Fallout 2 crashing in XP

[Kung Fu Guy]

I searched the forums, read the entire sticky thread at the top of this forum, tried out a lot of different fixes and am still having the same problem. The only thing I found is this post from 2 years ago which describes my exact problem.

i seem to have run into a problem after following your steps for a manual install.
the game opens up, the interplay bit runs, the intro bit runs... all that works fine, and then it gets to what i assume is the menu screen. all the colors are reversed and everything is horribly pixelated and i cant tell what anything is or where my cursor is so that i can start up a game or anything.
nothing seems to work, any one have any ideas?

I'm running Windows XP Pro with an NVIDIA GeForce 3 Ti500 video card, AMD Athlon 512 mb processor. I did the manual install as outlined in the sticky thread for the humongous installation. Then I updated with Killaps Unofficial fallout 2 patch US. (my disk is an original US)

-I tried creating a shortcut and having it open in compatibility mode for 95 & 98.
-Tried reducing the colors and screen resolution.
-Tried rolling back my video card drivers, then tried updating them again, all with no luck.
-I've tried disabling the video card in device manager (this actually made it look worse).
-I tried lowering the Hardware Acceleration, on each peg, all the way to none. that didn't work either.
-I've tried searching these forums and found some other suggestions for other problems, but figured I'd outline my problem before messing things up even more.

I think that's everything that I've tried thus far. None of it has worked. I've been at this for about 3 hours now. I thought about re-installing with a different patch, but this seems to be more video card related.

Thanks for your patience, i realize that was probably a long winded post.

 

[Kung Fu Guy]

no suggestions anyone? This issue is bringing me to tears! I need my fallout!

That being said I'll keep trying, if i figure out what it is i'll post an update.

 

[VoidVector]

no suggestions anyone? This issue is bringing me to tears! I need my fallout!

That being said I'll keep trying, if i figure out what it is i'll post an update.

i can tell you i see something like what you describe (pixelated image) when i tab in and tab out. The instant i tab out, I see pixelated screen until the other program fully loads. You should try to make sure that no other program is trying to display on top of the fallout game screen.

You can also try running the program in windowed mode. You need a DirectX tweaking program to force the game to run in windowed mode. There are some discussions here: http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8162

Worst, you can try running the game in a virtualization, i.e. VMWare or Virtual PC.