Whenver I use VATS, my game crashes. When I try to load the last autosave, the game crashes in the middle of it loading. I can load the save before I leave the vault, but ive gotten way ahead of that and dont want to do that.
I just purchased the game today. It first happened about 2 hours in.

Anyway to fix this?
The error message is --

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: Fallout3.exe
Application Version: 1.6.0.3
Application Timestamp: 4a147392
Fault Module Name: nvd3dum.dll
Fault Module Version: 7.15.11.8120
Fault Module Timestamp: 4954afbf
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 0026b777
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: fd00
Additional Information 2: ea6f5fe8924aaa756324d57f87834160
Additional Information 3: fd00
Additional Information 4: ea6f5fe8924aaa756324d57f87834160

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I get the same problem - was getting blue screens on entering VATS with my nVidia card but now I am using a ATI HD 3850 and I'm getting crashes to the desktop instead.

I had a similar problem (on an NVIDIA 8800GT), except the blue screen was only visible for a fraction of a second before the machine would reboot. I solved the problem by installing an older driver - I uninstalled 195.62 and installed 178.24. I haven't had the VATS crash since then (about 50 hours of play).

I am having the problem with VATS giving me blue screen crashed. I am also using an NVIDIA 8800GTS driver version 197.13.
Are there any known solutions to this crash other than rolling back to the 178.24 driver?
Is this crash specific to the 8800 series?
This is the only game/application giving me problems and rolling back will cause issues with other applications and games. If this is the only solution I will just have to sacrifice Fallout 3 until which time as I have a system that is more compatible with it.