Fallout Troubleshooting Options

[Kane]

It's a fun game! I enjoyed it way more than Fallout 3.

[Renee]

It's a fun game! I enjoyed it way more than Fallout 3.

I enjoy FO3 more, but New Vegas is great, too. I love the juxtaposition between both games.

I really wanted to b34t NV on Xbox, honestly, really tried and tried. But there are a few things which I've been really wanting to change, and it got to the point that I wasn't enjoying some aspects of the base game. Hence getting it on GoG the other day.

[Renee]

Right after speaking to Doc Mitchell (NV) the game freezes. This is literally right after he sends us off, and the door's right there. Game just freezes.

It did this on the very first day I started the game, good thing I save often! And this was before I did anything at all. No mods. No script extender, nothing.

I followed that guide you linked, Kane. Did maybe half of the things on that list before I stopped because I don't fully understand everything I'm doing. Anyway, that made no differnece! Still crashes just after speaking to Doc. Installed script extender. Still crashes after sspeaking to Doc Mitchell.

I press Alt + tab so I can see the desktop and there's a weird window which popped up. It's black & white text. Full of a bunch of info, but nothing to do with errors. No idea what to do!

[SubRosa]

I never ran across this one, so I am not sure what the culprit is. The most famous bug involving Doc Mitchell is of his head starting to spin in a circle when you are creating your character.

I just did a quick search, and see a lot of posts about people having crashes as soon as they leave Doc Mitchell's house. It seems that turning down the graphics options might fix it. Once you get past that area, save the game, turn things back up, and it often seems to work.

[Renee]

GOOD! Phew, thanks! If there's a lot of others who've had this prob that's a good thing because it's well-documented. I didn't even bother to google this time, because we've got several here who've seen a lot in Fallout 3 and New Vegs, so thanks.

[mirocu]

I just did a quick search, and see a lot of posts about people having crashes as soon as they leave Doc Mitchell's house. It seems that turning down the graphics options might fix it. Once you get past that area, save the game, turn things back up, and it often seems to work.

How interesting. Exactly the same issue and fix regarding the lab area in Bioshock 2.

[Renee]

Still freezing.

I just tried LOOTing the game, and I did notice the DLC does need to be cleaned. But I went ahead and tried the game after LOOT was done. Game still froze, but I got an error message this time.

Runtime Error!

The application has requested the Runtime to terminate in an unusual way. Please contact application's suppport.. bla bla bla.

I don't know if any of that makes sense to anyone here. Gonna get FNVEdit and see if cleaning DLC 1). is possible and 2). makes any difference.

[Renee]

I made a video of what I'm talking about.

Game freezes after speaking to Doc Mitchell.

What it not seen is the mouse cursor, which abruptly POPS onscreen as the game freezes. Probably nobody knows what can be done about this, so I'll post this at other sites as well. But that is what's happening.

One idea I have is to get a manager and turn off all the DLC. Maybe that'll make a diff. But for now I'm done with Fallout today!

[mirocu]

I take it you tried lowering the graphics setting Subrosa talked about? I know it sounds weird that would be the issue but it was regarding Bioshock 2.

[SubRosa]

So you don't even get to the door or go outside. The crashes I was always seeing reported were if people did that.

I suppose you could try running the game in Windowed mode, and see if that changes the crash. I think you can set that in the launcher. The mouse cursor popping up makes me feel like the computer is switching away from the game to give your desktop the focus, but not making it there? I am admittedly grasping at straws. Maybe using Alt+Tab to cycle between windows might bring it back when this happens. I don't know.

[Renee]

mirocu: I didn't change graphics settings because other folks who've had issues are talking about happens after we get outside the door, and as we can see, I never get outside!

SubRosa: Sure I'll try windowed mode. In fact that's exactly what I do: Alt + Tabtabtabtab. That's not shown in the video. But Yeah, I can alt+tab until I get back to desktop.

But yes, that's the feeling I get too. The game's trying to slip out to desktop for some reason. Blea. I have no idea what to do.

This was supposed to be easy! I'm doing everything right!!! So I'll try windowed mode and like I said, I also want to get a manager so I can turn off DLC. See if that makes any difference.

[Renee]

More issues! This time with Fallout 3. All kinds of problems. Black screen on launch is the latest one. Youtube video after patch after "HOW TO FIX" .... I'm getting nowhere.

Screw it, folks. Screw Steam, that is. All of this seems to be Steam's BS. I'm starting over with Grand Old Games. Granted, my copy of New Vegas from GoG is still broken (see video link above). But maybe the GoG version of FO3 will be just fine.

Let you know if I'm successful later. Ciao.

[SubRosa]

You are just having the worst luck with computers lately. You had better check for gremlins.

[Renee]

Hee hee yah, right? Gremlins.

Thing is, all my other games are fine now: Skyrim, OB, Morrowind, etc. Only FO3 got messed up.

The GOG version initially worked. That is, the basic install from GOG (without mods) worked. Then I began copy/pasting folders and files over from the Steam folder into the folder I just made. Kept starting the game occasionally, making sure it still started. FOSE in the new folder? Everything still starts fine.

Copied all my mods over (Data folder that is) and Hit a snag. The game immediately CTD'd, but that's expected because I haven't finished moving other files & folders over. So I did that. Copied the DirectX9c folder, Edit Scripts, GeMM, ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated! and other folders and files from the Steam folder into the new one. Now the game starts. Menu screen shows up. I try clicking Continue and the game CTDs at that point.

Tried clicking New, as in new game, still CTDs on launch.

Disabled all mods, only the base game + DLC is left. Still CTDs on launch. But at least I made some progress. Something's missing. Just gotta figure what the heck.
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This post has been edited by Renee: Jul 19 2024, 09:58 PM

[SubRosa]

I suggest downloading the latest version of FOSE. I think I had to when I installed the Gog version of Fallout 3, because it did not like the older versions.

You probably need to redo the old multi core CPU fix for Fallout 3, where you edit the .ini files.

Ok, I remembered having some issues with the Gog version of FO3.I went back and found where I talked about it, two years ago. Here is the main post:

****
I have spent all day fighting with Fallout 3. As soon as I started adding mods, it started crashing again. I went through all the 'standard' tweaks: updated my video drivers, reinstalled the game, set it to run as administrator and in compatability mode for Windows XP, ran it in a window, used New Vegas Anti Crash, etc... I even tried a couple of the Windows 10 fix mods, that have you put a d3d.dll file in your base Fallout folder.

What finally seems to have worked is the Fallout Anniversary Patcher mod. It does a lot of things, the main one being downgrading the game to the previous version (which worked better with mods). It also removes the Games for Windows Live stuff, makes the executable large address aware, fixes a mod limit bug, and more. It works with both the Gog and Steam versions of the game.

If you are using FOSE, don't start the game with the fose launcher file after installing this (It won't let you if you try). Instead start it with Fallout3.exe, and it will automatically use FOSE if you have it.

So far so good with this. I hope I am not jinxing it by talking about it.
*****

[Renee]

The main thing is I'm really jonesing to get my story going again!!!!!!!!! Really trying my patience, to be going thru all this right when some chapters are getting written.

Anyway, nice, look at this!

I did try the Anniversary Patcher, but I tried it with the Steam version, not the new GoG. So that'll be something I'll try tomorrow.

And if that don't work, my next idea will be to install everything backwards. Instead of copy-pasting the Data folder first I'll try copying the main folder first, piece by piece, until I find whatever's causing the prob. THEN I'll do the Data folder.

I might just install everything from archives this time, though. That's what I did when I had to rebuild Skyrim back in 2018; I installed everything from the Downloads > Skyrim folder. It's good to go thru everything piece by piece. Getting rid of stuff which has become dead weight, ya know?

This post has been edited by Renee: Jul 20 2024, 02:21 AM

[mirocu]

Just go GotY from a DISC already, Renee. Forget all the online business

[Renee]

Yeah, but where though? Where can I find a Fallout 3 actual disc??? Which is new, and for PC? -- Anyway, I already rebuilt my game. Took about 4 hours, but it's back. Woo hoo!

I did not need the FO3 Anniversary Patcher. What I did was started all over with the reinstall from GoG.

And then instead of copy/pasting stuff from the old Steam folder into the new GoG-based folder (really bad idea; what was I thinking?) I went to my Downloads folder. I've been in the habit of saving archives from the very beginning; a really good habit. Everything's organized. Went into the Downloads > Utilities folder. Started with FOSE.

My version of FOSE is really old; it's from 2016, and the newest version was released in 2022. However, I read somewhere that if I use the newer version then I'll have to make a bunch of upgrades, because my gamesaves are already extant. They are already based on older software. I would need the Anniversary Patcher if I went that route.

So that's gotta be why my game would instantly black-screen-on-launch. Because that happened after I threw the Patcher in.

Anyway, I installed all the rest of the utilities: FO3 Edit, FOMM, and so on. Next, the Unofficial Patch. Finally, I moved to the mods, starting with Alternate Start folder. Everything was installed from scratch this time, straight from the archives themselves.

Enough talk. Time for some gaming. Miss Vicious, here I come.

[mirocu]

Awesome you got it running again!

[Renee]

Don't worry, I already fixed my (latest) prob. I'm just posting my fix for anyone else out there.

Was reinstalling Fallout 3 from GoG and was going crazy, because the black-screen-on-launch happened. Tried a .dll fix. Tried to set FO3 executable as Administrator. Tried setting Compatibility Mode.

Each of these 'fixes', I had to get up from my comfy chair over and over because the game would blackscreen, and then I'd have to get up from my chair to turn off/restart my computer. No mods or utilities installed at all, yet! -- However, at some point I discovered I could run the game in Windowed mode. HMm.

Was about to install the Anniversary Patcher when I just happened to notice that the Full Screen setting in the launcher was set at some resolution I don't use. Ah-ha! It should be 1360 x 768. Bang!! Now the game starts & runs. Phew.

It's just a reminder to myself and others: always check the small, easily-overlooked stuff too.