I have 2 main questions in this post.

1) Are there any known in-game side affects of using the multi-core fix to try and eliminate freezes??? I ask because my game freezes ALL THE TIME. Daily. Has ever since I bought it. I'm not asking for help with that in this post because I'm convinced it's not a driver issue since my machine is almost brand new with new drivers, and even then I've already updated several. I just checked the day before yesterday and all of my major drivers are still up to date. So I tried the multi-core "fix" wherein you make changes to the ini file.

It may have helped (not sure yet, it crashed once so far, but if that's all then it IS an improvement), but I MAY BE noticing something in game. I say MAY BE because it's also possibly just my perception and I'm totally WRONG. But I'm worried enough to ask, so I'm wondering if there are any known in-game side effects to using the multi-core fix. Specifically, it SEEMS (lilke I said not sure yet), but it SEEMS like the merchants (at least the ones in Megaton) aren't regenerating their goods as often as before. I'm low on ammo and have now checked Moira's 4 consecutive game days to see if she had more to sell and NO CHANGES to her wares. It SEEMS like it changed regularly before, but again, I may just be imagining that.

Also, in the line added under the bUseThreadedAI=1 line where you typed something like iNUMHWThreads=2 (or something, going from memory that may NOT be right) I used the value 4 instead of 2 since my CPU is an Intel 980DX, and I believe it actually has 6 cores but I may be wrong about that, but I'm pretty sure it's at least 4 cores. Should that number be the number of cores or should it be just a 2???? (It was a 2 in the example I found).

2) Because of all the crashes, I've uninstalled and reinstalled this game LOTS OF TIMES. Does anyone know if I'm going to run up against a limitation in the number of times I can reinstall the game with my disks? I've read that some companies use that as some sort of copy protection. This last time I reinstalled it running the setup and application programs under the Vista Service Pack 2 compatibility mode (I have Windows 7 64-bit).

Now maybe THAT affects some in game stuff of what I'm seeing??? (Or, I'm not really seeing anything and it's my imagination is always a possibility)

Anyone know of any possible IN-GAME side effects of either the multi-core fix or installing and running it under Vista Service Pack 2 compatibility modes??? And does anyone know if the number in the second line of the multi-core fix is important and whether or not there are a limited number of reinstalls I can do with my disks??? That's a summary of my questions here.

Thank you for any help.