Hello everyone,

I just recently got a new Dell Inspirion laptop (business computer...shhhhh) with Windows 7 professional, Core i7 chip, 8gb ram, 1600x900 resolution and since fallout 3 is one of my favorite PS3 games I wanted to put it on this new laptop so I can take it on the road with me. That being said, I saw on steam that the game was not optimized for windows 7. After some research online and seeing people with windows 7 playing Fallout 3, I decided to buy it.

Unfortunately, I have not even been able to get the game to even start. I have downloaded other games from Steam and they work fine so I don't think it has to do with any security settings present on this business computer.

When I go to play the game (by either click play on the button in the steam library screen OR finding the fallout.exe file and running it as an admin.) a small fallout 3 dialog box opens up and says:

"Fallout 3 will now detect your video hardware and set video options accordingly"

So then I click ok since that is the only option and the next box says:

"Video settings have been set for ___________________ quality"

I put the blank line in there because sometimes it will say Low, sometimes Medium, sometimes High.

So after that box pops up I click ok and then I have the following options to click on:

Play

Options

Data Files

Tech Support

Exit

Naturally, I click on Play and then the first dialog pop-up box I saw, the one that says Fallout 3 will detect my video hardware, pops back up and I can't seem to break the cycle. Any time I click on play it goes through the video auto-detect boxes, I've never had it do anything else all day.

After hours of googling, I have tried modifying the fallout.ini file, running both steam and fallout 3 as "administrator", running windows 7 in XP mode, changing the compatibility options in the fallout.exe file, re-downloading and installing the game 3 times (takes an hour just to redownload the thing), and I've also gone into the options screen to turn down all of the settings to their lowest possible option but I still have never got the game to even open up to the point where I could enter the CD-key.

I've sent an email to steam support but I've read getting them to email you back is difficult. I also registered to post this on the steam forums but I haven't had my account activated yet.

So, if any of you may be able to help I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks,

dalejrfanfreak

You don't mention anything about what sort of video device you have in your laptop. It's possible that it's just not capable of running the game.