I'm looking for the common thread for those whose systems are having the "random crash bug" described as:

- You ARE able to play for 5 minutes or more, the game does boot and save games load.

- Your computer will crash to desktop or reboot completely after random intervals (5 to 30 minutes)

- No logs, events, or crash dumps are generated.

- You were able to play just fine prior to yesterday's patch.

So, just the answers to the following:

1) Which on-board sound chipset do you use (Realtek is common, as is CreativeLabs)?

2) Are you running SLI or Crossfire?

3) Is your on-board Intel GPU enabled? In use?

4) How many hours of normal play before the issue started?

5) When did the issue start (about what time)?

6) Who is your motherboard manufacturer? Did you custom build your system?

We've already eliminated a lot of other "common causes"...everyone seems to be running wildly different GPU's, CPU's, and Windows versions.

You can include your dxdiag dump in a spoiler if you wish.

SPECS: Windows 7

Intel i7-3770 3.4ghz

16gb of RAM

NVIDIA GEforce GTX 960 ddr5 4gb

Games installed on a 1.25 TB (D:) 7200 rpm

Motherboard: Asustek Sabertooth Z77

1.I have a Realtek high definition Audio, but Apparently I also have Nvidia HD audio and Nvidia Virtual audio device(wave extensible) (WDM)

2.I am not running either of those

3. Checked to see and I'm mostly sure that only my 960 gpu is running.

4. able to play well and for hours on end as long as I don't use the workbench too much.

5. Whenever I use the workbench to build settlements, it doesn't happen always but it's literally the only thing that I've been doing prior to having a CTD. everything else works fine.

6. mentioned above Motherboard: Asustek Sabertooth Z77

Game runs pretty well.

I am getting crashes to desktop with no error message or anything. Just a milisecond switch and I'm on my desktop.

THIS ONLY happens when I've used or am using a workbench for settlement editing. It doesn't always happen, sometimes it's fine.

However literally all of my crashes have happened when in a settlement or building stuff in it. and It's not just sanctuary it happened in red rocket as well.

I've capped at 60 fps, I've gone windowed borderless, I've disabled the nividia shield. I was running the BETA patch as well which I installed after I started the game and made my first character. I've verified the game twice, and am now in the process of reinstalling.

I've uninstalled my xbox 360 controller and use the xbox one controller now. It does give me a run time error when I plug in the controller but it works fine anyway so I have no idea if that has something to do with it. though I doubt it.

It could be my character file and I might just restart and see if I'm allowed to not have crashes when using a workbench for too long.

I need a patch or something.

So far Realtek is the common thread, based on combing threads most of today...anyone else?

Do you have the latest version? The last patch fixed some audio related crashes. I'm not sure if it's the same issue.

I did, I was running Fallout 4 [beta] However now I'm reinstalling. Might start a new character in the meantime to see if that fixes it.

It won't, but doesn't hurt to try

The latest version is what broke it. They helped out people with one audio chipset, and broke the game for people with another it looks like.

I'm still confused as to why it's being triggered by settlement editing for me. It might even be another issue. If I ignore this optional thing, the game doesn't ever crash.

Oh man, that svcks! Realtek does have a bad reputation for their drivers causing crashes. I've heard in the past from other games, if you let Windows install the bare audio driver for your chip or perhaps even disabling the panel on boot.

I'll try that now. Hopefully Windows doesn't fish the driver from somewhere.

So try uninstall your driver and run a windows update if it doesn't do anything in the mean time. A reboot after uninstalling probably would search for an audio driver.

Got the Windows driver to stick, but the game still crashed like clockwork after playing for 5 minutes.

Back to the drawing board.

So I reinstalled and I still got the crash like you predicted. So I started a new character, However this time I didn't lock the frames and I can't tell if something else was running in the background but, I got an actual blue screen from the character editor, I've played this game for like 15 hours without anything like that happening, I spent like an hour in character creation before, and now I get a blue screen. I am stumped.

They just need to allow users to roll back the (&($#&%($& patch.

Its a simple matter of enabling the players to patch to previous versions on Steam (other devs do this with some games).

But they won't do it. They prefer to clog up the boards with this issue while they stay quiet.

So so dumb. What "stealth fix" did they put in that screwed up a working game so badly that they can't let us go back?