When I open Fallout 3, the launcher works fine, but when I click the play button, the game only begins to launch for about a split second before the error comes up: "fallout3 has stopped working." I've updated my drivers, I've re installed the game, and I've downloaded the latest patch, I also set water multisampling to low. Please help me, I'm running Windows Vista and the game is through Steam.

Error:
"Faulting application Fallout3.exe, version 1.7.0.3, time stamp 0x4a40f18b, faulting module Fallout3.exe, version 1.7.0.3, time stamp 0x4a40f18b, exception code 0xc0000005, fault offset 0x0074de75, process id 0x9c0, application start time 0x01cc6283f81c2362."

Specs:
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate 6.0
Processor: Intel® Pentium® 4 CPU 3.40GHz
Memory: 3326MB RAM
Display: ATI Radeon X300/X550/X1050 Series

The game isn't supposed to run properly on seven year old hardware. It simply cannot do so. Actaaully, the design of that video chip is a year older than the high end part of the Xn00 generation. A graphics card able to handle most of Dx9 is required, not one that stopped with Dx9.0"a".

* Direct X 9.0c compliant video card with 256MB RAM
(NVIDIA 6800 "GS" or better/ ATI X850 or better)
{Added my note here, the X800 Pro & up also, and
avoid the Geforce 6800 SE, and 6800 XT}

The high end Xn00, from the X700 (too slow) up to the X850, qualified for Fallout 3, although not for Fallout-NV. Even if that X300 could somehow sprout wings and magically add the SM-3 pixel shaders, it would be miles too slow.

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=86&card2=301