SO. I have an ok game, and my pc BARELY runs it decently but it works and thats all that matters, but the problem here is that my game just sometimes (very rarely) just shuts off. I mean it is still on, the game is still playing, but I can't access it! Its like I minimize it and can't reopen it. So all I can do is ctrl alt del it... (Luckily I have auto save on!) Is there anyway that I can possibly make it so that I can replay it when it gets minimized?

Its a very known issue. Happening more and more with modern games. Minimization is getting less and less stable for unknown reasons. The only sure-fire way i know of is to not keep it minimized for very long, perhaps around 30 seconds max.

Also a thing of note, if you are for some reason still running version 1.0, then you need to patch. The first patch addressed some minimization issues, though as stated above, its not 100% solved.

I had this problem before, usually turning off Anti-Virus, closing all un-needed applications helps. Especially browsers, they will try to keep the game down if anything needs to update. But as Echonite said, a lot of games will have problems with minimizing.

It has always been very simple to avoid a problem with Alt-Tab crashes. Pause the game by opening the save menu. After that, THEN you are able to Alt-Tab all you want.

hmmm i get what you all are saying, but i gues i forgot to specify, it just RANDOMLY minimizes, i mean yes, sometimes i ctrl alt del to check the wiki for some tips and stuff but at random times it just randomly minimizes and i have to delete it afterwards or restart my computer, so THATS the part of the question id like answered, and i have no clue if this is patched or not =/ (where would the patch be then?)

Have you patched at all since installing? Do you have the GOTY Fallout?

goty edition, i have no clue if it is patched or not, so if it isnt, where would i patch it? just on the fallout site?

GOTY is already fully patched to 1.7, so there does that idea.

My only guess is you have something running in the background that causes it to minimize.

Do you keep a browser open? Or anti-virus? Those have been known to try to minimize it.

as stated, i do keep the vault open just in case i want to look and something for fallout3 so, should i stop doing that?

You could try it, I know Firefox 3.6 caused it to minimize pretty often for me, and closing it before I started the game helped a lot.

I would recommend a program like GBoost from GZero to maximize your performance and minimize problems.