Well, OP has already kicked the OS in the nads, so this won't really be useful now. But....

FO3 is a DX9 game. You were running on Windows 7, which is a DX11 system. There's been more than a few places I've seen it suggested that when DX9 games throw fits on Win7 machines that the user should install DX9 alongside it. Especially in a 64-bit environment. Since I haven't upgraded to Win7 yet I don't know if this advice works or not, but it might be something to consider for down the road.

For the record, Memtest86 is the utility of choice for stress testing RAM. My roommate was having some stability issues and random crashing on his box not too long ago that only happened when gaming. Surfing the net was fine. Like you, he tossed megabucks at the problem with a new case, PSU, CPU, HDD, and Mobo. Unsurprisingly, the issue followed him the whole way because he refused to replace/test the RAM because it was new. I kicked him off the box one night and ran the test, then dragged his ass to the screen and showed him the results - a failure in the 4th memory stick which only ever got touched when he ran memory low during gaming sessions. The kicker being that it was under warranty! So we packed it up and send it back to Corsair and a week later, new chips came. He's been gaming crash-free ever since. So it's worth checking.

have you tried NOT using ANY (as in nothing at all running in the background) I know some people refuse to run a pc without them, I personally never do because they tend to make things go PMS on me. (sorry if it was suggested I admit I didnt read the entire thread)

... or you could just unhook your internet cable and perform a clean boot before starting your game

Ethanil,

Your ex-military aren't you? I think I recall reading that in a previous post last year... In that light;

I don't want to hear any more of this quitting crap out of you!

You have been working on Path of the Gunslinger now for a year, and its has made great progress and will be a fun mod to play in the end. You can't give up now over a technical glitch... It just wouldn't be right.

There are a ton of really good people that have posted to this thread offering help, input and encouragement. Now take a kick in the butt and and Work this thing until you nail it!

Victory is life, put your gunslinger attitude on and fight to the death on this!

Miax

i dont know if this will help at all, but i had alot of crashes untill i stopped making massive changes to the ini file.. i deleted my ini and only made the essential changes and my game hasnt crashed since..

Sorry to see you having such trouble, E01.

And I don't think FO3 modding is dying or lacking, rather, we just lack a crapflood of furry and six mods that's become so acceptable in the Oblivion modding scene.

Also, "Lucky" & "Pompous" are interchangeable apparently. Interesting.

I lol'd then saluted my monitor whyen I read this. Thanks for making my day! Now all I need is a fishy stick...

Cereally tho, Since porting back to XP, the system seems to be almost totally stable. I've had one crash in 4 hours and that was when I was mashing a quicksave key.

Me and Jericho and Dogmeat took a stroll through the Bethesda ruins (at level 3) and pretty much decapitated everyone with my uhh...borrowed...from Jericho...chinese officer sword, his club, and Dogmeat's teeth.

Took almost an hour to clear the town and buildings, and some SERIOUS strategic maneuvers, including using that infamous french Army maneuver: Enfui! (I'm kidding, just kidding!).

Not a single hiccup or anything the whole time, so I've got my fingers crossed.

I believe I owe much of this to the advice people have given in this topic. As far as I'm concerned, the present PC issues forum should be wiped and a note posted: 'Halfwits with stupid ideas like removing your disk cache will be shot out of a cannon'. I swear, that was the advice someone was giving in a topic over there!

It's like I've always said, if you want to find out the REAL deal, talk to the modders of a game, not the programmers or the run of the mill players.

You guys offered a lot of solid advice and I'm using a LOT of it.

What's your load order look like now that things are stable?

I'm still a little concerned over load order, but here is what I have at the moment:

Fallout3.esmAnchorage.esmThePitt.esmBrokenSteel.esmPointLookout.esmZeta.esmCRAFT.esmCALIBR.esmFO3 Wanderers Edition - Main File.esmMart's Mutant Mod.esmDarNifiedUIF3.espCRAFT - Activation Perk.espFO3 Wanderers Edition - Main File.espFO3 Wanderers Edition - DLC Anchorage.espFO3 Wanderers Edition - DLC Broken Steel.espFO3 Wanderers Edition - DLC Mothership Zeta.espFO3 Wanderers Edition - DLC Point Lookout.espFO3 Wanderers Edition - DLC The Pitt.espFO3 Wanderers Edition - Followers Enhanced (BrokenSteel).espFO3 Wanderers Edition - Optional Sneak Msgs.espWeaponModKits.espWeaponModKits - FWE Master Release.espUPP - Pack 1.espUPP  - Quest Perks.espUPP - Experience Perks.espUPP - Pack 2.espSniperZooming.espBypassOpAnchorage.espWeaponModKits - OperationAnchorage.espWeaponModKits - ThePitt.espWeaponModKits - BrokenSteel.espWeaponModKits - PointLookout.espWeaponModKits - Zeta.espStealthboy Recon Armor - CRAFT.espMart's Mutant Mod.espMart's Mutant Mod - DLC Anchorage.espMart's Mutant Mod - DLC The Pitt.espMart's Mutant Mod - DLC Broken Steel.espMart's Mutant Mod - DLC Point Lookout.espMart's Mutant Mod - DLC Zeta.espMart's Mutant Mod - FWE Master Release.espGore_No_More.espLess_Blood.espSavage Wasteland - Fewer Gun Wielding Maniacs.espPoint Lookout Scar Hair for Vanilla Races.espKH_FWE Fixes.espKH_FWE Tweaks.espKH_FWE Hellfirefix.espKH_NoAmmoWeight.espKH_MMM override.espMez's Merged Patch - FWE-WMK-MMM.espTotal active plugins: 51Total plugins: 51

I'll be adding more things as I become sure the system can handle it.

OohRah!

Glad to see you've got your issues (hopefully) sorted! Sorry, I didn't offer any help, but everyone else seemed to know what they were talking about It's too bad Win7 was giving you such problems.

For what it's worth, I updated my graphics card to a GeForce GTS250, and importantly, stopped using the onboard sound card and have been using an add-on one that plugs in as its own little PCI card. I also replaced my power supply with a strong, gaming-sort of one when I got the new video card. FO3 rarely crashes on me, now. It used to blow up every 15 mins or so.

Can you run Phalanx with Max settings yet?

Who me?

I like as high a framerate as I can get, so... I'm not doing that.

I had to replace my monitor too... and this new one is one of those wide HD LCD thingies. It's interesting, nice-looking. I'm not sure what graphics settings I'm on, but I'm happy with what I have.

It hardly crashes at all. I playtested the FOOK/Phalanx development version for several hours yesterday, and the game didn't blow up until I used a mininuke to blast through a door leading toward the Virgo dish thingie, and when I walked through the newly-unlocked door, the game finally went splat. It didn't seem sound or video related, or related to the game being busy, or so on.

So yeah - - it's a different beast with this video card + an add-on sound card.

The only place I'm having a lot of crashes at the moment is in the areas surrounding Reilly's Rangers. I'm not sure if the area has been modded and that's why or if it's the fact that well...for some reason, my game spawned 2 Gargantuans, 3 behemoths and about 50 super mutants in the area along with a BOS patrol from the patrols mod (I've disabled that temporarily and it seems to be helping).

Another mild crash issue I've noticed seems to be sound related...once in a while I get a stutter or sudden 'skip' in the entire sound and music going on, then my framerate drops a bit and gets a little choppy...then...wham..down she goes. This has been rare the last few days though.


I noticed the sound issue the most while I had the full weather package installed including the 'weather sounds indoors', so I think I'll try using his lower resolution sounds and see if that fixes it.

It's possible, I suppose, that the onboard sound driver is fighting with the USB sound driver, so I'll also try disabling onboard sound again.

Overall though, my game is so stable its scary.

That is caused by a component of your PC overheating, most likely GPU or CPU.

hmm. Thanks. I have the case open...maybe I need to replace a fan then, or maybe the stock goop on my heat sink dried up and cracked. I'll investigate when I get a little cash for silver paste.

Having the case open is not good, as it prevents a proper airflow through your case.
Air needs to be svcked in from the front and blown out through the rear, that way the air passes by your PC components properly.

That's what I've been thinking all the way as I sped through the thread - my PC Voodoo sense tells me its either:

*) CPU or GPU or RAM crapping out after protracted high load heat.
*) PSU unable to cope with temps caused by long, high loads.

GPU you can test by looping the 3DMark DX(whatever your card supports) tests over and over ,overnight. If its crashed in the morning, your GPU is likely overheating

CPU and RAM you can test with http://ocbase.com/perestroika_en/index.php. This is an overclocker's tool designed wholly to create as much heat as possible to trigger this kind of failure. Like the good old Prime 95, it has 3 modes:

• CPU - Creates lots of heat in the CPU. Errors returned will most likely be CPU-based
  
• RAM - Creates lots of heat in the RAM and memory controller. Errors may be CPU-based, so should be run _after_ CPU test.
  
• Mix - Take a guess

Given that it takes hours, plural, for FO3 to trigger a failure, I would say ran a (number of hours you sleep) overnight CPU test, followed by a similar RAM test.

Unfortunately Memtest will miss many errors in modern large DIMMs, its algorithms make its data ops move from physical chip to chip to quickly for heat-triggered failures to occur.
edit: this is not to say that its useless - memtest will actually know which bit of your ram is borked when it finds an error, which is rather nice with the other errors it does detect, it just doesn't generate enough heat to catch these.

As far PSU, there's no real systematic way of testing it, apart from buying a PSU-testing machine. Given the single CPU and single mid-range GPU, 550W should be ample, but that depends on a couple of things.

Could you tell me, please:

The make and model of the PSU. Not all PSUs are born equal and max amps between different voltage rails change from PSU to PSU.
How old it is (Capacitors age, and not gracefully).

I'd never leave my PC unattended and under stress if I thought there was an overheating problem. Oh. no.

For one thing, overheating means hours are being stripped off of the hardware's life. Having this happen when I'm not there to see it build up .. no way.

I run with my case open as well...

Overheating has always had a peculiar set of symptoms when it happened to me back in Fall 2008. The game would get slower, and slower, and laggier, and nastier, and then crash or lock up.

The sudden crashes when it seems like some weapon just started firing, or when you're walking along doing nothing and the game seems unlagged and fine - those were not heat related in my case. The heat crashes were distinct in that game performance steadily went to hell before things crumbled into oblivion.

It doesn't mean hours stripped away, at worst it means one less Fallout session.
Seriously though, if you're having heat problem that cause Fallout to crash, then actually playing Fallout will result in more damage than a proper test program will do. The reason is that Fallout doesn't necessarily crash right away when errors start happening. You'll usually get sound loops, stuttering, etc. first. However a test program like for example Prime95 will cease operations the moment it detects an error, which makes it far safer to use than playing a game.


As said above, you're actively hurting the air circulation in your case, plus you are accumulating a ton of more dust, which will also increase heat build up.
Just have two fans svcking air from the front and two fans blowing it back out. A case fan costs maybe $5 and is definitly worth the investment.

That certainly makes sense... I have a BFG 9800gtx+ with the fan exhaust pointing towards the front of the case ("old-school" design I guess). With the PSU pushing air out the back, there's obviously some negative air pressure in the case. Luckily it's a big case with holes all over it, backed by a dust screen... temps are good.

Seems more and more cards are utilizing a rear pointing exhaust...next one I get will definitely have this!

Just out of curiosity, I have my case open because when it's closed my PC like to just shut itself off, what are your feelings on having and actual home use fan blowing right into the open case.

My last PC had both sides off and sat right next to a box fan, overclocked for about 11 years.

An open case won't cause your PC to blow up, but it will definitly cause much more dust to accumulate inside the case. A home fan will just make it even worse

If you need to leave your case open because otherwise your PC overheats, all that means is that your case cooling is crappy. But leaving the case open is only a patchwork solution, proper case cooling is the way you go if you care in the slightest about your PC.

1. Open case vs. closed case
A closed case being better than an open case is only true for well built cases with a properly engineered airflow, many cases just simply do not have this. Having the case open allows all of that heat to escape out of the case, it greatly increases overall heat dissipation. It has been shown in various overclocking enthusiast sites, like JonnyGuru, that various components can get hotter with an open case but overall average temperature usually goes down, unless you have a very well designed case. The best way to determine this would be to test, looking at your videocard temp, motherboard temp, and CPU temp. Most likely, open case will be the best for you.

2. Your problem does sound like a hardware issue given how much software-side troubleshooting you have done only to have little improvement. I think the stress testing suggestion is a good one, and OCCT will do fine. If you don't like OCCT you could also use Prime95 w/ Speedfan, which is what I use. It's really just a preference thing, both are great software. If it is able to handle the stress testing for 8 hours without overheating and any errors, you are good to go. The max temperature on that is 72-74 degrees Celsius for the AMD Athlon II X2 245 Processor. I would actually say under or around 55 is what you want to shoot for and around the low 60's at most.

3. You would also suggest this program http://freestone-group.com/video-card-stability-test.htm to stress test your video card. Max temp for most videocards is 105 degrees Celsius but I wouldn't suggest anything over 85 Degrees Celsius.

One really easy way to test for your overheating problem, though not a permanent solution, would be to get a large fan and position it to blow directly into your computer case at medium to high speed. If you still have the same problems after this, you know your problem isn't overheating.