Fallout 1 and 2 crashing problems

[Kedhrin]

Hey all, I've read the stickies and browsed through the forums a bit, not really too sure if I was finding the information I needed so I'm starting a new post.


Fallout 1 and 2 both are crashing on me, I just played through fallout 1 - living with the crashes, but it is sometimes a pain in the ass. Now I'm playing Fallout 2 and it is doing it with me as well.

Here are my system specs, and I will tell you the details of the problem below.

Fallout 1 - v1.1
Fallout 2 - v1.02

OS - Windows XP Pro SP2
AMD XP 3000+
768mb DDR Ram
ATI 9600
Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS
80GB HDD
DX 9.0c

Installation Methods:

Fallout 1 - Manual
Fallout 2 - Setup exe on cd


K, so basically a couple of problems are happening - one being the blackout thing but you guys have enough information on that and I'll try to tackle it. Another problem is that the colors seem to drop below 256 every now and then, i mean... severely below 256, looks really ugly - but i can alt-tab back into the game and the colors are restored, so those 2 bugs aren't really that big of a deal.

the one I'm primarily having is that I'll just be playing the game, the screen will go black and the game will crash, I can ALT+Tab to the Error Window, but the screen is black so I have no idea what it is saying so I can't really figure a way to fix it.

My geforce 6600gt is being sent to be repaired right now, so I borrowed this ati card from someone. My experience with ati's is that they suck, I use one at work and I have nothing but problems with it, same here at home (especially with games like quake 4).

I don't know if what is happening is a hardware failure on some median of my pc, or if it is software.

I would also do the suggested put video acceleration off like suggested in the stikied message, however, last time I did that on my pc it messed it up so bad I had to reformat because I couldn't even get into safe mode - so I'm a little iffy about that option.

any ideas?

Thanks,
Kedhrin

 

[Roshambo]

It appears to be hardware failure. I have noticed a greater trend of problems with Fallout and recent ATI cards. ATI seems to not like legacy rendering at all, which makes it pretty useless to me, and the fact that it's barely DirectX 9 compatible with stability issues, especially with games like Chronicles of Riddick, makes me not even consider paying money for one anytime soon. My condolences, but you do with what you have, and without a spare beater card to "donut" it, so to speak, you're having to use something not quite suited for Fallout.

On that note, try rolling back through about five versions of drivers for the ATI card, as it appears that ATI's drivers are going to hell again. Either that, or go spend $20 for a back-up clunker GeForce 2 to play legacy games on, and it shouldn't give you much problem.

 

[Bloodlust]

Well,I've got an ati 9600 gfx card with the latest drivers installed and fallout runs perfectly good on my system.
A possible cause for your problem might be the WinXp service pack 2.There have been noted compatibility problems with older programs,so this might be the cause.

 

[Kedhrin]

awesome, thanks.

yeah, i kind of made the mistake of selling my geforce fx 5200 a month ago because i didn't think i'd need it, then my 6600 started acting up. oh well, i guess now I know to only sell my 2nd backup .


btw Bloodlust, love the second pic on the fan made fallout gallery.

thx you guys for keeping fallout alive, it's my main inspiration every day at work.

 

[Sonic]

I'm running Fallout on a WinXP SP2, Sapphire 9600XT and I've no problems. How did you install the ati card? dido you do a clean install of Windows? maybe there's a driver conflict.