Vista - Fallout 3 Keeps Crashing

Just bought this game today and after about five or ten minutes of play it will crash, every single time. I am running 64x vista with an HD 4870, my PC in general is new and high-end. I also realized this is a pretty common problem so I don't know if it's because of driver conflicts, registry files, or perhaps ffdshow.

So far I've tried reinstalling the game, uninstalling a K-Lite Codec pack and getting the latest video drivers.. nothing. Afterwards it started saying "winmm.dll was not found", even though it would eventually load the launcher. The only strange thing about my PC for the time being is that I'm using a CRT monitor via a DVI to VGA converter.

Is there a way to fix this? Or will I have to buy a x32 vista and do a dual-boot just so I can have some game compatibility on this machine. I'm really worried about this because it could persist onto other games. Another strange thing to note, I have two free mmos that I play. One crashes in a similar manner and the other plays fine.

Ok, I thought there might be some issues running it on 64x vista (Ultimate for me), so I went to the usual places to "try it out" first. My game was crashing a lot, too. I got the latest patches and all. My friend has his installed (store-bought) on 32x and he's getting crashes as well. I'm running a GeForce GTX 280 and he's running a card a few lines behind me.

All I can say is: Wait on buying "new" games. Take it back, say it's incompatible with your system, get something else, and try the game again later after more patches and updated video drivers are available.


You could try contacting the game developer's tech support line. I heard from my friend they were extremely courteous and helpful when he was having issues installing the game. His crashes are far fewer and he didn't get as annoyed with it as me.

if is registry problem or conflict, create another account and reinstall the game on it, also i'm not too sure if the game is 100% 64 bit compatible.

Something to try,

How to Fix Fallout 3 Lock ups and Crashes | Unigamesity

A little light reading (12 page thread),

Fallout 3 crashing thread - [H]ard|Forum

Pick a link, any link,

Fallout 3 Crashing - Google Search

That isn't the problem, the problem is a buggy game.

I had problems where it would crash on loading - generally, if I made it out of the first 10 seconds of loading a saved game I played for hours on end.

Please help! I can't install fallout 3. Error code: (-5006: 0x8000ffff). I have vista 64 with all of the system requirements and more. I heard it could be a securom issue. I have a dvdrw drive with labelflash.(could be the problem?) I've tried everything from running fallout as an administrator, to copying it into a new folder. Has anyone else run into this problem? I'm not willing to use third party stuff, so any advice would be awesome!

I did have securom issues too with fallout. Like it would say the original cd isn't inserted. I just tried it repeatedly and it worked, lol. Did you try it again and again? xD

Word! bethesda finally e-mailed me back. They wanted a dxdiag file attached to the e-mail, so I assume they will look at what version of dx I have. I'm still worried about it. I just updated my dx from microsoft, so this problem could be on-going. I just downloaded a directx web thingy-I can't remember what it's called. I bought my pc like 10 days ago, so I thought that everything would be up to date. Also, before I downloaded updates, I was able to run games in dx9, now I my os won't show the "run in dx9" option. I'm puzzled. "Strange things are afoot at the Circle K."

By the way I just wanted to let you guys know, I discovered the problem is my video card. The Sapphire HD 4870 is known to cause crashing because the card would.. "keep switching the GPU clock speed between 500 Mhz and 750 Mhz. This would cause the card to, at some point, stop responding as it couldn't cope with the switches."

At least that's what I've heard, I'm still looking into it.
So I guess vista's innocent, or is it...

Hmmm - that may account for some of my crashes then too - cause my dual GTX 260s would run at very very low speeds (like 100 versus 636 for the GPU clock) when I was not doing anything graphically intensive....so it may have just needed me to let the intro run completely before I started loading a game lol...

so, in effect, it's my *impatience* that was causing the issue....