Looks like you may have a fix I am looking for thanks will try it.
I bought the game a week ago at wallyworld. The last game I bought was Oblivion and it didn't work at all on my desktop (gaming rig) also running Windows 7
Also the game came with 2 dvds I installed the first one fine, It never asked for a cd key, and the second dvd does nothng, I think I will try again but turn off
the autoplay feature on my drive if I can figure that out, and try to find the setup.exe to click on in the second disk.
Funny thing is It still plays but freezes like in the initial thread.
I wonder whats on the second disk?
Its not my computer like you said because it has an i7, Nvidia 460M 1.5G card, and 8G Ram and nothing really to speak of as far as additional software except Borderlands
which rocked at 'high performance settings' on full blast the very first time.

As stated in my other post I have a quad core processor, BUT - I played this game 2 years ago right off a fresh install when I bought the store version of GOTY. Worked fine with no tweaks. Now as I stated in my other post I cant get it to work and have tried a litany of fixes. Is it possible something changed in DirectX or any other manufacturer update that is making my game hang at the intro screen after hitting NEW GAME?

For referrence:
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1160314-played-2-years-ago-fine-reinstall-recently-and-black-screen/

ANY help with this would be great. Itching to play- ...... again

This is quite late, but if you see this, here's what I did to finally play FO3 flawlessly; (except for that freeze up thing in Oasis) I re-installed Vista x64. That cleared up every problem I'd endured since purchasing this refurbished machine. I don't do anything on this computer except read political blogs, and gaming, so I don't worry too much about losing important data; ymmv. The MS agent I talked to through emails indicated that sometimes, the OS install itself is the culprit in countless screw-ups involving graphics cards and software such as the common InstallShield folder renaming-issue.

I usually don't offer any advice like this, as I only know enough to know I don't know anything. But, I had the opportunity, while doing yet another install of Vista, to see that some issues returned, such as the InstallShield example, (and the bottlenecking the CPU was necessary), but everything from video playback to playing FO3 or Mass Effect is stabilized and no more CTD. So I saw that the details in the installation process could change each time, and it occurs to me that perhaps you might have to "pull the lever" more than once for an installation to be successful.

Of course, I'm pulling this all outta the area around my wallet, as I don't know anything about Vista install processes other than following the instructions for re-installing it. All I do know is that I have been having awesome good luck in how stable it all is running now. I sure hope this helps.

I appreciate the feed back and I am worried that it will take a re-install of Vista. I figured an update of Windows Vista is in fact the core of this issue. ........ of course I dont have a physical copy of a windows CD and I figure I am screwed.
Eh..... svcks to be me huh?