The game is running fine on my computer, which meets the game's requirements. I'm running a fully-patched GOTY edition on 32 bit Vista. However, I've been having problems - the game keeps freezing up at random moments - during fights, while exploring, or whenever. However, the sound still seems to work and the game doesn't crash to the desktop - I just can't do anything at all. When I alt-tab, the mouse still seems to be stuck to the game, if you will, and the desktop is completely black, so I can't end the program without logging off my account. This is insanely annoying. I've clocked up about an hour and a half of playtime and this has happened about four or five times, so it's a pretty annoying problem. Does anyone know what is wrong, and is there a thread that you could refer me to?

Are you using a CPU with more than 2 threads? If so you might want to try the "quadcore fix".

Open up the .ini file located in My Documents>My Games>Fallout 3. *Do not alter the one in the actual game directory labeled Fallout_Default_ini*
In the FALLOUT.ini find the line

bUseThreadedAI=0
change the 0 to a 1

then below it add the line

iNumHWThreads=2