There is a mod on nexus that will make your windowed mode full screen

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=45

Thanks for that. Unfortunately though windowed mode seems to be playing up now. Though have found another fix that seemed to work (though not tested for long periods). People are saying that after patch 1.1 the game doesn't like 4 cores anymore, & to get around this you have to edit the fallout.ini file to limit the game to use 2 cores,

Open up the fallout.ini file in: My Documents\My Games\Fallout3 (make backup on fallout.ini file - just in case)
Find the line:

bUseThreadedAI=0

change it to:

bUseThreadedAI=1

Add another line after it and insert:

iNumHWThreads=2

The above seems to work (for now), and when I switch back to the old fallout.ini file it starts to freeze again (hopefully indicating that was the problem).

I've also found information regarding a windows vista hotfix that fixes a known issue regarding certain system and application crashes on computers that have multi-core processors. I haven't tried this yet though so don't know if it works. Below are the links to the fix. Top is 32bit, bottom 64bit.

http://thehotfixshare.net/board/index.php?showtopic=11094
http://thehotfixshare.net/board/index.php?showtopic=11095

How about the quest "Sorry, my darling" crashing instantly to desktop? What do I do about that?

Which one of these issues means the same thing as when I see the Menu and select PLAY it starts for a little bit and then it says that it stops working on me.
I might also need instructions for this problem explained easier...

Wolfpup you can add this to the list of fixs

this fixs some BSOD issues some are haveing

download rivatuner and check you GPU's fan speed if its anything
other than 80% - 95% you need to set it manualy higher

mine was set to 25% and not by me aperantly when i installed this brand new
9600 GT Overclocked edition Graphics card it automaticly set it to 25%
so after setting it to 95% my graphics card is nice and cool and not BSODing when i
play Fallout, and yeah only fallout was BSODing i could play farcry 2 deadspace and a all
my other new games just fine on super high settings

i kinda think it was a combination of the fan speed and the new nvidia driver out
i also had to revert to the old 182.50 driver

hope this helps someone

recomendation for sticky

this is an essential post
and needs to be seen by all will
save some people from posting same error over and over again

bump


this needs to be stickyed

Last BUMP for this post

This helps it needs to be stickyed
or pinned

Please

Save your bumps, this post may not be pinned directly but it is indirectly.
You can find the link to this thread through the "http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=890373" thread, which is pinned.

i would like to add another contestant to the bug fixes. it was posted by ruyr. please read http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=982514&st=0&gopid=15172212&#entry15172212.

Thanks for the info. I haven't tried some of this stuff.

Don't want to lose this thread, so bump.

Good Evening.

Windows 7 x64 Professionsal user. I had recurring 'freezes' (game engine keeps running, but controls have no effect) every 4-6 minutes depending on how I had last tried to fix the problem. At first the game crashed immediately, but using InstalledCodec I discovered that MPEG-I Stream Splitter was conflicting. Once I disabled that codec, then the game ran for 4-8 minutes before freezing, and nothing that I found anywhere could fix the issue. The list of things that I tried is http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1399670.

And then, suddenly, Fallout 3 worked, but not because of anything that I did to the game files.

I installed S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl, and played that for about 10 hours. Then, when I found the energy to go back and work on FO3 again, Fallout3 worked. Very strange. Both games were released within about 8 months of each other, so I'm guessing that SoC installed something that FO3 needed. I'll edit this post once I've gone through before and after dxdiags and found what the difference is.

This is precisely why truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense.
Many thanks to the OP for creating the list of fixes.

OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (6.1, Build 7600) (7600.win7_gdr.100618-1621)
System Manufacturer: KarlMonster
System Model: ASUS Rampage Extreme
BIOS: BIOS Date: 07/27/09 14:31:42 Ver: 08.00.14
Processor: Intel® Core™2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz (2 CPUs), ~3.0GHz
Memory: 8192MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 8192MB RAM
Page File: 2208MB used, 14172MB available
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
DxDiag Version: 6.01.7600.16385 32bit Unicode
Card name: ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2
Chip type: ATI display adapter CrossFire Secondary (0x9441)
DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_9441&SUBSYS_02601043&REV_00
Display Memory: 3827 MB
Dedicated Memory: 1015 MB
Shared Memory: 2811 MB
Current Mode: 1024 x 768 (32 bit) (85Hz)

Audio is "Supreme X-Fi" licensed from Creative Labs
Description: Speakers (SoundMAX Integrated Digital HD Audio)
Hardware ID: HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_11D4&DEV_989B&SUBSYS_10438334&REV_1003
Type: WDM
Driver Name: ADIHdAud.sys
Driver Version: 6.10.0002.6600 (English)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Date and Size: 8/18/2010 15:11:49, 478208 bytes
Driver Provider: anologDevices

One thing I haven't seen mentioned here regarding Windows 7 is to NOT install it into the Program Files (x86) folder. Doing so will cause UAC to not allow Fallout (or any other Windows game for that matter) to be able to properly access the disk and the files it needs to. I usually install to Games\(game name) folder to get around this.