This is a problem that I've only recently come across after spending ~19 hrs on my second NV playthrough.

I encountered this problem after entering the Poseiden Gas Station just Sth of New Vegas/ Violetta and Violet's trailer park. About 5-10 minutes of playing (attacking the Violetta and Violet), my head suddenly exploded. I was very surprised. I reloaded, played in the same area again it happened again. Third time, I fast-mapped away from the area back to my "Underground Hideout" near Red Rock Canyon and it still happened.

Initially thought it was a conflicting mod that I just installed but the problem remains even after un-installing said mod and reloading from a pre-mod save. Despite not having started Dead Money for the 2nd playthrough, using the console to player.removeitem "XXXXX" dead money collar doesn't fix the problem. I wonder if there is a specific code for the dead money exploding head effect and whether it can be turned off using the console.

I should say that I played ~180hrs of NV with multiple mods installed without once encountering this problem. This includes completing Dead Money and returning to New Vegas from Sierra Mardia (?sp) and playing through a little more using my first courier.

I am currently going through the process of slowly and individually deactivating some ~90 mods to see if there is a specific mod that is causing this problem but it is a very, very annoying problem and any other suggestions/help/comments would be much appreciated.

My F:NV patched to v1.3; has Dead Money and Caravan DLCs installed and running on Windows XP on a medium end machine that hasn't had any problems to date running the game.

Weird.
no new mods other than the DLC?

@Mak10z

Lots of mods but until last night, not this problem with any of them.

I'm not sure whether a new mod is the culprit but as in the orig. post, the error still occurs despite deactivating and deleting the mod.

In the Nexus forums, there is a thread about this problem and the suggestion that following Dead Money, areas corresponding to the radio/speakers from Sierre Mardia (?sp) have been over-layed to the New Vegas map. Sounds sort-of plausible, especially as the exploding head is exactly what you see from Dead Money.

Just a thought -- it's strange that this happens while you are fighting Violet. There's an explosion effect when you take her head for the bounty. Have you checked to see if it happens around Nephi or Cook-Cook?

@ Al D

I thought of that as well but seemed to have narrowed down the bug to a suspect night vision mod that uses a custom script. After going back to a 2 day old clean save and replaying the areas that resulted in the exploding head, I haven't (touch wood) had a repeat of the problem, even after defeating Violet and taking her head. Interestingly enough on tonight's playthough, I didn't get the exploding head effect off Violet because I managed to mangle it.

I suspect that the night vision mod may have conflicted with an older and previously problem free ED-E mod that uses a modified exploding collar as a NPC control device.

However, it may be possible that I am entirely wrong and that this is somehow related to Dead Money. I shall try again later tomorrow (almost MN local time) with a more controlled attack on another named Fiend.

This should be in the technical thread....
Have you tried buying it on Xbox 360?

Problem fixed, it was a series of conflicting mods.

@ daisah: Will post in the tech. forums in the future

Sorry, i usually never tell people this.... what have i become

I have the exact same problem but do not have the mods you mentioned. I don't have night vision mod or an Edie mod (and don't use him as a companion). I haven't played DM since I played it when it first came out and this is happening in the last week or so. I might have a weapon that has a night vision scope though.

And it has happened in places where there aren't removable heads. One time it happened at searchlight airport in which had I had fought one WARZONES battle involving ghouls and NCR and was currently fighting another WARZONES involving a bunch of MONSTER MOD (monsterranch.esp) scorpions. I suspected it was a delayed reaction to some kind of scorpion venom from one of those little oval mutant scorpions.

What were the recent mods you added?

I have a sneaking suspicion that there is something we definatly both downloaded and installed recently that starts with a "P" and ends with an "atch".

Yep. You found out Obsidian's evil plan. They patched in a head-exploding bug.

Couldn't possibly be a mod conflict, nnnoooo.

Thanks for the helpfull comment. That really solved my problem. Keep up the good work.

FOR ME TO POOP ON!

Disable mods one by one until the problem stops? Don't use so many mods in the future? You're clearly experiencing something abnormal, and should thus try to find the root of the problem. Common sense is a useful tool.

Would using god mode right before your head exploding do anything?

Thats right just keep blaiming your installed mods. I first started having that problem when the 1.2 patch came out, and it got worse with 1.3. I have 0 mods installed right now. Pulled all dead money files out of my game, deleated all saves, and cant get from doc mitchels house to the bar without my head exploding. Played 80 hours on the last game with mods instaled and didn't have any problems until 80.30 hours of game play when it started up again. Its not the mods causing the problem. I don't think Dead Money is directley the cause, because I took it compleatly out. BUT patch 1.2 and 1.3 that were related to dead money are the problem. The devs need to make a patch that gets more than 2 min. of testing, and stop breaking the game. If you ask me the game was much smoother befor the patches thay gave us.

Hear Hear! My game got much more stuttery and started to randomly pause every few seconds once in a while after the latest pateches were installed. That random pausing never happened before the patches. Quite frankly I was happy with the game before the patches and it crashes just as much as before.

So far with the vanilla game and the 2 latest DLCs the developers of FO3 did a far better job. Oblivion and FO3 were two of the best games of all time but so far this version of the fanchise lacks the depth, richness and intensity of F03.

Yes, but game balance-wise, they're awesome.