Hello all!

I've recently purchased Fallout 3 and installed it on my laptop (windows 7) and it seemed to work until i tried to launch it! The start menu shows up (with "play", "settings"...) but once i've clicked on "Play" the game "starts" by a black screen which lasts forever. I can hear the main menu's music, but i'm unable to play the game.
I tried to update the drivers, start the game as "administrator" (sth like that), change a codeline from "0" to "1" (i read this online in a thread dealing with the same kind of problem i'm experiencing) and changed it backwards when noticing it didn't help, set graphic settings to minimum,...
I can't find any solution that works for me online, i hope someone here will tell me what to do just to play that game.
Thank you guys for reading my thread, and thanks to those who might answer it .

Inasmuch as you chose to discuss your problem as if all Windows 7 PCs were merely ordinary console game boxes, no one can answer, unless / until you come up with everything you chose to omit.

What did i omit (i didn't "choose" to omit anything, i don't know what else to say about that, i'm not a professional)?

The codeline in changed was: bUseThreadedAI=0 (i changed the "0" to "1" but it didn't work so i changed it backwards to "0")

Down further on the page on which you posted is a topic that might help you. Go here: http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1348070-windows7-quad-core-fixes/. If this doesn't work, I don't have much hope that it will, the only option you would have is to buy a desktop that would meet the minimum requirements as shown on the Fallout 3 box.

Examples are everywhere all over this forum and all other Bethesda hardware / software problem forums:

Preliminary diagnostic information

First, however, what have you learned using the forum's archives?

After failing to learn anything substantive that way, since PCs are not *anything* at all like game console systems, it adds another dimension to a question. That may not be news to you, but many new arrivals come here for help who have no such idea at all. There is literally almost nothing that is truly a "standard" between various branded PCs, making the game developers' jobs very difficult, and requiring that warning labels be attached to game boxes for any games with serious requirements.

Because most of the new arrivals, and even many of the more experienced gamers as well, will have have misunderstood how to evaluate their PC compared to that game box warning label, we have to start from here. Please fill it all in.

Basic Hardware Specification Chart (Empty so far)

Processor Manufacturer: AMD / Intel
Processor Name / Type: Athlon X2 / Pentium D / C2D / dual core / quad, etc.
Processor Speed: ?.? Ghz
Operating System / Service Pack: WindowsXP with SP #?, Win7, Vista ?
System RAM: ? ? GBs (MBs, if less than 1024 ? )
Video (GPU) Manufacturer: ATI / Nvidia (only those two are supported, PERIOD, so please answer which of them you have)
Video Card Model: (examples) Radeon HD 6670 / Geforce GTS 450
Video Card Driver Version: Catalyst ?.? / Nforce ??.??
. . (please use the numbers, and dates, *not* the word "latest")
Video display's default screen resolution
Video Card onboard RAM: ? ? ? MBs
Sound Card Manufacturer:
Sound Card Driver IDs:
Sound Card Model:

(And this is only for the raw hardware & driver variations. Potential software conflicts are far more likely to be game play problems, and developers cannot test for all possible program loads.)

What are the Fallout 3 (PC) system requirements?

Minimum System Requirements:

* Windows XP/Vista
* 1GB System RAM (XP)/ 2GB System RAM (Vista)
* 2.4 Ghz Intel Pentium 4 or equivalent processor
* Direct X 9.0c compliant video card with 256MB RAM
(NVIDIA 6800 "GS" or better/ ATI X850 or better)
{Added my note here, the X800 Pro & up also, and
avoid the Geforce 6800 SE, and 6800 XT}
* 4.6 GBs of free hard drive space

You were right to make this change.
Also, for windows 7 machines you must perform a custom install. Change the destination folder so that it is NOT x86/program files. I just changed mine to the games folder under documents. After making those two changes mine has run great.

I'm running:
MSI notebook
Intel 2nd gen I5 2410M
6GB RAM
AMD Radeon graphics card with 1 GB dedicated GPU RAM


You can run this game on a notebook. But it is not easy to find a notebook with a dedicated GPU and most integrated graphics processors are not capable of running this game regardless of the CPU or RAM.

I hope this helped good luck.