On the first day of getting it and trying to play it, I discovered it would not launch. The launcher opens, I click 'play', then it flashes on screen for a second, before closing without a single error message. Pretty typical problem, right? Well, until you hear the rest of it.

I updated my graphics drivers, restarted my PC, then started the game. It worked just fine. I played for an hour or two before closing the game.

The next time I tried to play, it crashed in the same way it did the first time. This time, I verified the integrity of the game cache, and it worked. I once again played for a few more hours, before closing it and going to bed.

The next day, I woke up and wanted to play some more. So I attempted to launch the game, and it crashed. Verifying integrity of game cache didn't work, so I then deleted the .Ini files. The game worked. Played for another hour.

I did an experiment. I immediately closed the game, and attempted to start it up again; and it crashed. There was literally not a single second of time for ANYTHING to change. And yet the game crashed as though it were broken the entire time.

After half an hour of experimentation, I discovered that making it run in compatibility mode for Windows 7 made it work. I again, played for a little while. Closed it, came back later to play it again. It crashed.

After more experimentation, I discovered that DISABLING compatibility mode made it work. (I have never had a game IN MY LIFE that required me to turn off a setting to get it to work, when that VERY SAME SETTING got it to work in the first place!)

I haven't ever had a game that essentially breaks every time I close it, requiring me to fix it again. Typically, a single fix should work. The game runs just fine when playing, I haven't had any crashes while playing, only ever when trying to start it.

Due to this, I know it's not a hardware problem, otherwise the game wouldn't run at all.

At this point, I would GLADLY deal with in-game crashes if it meant I didn't have to deal with this. At least in-game crashes aren't GUARENTEED to happen, like startup crashes are.





EDIT (November 13th, 2015)
I'm convinced it has to do with the .exe of the game. I'm not sure why, but I have a feeling that something like the Fallout 4 Script Extender(once it gets released) will run the game just fine, due to the fact it uses a separate file to run the game.

How do you run the game in compatibility mode for Win 7 while using steam?

Right-click on the game in Steam, click "properties", click "local files", click "browse local files".

Right-click on "Fallout4.exe", click "properties", click "Compatibility", click the check-box for "Run in compatibility mode for", and select "windows 7" from the drop-down menu.

Thank you sir

Hello. I have the exact same problem.
The only way to reliably play it several time in a row is to restart my computer entirely, the first time I launch the game always work. I hope Bethesda will find the source of this problem.

Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one with this problem. I wouldn't be surprised if Bethesda chose to ignore the problem because there are so few of us with it.

Thanks for reminding me to try restarting my computer.

I got it working for now. But as you undoubtedly know, this doesn't mean it's fixed.


For now, I guess when we get it working, we'll just have to avoid closing the game, and instead tab out when we wish to do something else.

This will probably not help you, as I don't think a lot of people are in my situation, but I managed to solve the problem.
I have a Playstation 2 Gamepad connected via an USB adapter, and I wanted to see if it could work with Fallout 4. So I installed "X360ce", a well known program that emulates a X360 gamepad with any gamepad, even the older one.
If you have never heard of it, it's an .exe that you put in the same place than the executable of the game and create a .dll named xinput1_3.dll so it uses this one instead of the one included in Windows.

And...it worked. So I played a bit, I quit to do something else, and then I restarted the game, forgetting that I needed to reboot. And the game worked. I thought "Wait a minute...", tried to quit and launch it again, and it works. Now it works every time.

If you are as desperate as me with this bug, you could give it a try. Even if you don't have a gamepad at all, it might help.

Thanks, I'll try it out.

Would you run it for windows 7 even though you have windows 10?

Well, in my case, it worked once. Then disabling it worked.

So really it's up to you.

Unfortunately, it did not work for me.

Not even restarting my computer is working anymore.

-Bump-?