The first day i played the game, it worked fine. I played it for a couple of hours. When i exited, it said fallout 3 stopped working. I didnt think it was important. Next time it didnt happen. The time after it also didnt happen. Then it happened again. After 2 days of playing the game, it crashes while im playing. Tried it again it crashed again. It happens in about 5-15 minutes of gameplay. It just started happening all of a sudden. Dont just tell me what to do, i want information about this crash (why does it happen, ect). These crashes during gameplay started ever since an error message appeared saying that the computer couldnt read the memory. My computer has blue screen, even before i got the game but i dont think the computer is the problem. im having the computer sent back soon for repair. is this the game or the compuer?

We can't really help because...

1) You have given us absolutely no information about your computer. Post a dxdiag so we know what hardware, drivers and codecs you're running with.

2)What's the error message? The full thing, not just the basic message, but the error code.


To answer one part though, a blue screen is caused by either hardware or driver errors. They cannot be caused by a game, but the existing problems can be triggered by a game. This is where the error code helps, so it can be determined what the cause is.

quad 2.8 ghz
4gb ram
1tb hard drive
ati radeon 5750 hd
windows 7 home premium
it had no lag it was running fine.
i didnt had time to read the code, the blue screen appeared about 3 sec after the error message. i'll have the manufacturer fix the blue screen, but i dont think itl fix the crash. i jyst want to know if the crash is the game's prob or the pc's prob.

Go in your My Documents\My Games\Fallout3 folder and find the .ini file
Double click on it and open with Notepad.

Find the line showing:

bUseThreadedAI=0 (you can use Ctrl-F to search easily)

Change that from 0 to 1.

Below it type:

iNumHWThreads=2

I said dont just tell me what to do. what does that do? is it risky?

Fallout 3 has trouble running on any processor that has more than two cores. Such as your quad core.

The change to the ini file basically tells the game to use only two cores which will get around the problem caused by trying to run on more than two cores. It's not risky at all and the inis are editable precisely for reasons like this as well as making it easier for mod intergration.

But as I requested, post a dxdiag, so we also have an idea of your drivers and codecs.

To get a dxdiag:
Start - Run (if Vista or Win 7, the search box acts like Run) - type dxdiag - hit Enter - "save all info" button - open txt file and copy/paste EVERYTHING here

if i run it on 2 cores, wont i have to lower the settings?

could patches help?

i am not going to do any of this, i know it is risky dont tell me it isnt.

Fine we won't. As a matter of fact, we won't tell you to do anything at all at this point and let you sit with your troubles because you're too paranoid about doing a commonly mentioned fix.

You were told doing this wasn't risky, that the game doesn't utilize more than 2 cores, that this game often times has trouble running with quads. And no, you won't have to sacrifice your settings...the extra cores weren't doing anything anyways.

You come here asking for help, yet turn it down to the point that you think you know better than we do?????? If there was something dangerous about the suggestion made to you, it would have already been picked up by someone else telling you it's dangerous and you would be notified about it.

Good luck is all I can say.

sry, it just sounds kind of risky. i'll think about it.

im just mad about this computer. it has been broken the first day i got it, the games i have dont work well and this one which is my favorite doesnt even work. i shouldve never gotten this computer.

It really is not "risky" at all. Editing the file is pretty common, and almost all of the people quad cores edit it this way. And just deleting the file will make the game regenerate it the way it was.

its not the file its that the computer running the game like this with only two cores. im afraid it might not handle.

Fallout15 humm We been through all this us poor Quad-corers no matter its intel or amd. The fix is harmless. Maybe you have to you have adjust your settings so your game will run smoothly. Believe me and other posters in this post that are trying to help you that ini quad-core fix will work. That fix only tells the game to run on two cores.

The game isnt using the other cores anyway.........they are just sitting there for the OS to use. Which it will still work fine, you will not see any performance loss at all. The game was never meant for CPUs with more then 2 threads which is why it doesnt use them.

I decided to try the game one more time. This time i didnt use cd to get in the game and it worked fine. I played for a few hours. The prob seems to have been fixed.