When adding this line to the general section:

iNumHWThreads=

Set it to the number of threads your system has. For instance, if you have a 2 core i3, set it to 2. 2 core hyperthreaded i5, set it to 4

I read it can only go up to 4, but I have mine set to 8 (4 core hyperthreaded i7) and have played for four hours without the freeze. Once again, this is a freeze in gameplay where the music still plays and you cannot alt-tab out but can cntrl-alt-del and shut down fallout3.exe from the task manager

I'll update this if it crashes, but so far so good. This appears to limit the number of threads the game tries to use. Just because you have a single core processor does not mean the game only prepares 1 thread, it still prepares multiple threads as do all applications really. I have noticed no decrease in performance either

I tried setting the value to 4, because my processor has four threads. Still no dice.

Yeah, It froze on me eventually. Still, maybe it postponed the freezing. Hopefully this issue doesn't exist in new vegas. But I wish FO3 wouldn't freeze...

Tru dat. If Vegas does this, I will really be pissed. I'll just let FO3 go, thanks for trying to help, everyone.

I tried the game in windows XP and it worked just fine without any problems so what I think now that the game has some compatibility issues with windows 7 64 bit under quad processor and I hope we will not see this in vegas. For now, I change the fallout.ini and play the game under medium settings and disabled shadow and the frame rate is stable between 35-40 frame.

By the way, when changing iNumHWThreads and put to 4 the game also crashes....

I also am running Fallout 3 on a computer with a quad core and Vista. I have only frozen once and that was when I hadn't bothered to turn off zone alarm, spybot and a couple of other processes that I didn't need running. I'm not sure if any of those caused the freeze, but I routinely shut off unneeded processes when I play games and had been lazy that day.

My son, on the other hand, can't run Fallout 3 on his Windows 7 dual core lap top machine. His game freezes every few minutes. He won't let me near it to see what I can do. He won't even take my advice. So, I sit here playing happily while he grumbles behind me trying to figure out why he can't play.

:brokencomputer: :user:

Edit: He finally got it working by using the .ini fix. He has a 2 core i5 and set the thread number to 2.

Officially, Fallout is not supported on Windows 7. It was made before Win7 and there will be no patch for compatibility. That aside, it works near flawlessly for me. I say near because nothing is ever perfect.

Also, Fallout was programmed for 2 cores, so put a 2 in the ini instead. The point of the Multi-core fix is to limit the number of cores to 2 so the game can run properly.

I also had to do the ini trick...

Worked great...no loss in performance either. 19x12, 4AA,15AF,V-sync on, HDR....All settings maxed. ( and I mean all of them.)..fps never moves from 60 . ( fraps )

Win 7 64