaints) problems as well, & with minimal effort.

Don't edit/alter that ini with FO3. Use the one located here:

XP: Documents and settings\UserName\My Documents\My Games\Fallout3\FALLOUT (Configuration Settings)
Vista/Win7: Users\UserName\Documents\My Games\Fallout3\FALLOUT (Configuration Settings)

Return the Fallout_default.ini back to its original state. The edits don't always work for FO3 when you use the Fallout_default.ini, and it can actually cause problems when that ini is altered. The ini in the My Games\ location can easily be edited, and if you make mistakes it can be safely deleted and the game will generate a new default one. Not so with the Fallout_default.ini. If it gets messed up, unless you backed it up, you might need to reinstall the game.

I've been reading that Steam keeps overwriting the FNV ini in the My Games\ location, so folks have had to edit the default.ini, but that seems to be a Steam & FNV thing only.

^ that might explain why it worked straight away for me. I did the one in the documents folder, and I have a GOTY on discs - not steam.

I set up mine in the Documents/Games/Fallout3 folder as well. No joy. Game continues to crash at or around 1 gigabyte of memory footprint, usually within about 10 - 30 minutes of play. I'm currently in the "support" process with Bethesda on it and have sent them my DxDiag reports.

But, all that means is they're looking for something else on my computer to blame other than the game not being compatible with Win 7 64 and 400+ series Nvidia cards.

I'm currently in the support process for Fallout 3 on this issue and I'm basically being told by their software tech support that because FO3 was released before Windows 7 they don't support the game under that environment (though to their credit they're trying), whereas Fallout: New Vegas does have Win 7 support and is enhanced for multi-core computers and runs pretty much fine for me.

So I can't play a game from 2008 because of an operating system from 2009 I guess...is the logic here. Rather than say....taking the adjustments they made for the engine for FONV and applying them to FO3 in a patch thus making it both multi-core enhanced and Win 7 supported.

BTW the MS Compatibility site itself says that Fallout 3 is compatible with Win 7 64 Bit, Bethesda tech support says they weren't aware of that and to ignore it as erroneous data.

So I guess the only thing we can do is wait until gamesas releases a Win7 compatibility patch. Hope it doesn't take ages

Some mod needs to start erasing these topics. They pop up every week. Seriously guys, not trying to be rude but use the search function

It isn't Windows 7. Windows 7 is unsupported because Bethesda says so meaning if anybody is having issues with that OS, nobody will bother to help because they don't need to. It's a get out of jail free excuse

The problem is multi-core CPUs specifically if you have more than two of them (2 is fine) OR if you have a core i series CPU. It will freeze the same way under XP and Vista. Vista and Windows 7 are internally 99.9% the same. It is more than likely an issue with how the game uses threads and how windows assigns them with cores in the background. You may have seen the ini mode that forces the game to use 2 cores which might help with freezing but it will still crash from time to time unless you force windows to only run on two cores (and disable hyperthreading) which I don't recommend for this one game

Here is something that might work though:

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1147026-fix-for-freezing-try-it-windows-7-quad-core-core-i/

The Multi-Core CPU might be the issue for some people but it isn't for others.

I had my Quad Core CPU the last time I played FO3 without any problems and fully modded. I am running exactly the same system except for the fact that I upgraded from Vista to Win 7 in the meantime.
I might have different codecs and such, so I can't really pinpoint the problems on Win 7, I can however say with certainty that it is not the Quad Core CPU for me. I tried everything, your little command
line fix included. Changes absolutely nothing. If anyone has some ideas I'd really appreciate it. I might even try to downgrade from patch 1.7 and see if that fixes the issue (although I had 1.7 the last time,
but im seriously running out of ideas).