Fallout 3 issues

[Pob255]

Please excuse me if this is in the wrong section.

As the title sugests I'm having issues with Fallout 3
Namely Blue screens of death I barely ever get them since my last reinstall of windows XP pro or even before that.

It all started off well enough, installed, downloaded the latest patch (1.7) and applied that.
the first section in the vault was fine, no issues at all, I got out of the vault and after about 12 steps
BSOD with a Nv4_Disp.dll error
after a bit of digging it's an nvidia driver error, but it's also part of a windows install and one of the files windows squirls away and doesn't remove if you uninstall the nvidia drivers.
So uninstalling the drivers, boot into safe mode, run drive cleaner Pro to remove all the remaining drivers windows is holding on to, reboot, reinstall latest nvidia drivers (190.38)
Fixed . . . or so I thought, after playing for a couple of days without issue, I got the minefield quest.
when I go near it BSOD Nv4_Disp.dll error

After a bit of digging I discovered there's a beta version of dotnet 3 and visual C++ redistribution on the install dvd and a few people have fixed issues by removeing and reinstalling dotnet 3.0
Couldn't uninstall it, says being used by something, so instead installed 3.5 and it seemed to work, I got through minefield without issue.
Appon leaveing minefield I decide to explore a bit around that area before heading back.
BSOD Nv4_Disp.dll error

I've gone over almost everything short of a reinstall of windows, I've:
Checked and updated drivers, both gpu and others
Checked windows is fully updated
Checked cpu and GPU temps under load
Stress tested, cpu, memory and gpu, individually and all at the same time.
Reset FSB to stock ie removed cpu overclock
Played other games with out issue.
Checked voltage levels while stressed
A lot of googleing looking for answers

Things I've yet to try
Update motherboard bios
look for graphics card bios update
reinstall windows
rip out dotnet 3 by hook or by crook and reinstall it.
Try it out on windows7
roll back to eairlier drivers (but which ones?)

Any other sugestions or ideas people can think of?
Has anyone else had this issue and found a fix for it?
Most of the stuff I've found is eairlier bugs, where it freezes or drops to a slideshow, neather of which I have.

[Jonessie]

You see this is the reason why I moved away from nvidia in the first place because of the drivers where so bad the caused a lot of BSOD and because of this I switched over to AMD and never looked back. You will probably find it's the drivers causing the BSOD what does the event logs say? Check the event logs then check the event ID with www.eventid.net and they will give you an explanation into why this happened. I would say its the drivers. From past experience with nvidia cards over the years.

I would have a look here because my laptop has an nvidia card and I used there drivers and I never experienced a problem using their tweaked version. http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/index

[Jasp]

Try using driver sweeper when re-installing the drivers and see if it makes any difference. Given you have covered most of the other bases try updating you Direct X to see if that helps.

http://phyxion.net/

[CaseyV9]

Maybe GFWL could be an issue if you using DLC.

Patches 1.6 + 1.7 only added Perks for DLC.

And on the patch side, the first few fixed a lot of issues. And later patches brought them back.

A long shot but try re-installing Fallout 3 and playing un patched and slowly patching it and testing the game after each one.

The offical Fallout 3 forum may be of use.

[kalniel]

When I had an nVidia card I found I basically had to keep at a particular version when I found one that was stable for the game - I'm out of date now so can't help with version recommendations, but the reason I switched from nVidia was precisely that - when I want to play two games that were stable only with different driver versions it was a pain.

If you got a driver with the card then try using that. Otherwise go to one that was out 2-6 months after Fallout 3 was released.

[CaseyV9]

Pob255, is that you on the Fallout 3 forum in the PC Tech issues? If not then check it out. These guys claim older drivers fix it.

I will post a link when I get back to my PC tonight. That is tech issue under general F3 not DLC.

[Pob255]

No that's not me on the offical forum

Well I had the 182.03 drivers still on my pc, so I uninstalled 190.38, rebooted into safe mode, ran both drive cleaner pro and drive sweeper, rebooted and installed 182.03
Played for an hour, no issues

Just out of curisioty I loaded dawn of war 2 and ran the performance test, my average fps has gone up by 9

EDIT: Oh and on game patcing, I work on the principle the the latest "should" contain the previous patches or at least refuse to install untill the others have been applied.

[kalniel]

Doesn't surprise me - nVidia drivers seem to always suit their newest cards at the expense of the older ones.

[Pob255]

Well no crashes, however I get a couple of second pause ever tume I enter VEATS and about a 1 second pause when something blows up.

[kalniel]

That's fairly normal - VATS pause seems to be an engine quirk. Explosion pause is usually CPU related (havok calculations) - I have a fraction of a pause on my computer, but my gfs core 2 duo (6300 I think) doesn't pause. I'm surprised your computer would.. maybe get rid of the overclock (the engine really doesn't like overclocking very much).

[roorooroo]

Best Nvidia drivers i have found are 182.50 if you'd like to give those a try next time.