Fallout 3 crashes when loading interiors

If you have a multi-core CPU, like the Quad, and you experience a Fallout 3 crash when loading interiors (the PC version of Fallout 3, specially in closed spaces). It seems that this crash is caused by a bug in Fallout which doesn't adapt multi-threading well, and this PC game stops responding in small areas.

Fallout 3 crash fix

The fix for this Fallout 3 bug is very easy: just copy and paste and you are ready to go:

  • Open the folder My documents / My Games / Fallout3
  • Edit 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 2 lines:

bUseThreadedAI=1
iNumHWThreads=2

Now close and save the Fallout 3 configuration file.

And that's it: you should have fixed the Fallout 3 crash when loading small closed interior areas. Well, Fallout 3 could stop responding sometimes, but these crashes won't be a frequent bug in Fallout.

Source

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16 comments:

Unknown said...

Wow!
I think you just saved me with this!
I had freezes in the interiors, seemingly more in smaller spaces.
Your Tipp seemed to have halped :D
THANK YOU!!

Unknown said...

Awesome! No crashes since I made this change! I no longer need to run Fallout3 at low detail, low resolution and windowed to prevent it from crashing every couple of minutes.

How did you figure this out?

Unknown said...

There seems to be many fixes or suppoesed fixes for fallout crashing the only thing that worked for me was this Setting my nividia video card to "Let the 3D application decide" Mode no set of drivers or inf editing fixed my problem, but knock on wood ive been playing smoothly for two hourse and the game looks and feels alot better.

Unknown said...

Had those interior crashes, but this fixed it. Thanks!

Unknown said...

THANK YOU SO MUCH! :D

Unknown said...

THANK YOU SO MUCH! NOW IT'S NOT A WASTE OF $60!

Unknown said...

tha fallout.ini stuff works awesomely well. thanks very much

Unknown said...

I couldn't even get through the intro without it crashing...this fixed everything. I haven't had a crash yet.

Thanks!

Unknown said...

What line do I put it after?

ESV said...

At the end of the [general] group should work pretty well. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think it has to be put after any specific parameter line of the Fallout 3 configuration file. Just make sure it's inside the [general] group of options.

Unknown said...

it work!! ohh thank you so much!! :))

yoyo12 said...

wow! as in wow!.. i tried everything they've suggested etc... but FAILED

i was really desperate to play this game.. but problem was about freezing & i thought your solution would not help since it addressed crashing,, but to my surprise.... NO MORE FREEZING!! your awesome tnx a a lot.

watto said...

Failed, tried that, didn't work.
im running windows 7, 4gb ram with Radeon graphics, the game runs a smooth as a babies bum until i get to the same spot outside of vault 101 in Springvale.... i seem to get further every time but it still crashes ever 30 seconds-5 minutes

rebus said...

mhmm. cant find the fallout.ini thing. )=

Unknown said...

Worked for me. Had also the crashes while beeing indoors (especially the intro !!)

Used in FALLOUT 3 GOTY German.

Thanks :-D

Unknown said...

I have a windows 8 I tried this but fallout.ini wasn't on there all it came up with was falloutprefs wich did nothing for my situation because I'll ipen fallout 3 like normally then click play the window showing my option to play the game closes and a blue loading circle appears by my cursor then it disappears and the game doesn't open. How do I fix this?