I've just got hold of a very cheap copy of Fallout 3 GOTY edition. I have installed it and am dying to play it but have encountered ridiculous glitches.

The game started freezing literally in the intro (scene when my character is born) and after re-installing I have managed to start only to have the game freeze again twice at the one year old stage. Basically the furthest I've reached is the door to my father's office.

Any patches needed or is it just my computer?

Could be the computer, try running a DXDiag and see if your computer meets the specs of the requirements?

How to get a DirectX dialog report:

Click on "START"

Click "run"

Type in "dxdiag" and click "OK"

Check through the tabs and perform all tests

From the sound of it, you may need either a better video card, more RAM, or updated drivers

Well it looks like the video card is not quite up to speed. I am rather surprised as I have run KoA on it without any issues and I would have thought this would be the same.

I've tried downgrading the quality and resolution but I take it it's not good enough.

It's puzzling that the game does run for a few minutes (I've managed to progress to the GOAT exam) but then freezes. I would have thought if it was a graphics issue it just wouldn't run at all or I would get a blank screen?

Now stupid question but how do I update my drivers?

Thanks for the tips by the way!

From personal experience graphics can cause SO many problems, crashes, color glitches, freezing, black or white patches... ugh... dont get me started...

As far as updating your drivers... well if you're using a windows PC an easy way,

1. Click the START button at the bottom, the one with the windows symbol

2. Click CONTROL PANEL

3. Click DEVICE MANAGER

4. A new window will open. Click DISPLAY ADAPTERS

5. Click on your video card name (there should only be 1 or 2 things in there)

6. RIGHT CLICK on it and select  UPDATE DRIVER SOFTWARE...

7. Click SEARCH AUTOMATICALLY FOR UPDATED DRIVER SOFTWARE

After this your computer should automatically find and update to the newest driver.

Another option is you can copy/paste the name of your card from that DXDiag report into google and add the word "Drivers" behind it. that tends to work. If you know the name of the company who produced it (I.e. ATI or Nvidia) you can try going to their website and look for a driver update there.

You may want a restart after the install

All the driver updates are little download files, you open and run it like an installer. It automatically places itself (usually) Hope this helps!

one other thing, and this may sound ridiculous, but the game may just need reinstalled.

Thanks for the help!

I followed your instructions to update the drive software and it is telling that the best software for my computer is already installed. I am rather puzzled!

And yes, I did re-install the game a couple of times and it didn't make a difference.

ETA actually I am not sure about the video card. I have GeForce GT 525M and the game requires GeForce 6800. When I start the game and it looks for the best peformance it automatically sets me for High Quality, which is why I was surprised the game kept freezing on me.

F3 isn't made for multicore processors, i had the exact same problems on my new PC.

Found this solution online

Open the folder 'My Documents' / 'My Games' / 'Fallout3'
Look for and open up the file FALLOUT.ini.
Inside FALLOUT.ini look for a group called [general].
Inside the general group, after all the configuration parameters, just copy and paste the following two lines:

bUseThreadedAI=1
iNumHWThreads=2 

Thanks for the help.

I followed your instructions and tried the game for a couple of minutes and (fingers crossed) didn't have any issues. I will have to play more tomorrow (didn't have much time today) and hopefully things will work. I was getting really frustrated because I had looked forward to playing this game so much and was rather bored with my other ongoing RPG.

OK update- so far, so good! I have made it out of the vault and the game seems to be running very smoothly so far. Thanks so much for the help everyone.

How's the game going?

Just curious - what OS are you running it on?

FYI, here are the specs:

For XP the GPU requirements are less demanding, for Vista, it's more demanding.

Are you playing on a desktop or a laptop?

System requirements

Minimum Recommended Windows[26] Operating system Windows XP or Windows Vista CPU Intel Pentium 4 2.4 GHz or AMD equivalent Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD equivalent Memory 1 GB RAM (2 GB for Vista) 2 GB RAM Hard drive space 7 GB free hard disk space Graphics hardware NVIDIA GeForce 6800 256 MB or ATi Radeon X850 Pro 256 MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800 512 MB or ATi Radeon HD 3850 512 MB Network Online play requires log-in to Game for Windows - Live

If all else fails perhaps you can either run F3 in a guest OS using Virtual Box how to use 3D in Virtual box

or set your computer up as a dual boot with one OS for F3.