... but I just discovered this and hopefully this will help others that may read this.

I love Fallout 3, and Fallout New Vegas. My two favorite games, although Fallout 3 is much better IMO. I too have experienced all the lockup's and crashes, and it seems to get much much worse the further into the game I go.

Normally, I have my PS3 connected to my Samsung 52" flat screen TV via one of it's HDMI ports.

We recently moved, and I wanted to connect it to a different monitor when I was setting everything back up so I wouldn't hog the TV all the time.

I connected my PS3 to my computer's monitor via the HDMI cable. It's a Samsung PX2370 (23").

So far I have had no lockups or crashes with Fallout 3 or Fallout New Vegas. I've download all the DLC and have played through everything with not a single issue. I could never do this when my PS3 was connected to my 52" TV.

Another game that is notorious for crashing is Red Dead Redemption. It got to the point to where I couldn't play it, and I even tried 3 different discs because I saw online that it was hard for the PS3 to read the disc. I tried it since hooking my PS3 up to my smaller monitor and it works without a hitch.

So I don't know ... maybe all these lockups in Fallout and other games are actually something to do with the particular monitor we have our PS3's hooked up to? Changing monitors seems to have fixed the problems for me. I wish I would have discovered it sooner. I went through 2 PS3's, 2 Fallout 3 discs, and 3 Red Dead discs because I kept reading that the problem was with the disc's not being able to be read, or the PS3 not able to read them.

So, in a nutshell, if you're running into Fallout locking up, or some other infamously bad games, try another monitor if you have one available. It completely solved all the lockup and crashing problems I was experiencing. Now if I could only get my 1st gen fatboy back.