Hi,
My installation of Fallout 3 stopped working after MS pushed a new update for MS Live11 yesterday (21 Oct 2010).
It was working fine for months before that. Now I am getting crash message that Fallout3 stopped working.


The Windows application log says that Fallout3.exe failed due to a crash in ASaudio.ex module.

I have already installed the K-Lite (Full) codec pack but the problem is not going away.
Any other suggestions?

Best regards,
WFOX

i sometimes had issues with the exe stop working when starting the game dont know how i came up with it but i just run the 1.6 patch when ever it messed about as it installs and then starts the game by itself. i have fallout3 from steam and when i installed windows live for bioshock 2 or you cant save game when i went to start fallout3 the windows live popped down all of a suddon it was a games for windows game told me my cd key was'nt real but theres no way to change it and had removed my saved game after about 40 hours of playing it i was'nt a happy bunny delete it and see if the game works i guess

I have actually found the source of my problem. Apparently AcrSoft video processing utility has a codec that brakes Fallout 3. :brokencomputer: Somehow, installation of the Windows Live re-registers this codec and Fallout loads it along with the other media codecs.
I have de-registered this broken codec with ffddshow utility and all is working fine. Actually K-Lite rules because it automatically fixed other broken entries and found missing codecs (apparently left behind by some not so well written software).
I strongly suggest using this utility to everyone who is experiencing strange crashes on start related to audio.
I have also read that simply deleting this ASaudio.ax file would do the trick. (I kept it just in case if I want to re-encode some files with ArcSoft later)
Hope this would help others on this forum.
Cheers,
WFOX

PS thanks for suggestion, m8. This is one of the reasons that I am trying not to buy anything from Steam if I can and stick to plain old DVDs. At least these will work for years without any dependencies on a third party. (I hope)