Am an avid computer programmer, I completely understand (much of) what's written in the INI files, and I've attempted to mod my game as recommended and I've made progress.

Initially when I made the INI change, it gave me an error; missing xlive.dll

Also an error (41,43,47 I can't remember which)

^^^^ This part I fixed!!!!^^^^^

I CAN successfully get into the game (I'm not modding nor do I plan to)

The game crashes very early on and lags even on medium quality

(I can play assassins creed 3, and league of legends in 1080p, 120 frames per second and in 3D without lag)

I've been stopped often at the part where the choose your would normally appear, the furthest I've gotten is successfully choosing what my face will look like in the future.

I know I'm making the proper changes to the INI file (fallout_default)

I've attempted setting both the fallout application and application launcher to windows XP compatibility SP3 from windows 8.1

I've attempted downloading 3ed party software's and fallout_default INI downloads which I deleted and changed out 1 at a time between attempts

Changing my graphics settings between ultra and medium, and successfully tricking the game into thinking I have a GeForce 7000

I've updated to the fallout 1.7

re-installed "fallout game of the year edition" 3 times through Steam throughout this process

Is there anything else I can do???

Specs:

Custom build computer (I am the manufacturer, there is no hardware confliction or issue)

Hyper threaded quad core i7: 3770k

GTX 650 Ti GPU (2GB super clocked)

16GB RAM

2 c:// in Raid 0 containing the Microsoft games download which gamesas and a Microsoft support specialist recommended to supplement any necessary game-related files

1 E:// containing steam, with both Fallout 3 GOTY and fallout new Vegas + DLC's

Have you checked out this thread?

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1465357-installing-fallout-3-with-windows-78-and-xp/

Also, there is no need to update to the 1.7 version of the executable if you've got the GOTY edition. It's already patched to that version.

ETA - are you editing the fallout_default.ini located in your main Fallout 3 folder? That's the wrong .ini file - that one is used as a template to create new default .ini files in case you need to roll back changes to the copy the game uses when it starts. The files you need to be editing are located in your My Documents\My Games\Fallout 3 folder; they're called Fallout.ini and FalloutPrefs.ini.

Proper changes maybe, but wrong ini file. As Gator Country mentioned, you need to change the one in your Documents folder, not the one in the game folder.

Like it was stated earlier the proper ini is in my documents. There are 2 ini's in my documents. You might need to make some changes in the other one as well.

Make sure you do install the windows life client since that is the latest version. You do not need to create an account or even run it. The game just checks to see if the windows life client is installed. that should take care of any xlive.dll errors and such.

If still having issues could you please post dxdiag.exe in spoiler tags. That can give us more information on how your system is setup to play the game. Older games can be quite finicky when it comes to settings.

Are you using nvidia experience or applications from Asus or applications that have an overlay.

I thought the ini file in the 'my documents' was transferred to the fall-out 3 folder (because I downloaded it on my e: drive and have my c: drive blocked without my explicit permission so I can keep my OS and my most used programs only on my two solid state drives)

However I'd like to note that because I open steam in administrator mode it WAS able to download the ini file in the c: regardless. (just in case some-one else has that issue)

It's not resolved, I changed the ini coding as suggested in the moderator's post's and the game worked, got out of vault 101 ect. no (major) issues.

However unlike other games if I ult/tab off of the game (for instance to play Pandora) I CANNOT get back into the game without closing it and reopening it, because it crashes when I tab away. If any-one knows how to resolve that I'd be interested and impressed.

If not however thank you to those who replied!

These games are not alt-tab friendly, it's not something you can do with them while playing. And you shouldn't be playing two games at once anyway, that just puts more strain on your system. The program is still running when you do that so you're essentially using two games at once. You don't have that great of a system that you can do that without any sort of issue at some point.