I have been fighting a losing battle with this game, I cannot play in Full Screen Mode. The game will launch fine and I can get loaded but withing 2 mins the game kicks me out and tells me poor performance and to change to Basic Color Scheme, so I do this and go back into game, it will play for about another 2 mins and either it will crash the game or fallout 4 will stop responding. So I re-load game and then it will work again for a few mins and then crash telling me Graphics driver stopped responding and has recovered. If I load it again it might work but last night all it was doing was BSOD and when I check BlueScreenView it says that the error was caused by THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER and that atikmdag.sys was the cause, so I updated to the latest stable drivers and still same issue, then I went to the Beta driver and still same problem. I used driver sweeper to clear everything and started over with latest stable driver and BSOD. I then went to windowed mode boarderless and the first time I loaded the game crashed telling me fallout4.exe stopped. the 2nd time I loaded everything worked fine and I was able to play. The first few times I played it would crash about 3 times then the 4th tim eit would play, but last night it was hopeless.

i7 920 @ 3Ghz

12GB Ram

Asus 6970 DirectCUII 2GB

Windows 7 64bit

This system runs Fallout very well (when it is working) on high settings so there cannot be an issue with it not meeting min requirements since i have read of people with Core2Quads running it. I have seen various issues via google with this or similar issues so I know I am not the only one. Anyone have any suggestions?

You could be facing a dying graphics card, CPU, even RAM. I had those same symptoms when my GPU died some years back.

Could also be a driver conflict which AMD cards are notorious for. You should be doing a clean install of drivers every update.

I had considered it might be bad hardware but I do not think that is the case since I can play any other game fine, it is only with this game. I have not had any BSOD's in a very long time and the last one was due to a bad driver. There are many other examples of people having this issue so I have ruled out hardware failures.

OP: I hate to say it, but you're almost at potato level PC at this point. Might be time to upgrade.

At least the GPU....

I wouldn't. I had the same issue. Some games worked and a few resource heavy ones didn't. Swapped the card out and it went away. If you have another card you really should test that first.

Why woudl the game work perfectly fine in full screen mode the day before and then last night in windowed mode? It cannot be hardware, it will be driver related but there must be some sort of workaround. This game is full of issues causing instability so I am just adding my problems to the pile.

yeah man i think the problem is on your GPU since i been playing a full screen mode and my rig is worst than yours.

This game is probably working your video card much harder than the other games. You really should get a new card, yours is older and at low end of what can run this game. However this could also be heat related. Open up the case sides, get a can of compressed air and blow out the dust on the GPU fans and heatsinks. Note, take the PC outside first, you will thank me later. The other thing to check is the video card fully seated in the slot, heat creep can move these out of the slot over time.

Finally, use a program that gives you control over your fans so that they start to ramp up sooner keeping the card cooler during gaming.

Airflow is not an issue, my case is Cooler Master HAF 932 with a 210mm side fan pushing direct to the GPU, it runs at 65c full load. One more thing I will add is the game will also do the same crashes even if I leave it in the main screen and the game gpu loads are minimal. I am certain it is driver related since anything i find says they updated drivers and it went away, but for me it has not. If there is any Hadware issues the ONLY thing that could be the issue is the fact that I recently had to replace the PSU (4 months ago) and I am wondering it MAYBE the one I got just doesnt cut it? I ended up getting a Thermaltake TR2 600W, so I wonder if that is part of it? Still makes no sene why the game crashes in the main menu screen since it does not push any high load. I might have to replace the PSU again with something better and see how that works out. I am still leaning on driver issues since other people with issues updated drviers and it works.

Hey I have an R9 290X, I have the same issue with two games, Fallout 4 and Far Cry 4, I have to run both on Windowed mode, but the issue isn't hardware but it has to do with using dual displays. If I only use one of the two then it runs fine, but if I use dual mode, either app wont run. I decided to keep them in windowed mode since there isn't that much difference, I just remove the borders and it's fine.

Yes I thought this as well and I did try disabling 1 display and it still happened but I think that was before I did a full clean driver install so I will have to try it again, but yes I agree windowed mode with no boarder is fine, and I dont get the "poor perfomance" error that way either. I used to run dual GTX460's on a NON SLI board and with BF3 I would get that same error and it would BSOD (b/c I was using a cracked SLI method). I just disabled Visual Themes and Desktop Composition and it would be fine. I tried that as well with FO4 but it does not seem to do anything so something isnt right there. It is not hardware it is driver issues I am sure.

One other thing I will try is resetting the .ini files. Is there a specific way to reset them or just rename them and the game will create new ones?

Resetting the .ini files did nothing, but the game launched a played fine in windowed boarderless mode so that means it is drivers. I will just wait till the next driver update and try again.

The only way I can make it work every time is the start game in full screen mode, have ti kick me out and tell me the go to basic color mode, then close game and run it in windowed boarderless mode, if I just straight run in in windowed boarderless mode it will cause issues.