Fallout 3 freezing on Intel system

[cookiemonster]

Hi am having a problem with Fallout 3 it keeps on freezing. I recently upgraded from an AMD system to an Intel, I had no problems with the AMD system and the only things i changed on the intel is the mobo, processor, ram and i changed the hard drive to an ssd drive. I am using the latest drivers and all windows patches are up to date.

 

[Kreij]

OCing? Try dropping back to stock speeds.

 

[Mussels]

the engine used in the fallout games is not tolerant of unstable hardware. most likely your overclock isnt as stable as you thought it was (or, your RAM isnt set up properly - manually set timings and voltages)

 

[Jstn7477]

Considering that my 3770K CPUs only do about 4.3GHz (and at 1.175v), you may be overestimating your OC. Whenever overclocking is involved and you have instability, back it down.

 

[cookiemonster]

I thanks for the prompt answers, I will try dropping down to stock speed but i have tested it with prime 95 and other games ie Skyrim, Far Cry 3 and there was no probs there also i had a lot of help and advice from the members on techPowerUp - Overclockers and Cooling Forum, and they said it was stable, but as i said i will turn it back to stock just to see.

 

[okidna]

Fallout 3 is not fully compatible with Windows 7.
If your stock speed setting still give you crash/freeze, try to run it with just 2 cores.

You can edit your Fallout3.ini (My Documents\My Games\Fallout3).

Find this line : bUseThreadedAI=0
Change it to : bUseThreadedAI=1
And add : iNumHWThreads=2

If the game still crashes/freezing change iNumHWThreads=2 to iNumHWThreads=1.

 

[drdeathx]

Try the new AMD beta driver

 

[2wicked]

Fallout 3 is not fully compatible with Windows 7.
If your stock speed setting still give you crash/freeze, try to run it with just 2 cores.

You can edit your Fallout3.ini (My Documents\My Games\Fallout3).

Find this line : bUseThreadedAI=0
Change it to : bUseThreadedAI=1
And add : iNumHWThreads=2

If the game still crashes/freezing change iNumHWThreads=2 to iNumHWThreads=1.

^This should help with the issue.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

I had a hell of a time trying to get FO3 working on my Win7 system. I was able to get through the whole GOTY edition with lots of mods after tweaking the hell out of it. I created my own readme to use when I decide to replay it again to make it work. I am currently on my first run through of New Vegas Ultimate Edition with lots of mods and have managed to make it reasonably reliable with the following settings.

If you have not done the Fallout.ini tweak already mentioned by okidna that would be the first to do.

Find this line : bUseThreadedAI=0
Change it to : bUseThreadedAI=1
And add : iNumHWThreads=2

Right click on your .exe (Fallout.exe or FOMM.exe if you are using mods) and go to properties and compatibility. Tick the "Disable Visual Themes" and "Disable Desktop Composition" boxes.

I have had the most luck running in WinXP SP2 compatability mode.

Since you are running an ATI gpu I would delete atimgpud.dll in your main directory since that has been found to cause problems.

Install the latest version of K-Lite audio codec pack to see if that helps.

Disable ALL autosaves (save on rest, save on travel, and save on wait)

Disable KillCam

When you save ALWAYS create a new save and periodically delete your older saves so you do not have hundreds of saves in your Users/My Documents/My Games/Fallout3/....dir
I would try to keep no more than 20 saves at one time but I have had errors/crashes with more/less.

If you fire up your latest (or any) save game and it crashes constantly and frequently then try creating a new save or load up an older savegame and try to play through it as that one particular save may have become corrupted.

I had to play with Hyperthreading and 2 cores disabled in BIOS to have it stable so you can try that as well.

I reverted to completely stock settings (no GPU/RAM/CPU overclock).

At the time I was running 2x 6970's but only one was getting used so I disabled crossfire.

You can try any/all of these to see if they help. Good Luck!! Let me know how it goes.

This game is a PITA to get working but if you do, I recommend using Fallout Wanderer's Edition. It makes it so much better than vanilla. Much more challenging (since the vanilla game is so damn simple and easy) and adds some goodies from Fallout 1 and 2.

 

[cookiemonster]

Hi dropping to stock speed didn't work now trying what Okidna said, funny how it worked all the time i had the AMD system.

 

[TheMailMan78]

Fallout 3 runs fine in Windows 7. I have over 100 hours in it.

 

[Black Panther]

Fallout 3 runs fine in Windows 7. I have over 100 hours in it.

Ditto.

___________________________________

Is it a fresh install of Win 7? If not, try a fresh install. I'm quite sure it's not a hardware issue. At the most, it might be a driver issue.

If you're using a console uninstall it and use keyboard and mouse.

Any other programs running in the background?

 

[TC-man]

On the other hand, I did have freezes when I run Fallout 3 in Windows 7 x64. I did the "iNumHWThreads=2" and it didn't worked for me. But I fixed the freezes by using this "Large Address Aware Enabler for FO3". Since then I didn't have freezes, 'till I tried "alt-tabbing" in order to go to the desktop (e.g. to read walk-throughs for the game, yeah, I know...) and often, I couldn't return back to the game by "alt tabbing" again.

 

[cookiemonster]

Hi tried what Okidna said but the game still froze like before so I tried what TC-man said and yes it worked I was on the game today and it didn't freeze at all, so the Large Address Aware Enabler for FO3 seems to have worked, thanks all for the help.
regards cookiemonster