Fallout 3 Crashes/Locks up - Symptoms inside

I heard updating to 1.7 solves most crazhing problems.

However for you it seems your nvidia driver crashed. Lower your OC or normal frequencies. Also try revert to different versions of drivers, see if it helps.

Are other games okay? Sounds to me like your graphics card is overheating.

The same thing happens to me. It's just bugs in the game. Update to the latest patch which i think is 1.7 that solves most of the issues. Even so I think it will crash once in a while.

That isn't Fallout. That is a problem with your VGA itself. Likely, a driver crash. I don't know what 7 does to handle it. XP just bluescreens, Vista will bluescreen on occasion but attempts to recover(Causing a CTD in FO3 when it succeeds. I've had this happen personally). 7 is based on Vista, so I'd assume it would try the same thing. Could be that the VGA is causing a driver crash(Or maybe a bad driver is crashing itself), and in an attempt to recover, 7 locks the machine up solid.

I found 191.07's to be best with FO3. Try those.

I figure its the Graphics Card. If I set the settings to Low the game Runs for hours, but if I set them to High or Ultra the game will die in a matter of about 15 to 20 minutes. I suspect over heating to angrysasquatch. I suppose I can also try the drivers you mentioned TestECull. Though I haven't seen any problems like this with other games, it still makes me wonder. I also have the latest patch (1.7). From what I understand it only adds achievements to the game for the recent expansion packs. Thanks for the input guys Rep +

I have had so many problems with that game, had to re-buy it for the 360 to finally get to play it. I have never seen so many bugs and crashes, I can run any other game fine. but No matter what I tried, nothing seemed to work, I really hope you can figure it out.

Patch 1.7 really helped my game stop crashing.