Fallout 3 on M11xR2?

I'm sure that this MUST have been answered somewhere, but I sure can't find it - has anyone gotten Fallout 3 to run successfully on their M11xR2? I've done everything I can think of, including installing the NVIDIA 258.96 WHQL drivers, but Fallout 3 will play for only a minute or 2 then freeze.

If you've gotten this game to run on your M11xR2 I'd certainly appreciate knowing how you did it. Thanks!

 

Uhhh.. I just installed it and it worked. lol I didn't do anything special other than spamming "next" next "next", "install".

Then clicked ok a couple of times :]

 

Glad to hear it. However, do you have the M11xR2 or the M11x? The game apparently runs fine with the factory video drivers on the M11x, but not on the M11xR2 with Optimus technology. I didn't have any problems installing the game, just getting it to run for more than a minute or two.

But, as luck would have it, just after I posted asking for help I seem to have found a solution. I went into the NVIDIA Control Panel/Manage 3D Settings/Program Settings and changed the preferred graphics processor from the default "Use Global Setting (Auto-Select: NVIDIA GPU)" to "High-Performance NVIDIA Processor" and now the game has been running about 15 minutes without crashing. And yes, I'd tried this setting with the latest video drivers on the Dell site and the game froze within a minute or so of playing every single time . It took the 258.96 WHQL drivers from the NVIDIA site to get it working for me.

 

Try this for Fallout 3. Go to Documents\My Games\Fallout3 and edit FALLOUT.INI

Find the line:
bUseThreadedAI=0

change it to:
bUseThreadedAI=1

and add the following line right after this one:
iNumHWThreads=2


FO3 kept freezing every few minutes until I made the above changes.

Stain

 

I had no problems with the Steam version of FO3. I have an R2.

 

works fine here. do you have anything overclocked? you might have it too high if so

 

Download cff explorer and edit the Fallout3.exe so it can take more than 2GB of RAM. Otherwise it'll crash all the time for people with 64 bit systems.

 

Thanks for the suggestion, but I've been running Fallout 3 on 2 other laptops running 64-bit Windows (one Vista with 4GB RAM, the other Win 7 and 6GB) and it runs fine with not a single crash on either one.

 

M11x R2 here, nVidia 258.96 drivers w/modded INF. No overclock. Download the game through Steam, and it runs fine. No crashing, no graphical artifacts, and I can alt-tab just fine.

If you are overclocking, try running at stock CPU speeds and see if that helps. And if you aren't already doing so, play it on a flat table with nothing blocking the air intake or exhaust ports. Overheating could easily cause freezing and system lockups like you describe.

 

Thanks for taking the time to reply guys, I appreciate it. Nope, never overclocked it as the games I've been playing on it (Dragon age Origins, Risen, and Oblivion) play and look fine to me as-is.

And, as I said in my response to tk112190 above, Fallout 3 now seems to be working fine with the latest NVIDIA 258.96 WHQL drivers after I changed the default Fallout 3 settings from "Use Global Setting (Auto-Select: NVIDIA GPU)" to "High-Performance NVIDIA Processor." I thought the Optimus technology was suppose to take care of things like this automatically.

Again, thanks all who responded!

 

Hmm...must be an R2 problem. I have an R1, overclocked, running on the 335m and I've logged a few days worth on a fresh install of F3. I hope you can get it to work! I only beat it recently for the first time, working on exp. packs etc. Great game. I personally have had no bugs or problems.

 

I honestly wouldnt blame Opti-mess on this one - Fallout 3 is a notoriously buggy piece of crap code. When it runs it's fine, but Bethesda followed their tradition of buggy games to the max with F3!

Great game, crappy coding!

 

Oh is that what it is? It doesn't crash too often but once in a while it will on me. Or sometimes it won't start.

 

I've played Fallout 3 a few times through on my modest gaming desktop and haven't ever had any problems with it. Haven't done much more than an hour on the M11x though.

 

Ironically Fallout is one of the few games I havent had any issues with on my R2, high settings, 2xAA, runs flawlessly.

NFS Shift and Blur on the other hand, no end of issues.

 

Stain, I spoke too soon when I said I thought the freezing was fixed. Tonight I played for just 5 minutes and the game froze. Restarted, played 5 minutes, froze again. I went into the .ini file and made the changes you suggested and played for over an hour with no freezes. Many thanks, I hope this problem is gone for good now!

 

It's one of my favorite games and I keep coming back to it. I've played it on an Alienware M17x and on a couple of Sager laptops (yes, I could start a laptop store!) and can't remember a single problem with the game on any of these machines. It wasn't until I got the M11xR2 that I started having problems with it.

 

DirectX update perhaps?

 

Thanks, I found that fix on the Steam forum. According to that thread, the freezing has nothing to do with Optimus, it was the game itself that was the problem. The INI fix I suggest will still have crashes, but now they will be every few hours. Save often!

More info from the forum:
This will limit the game to 2 cores and prevent the engine bug from causing the game to freeze.

*If the game still crashes write this iNumHWThreads=1

 

Again, thanks for the help! Not sure why I'm having problems on the M11xR2 but not the other laptops I've played the game on. Except for the latest NVIDIA drivers and Win 7 auto-updates the M11xR2 is stock, just as it came from the factory, no overclocking or tweaks. BTW, my Fallout 3 is a digital download copy that I purchased some time ago from Direct2Drive, including official add-ons and any patches, but I wouldn't think that would have anything to do with the freezing problem. So far there's been no freeze-ups since applying your suggested .ini changes in about 3 hours of gameplay.

 

I played Fallout 3 on the 360 when it first came out, however I purchased the Game of the Year addition for my M11xR2 here last week. I was having the issue of it freezing up often and I just wanted to say THANK YOU for providing this fix! I've had zero problems since I made these changes and the game looks great on this little beast of a laptop!

Do you know if this also applies to New Vegas? Just asking as I'm planning on purchasing that when the Game of the Year addition comes out.

 

The fix works, I have FO3 since last year, and I´m already finished it, and starting the DLC right now, I have played it 3 hours without any problem....

But is a Bethesda game, save often, even without the freeze problem...