So, I'm not sure why, but over the last few days, Fallout 3 (no DLC's) has started to freeze on me, the screen just freezes the sound continues, but I've had to CTRL-ALT-DEL out of it.
It had gotten to the point of as soon as I start the game the more quickly it freezes. Let me explain, at first I could play normally, just like everyone else, then starting a few days ago it froze up on me. Then each time I started it, it froze faster, it got so bad it just wasn't even worth starting the game.
I checked all of my drivers, my hardware, etc.
Before I decided to re-install, I figured I would check to see if it was a known problem. After a ton of research on it this weekend, the only thing I could come up with was this solution:
From the Web: The game engine has some issues with processors that have more than 2 cores. You can force the game to only use two of them and it will stop the freezing. I haven't had it freeze once since I did this several days ago. Open up the fallout.ini file in: My Documents\My Games\Fallout3 Find the line: bUseThreadedAI=0 change it to: bUseThreadedAI=1 Add another line after it and insert: iNumHWThreads=2 This will limit the game to 2 cores and prevent the engine bug from causing the game to freeze.
The game engine has some issues with processors that have more than 2 cores. You can force the game to only use two of them and it will stop the freezing. I haven't had it freeze once since I did this several days ago.
Open up the fallout.ini file in: My Documents\My Games\Fallout3 Find the line:
bUseThreadedAI=0
change it to:
bUseThreadedAI=1
Add another line after it and insert:
iNumHWThreads=2
This will limit the game to 2 cores and prevent the engine bug from causing the game to freeze.
Oddly enough this seems to have fixed the problem for me, I played Fallout 3 for a good 8 hours today after applying this fix, and not a single thing wrong except maybe I noticed a tiny bit of lag as opposed to before, not noticing any lag at all.
So if anybody else needs this fix, here you go, and to anybody else, any idea what's up with this? I guess the later patches are the problem, but why did this not effect me until 3 days ago? I've been playing this game a lot lately, and that was the first time, and I KNOW FOR FACT nothing has changed on my system.
I'd say it was Windows 7 related, but this fix was to apply to Vista and the later XP service packs, so it isn't exlusive to W7.
I know you only started playing it. Well it is one of the best games out right now it is also the most buggy game out to. Thanks for sharing
