Hi Folks, just bought the GOTY version of Fallout 3 and i can't get it to run. The "Please Standby" screen comes up aaaand it crashes. "Fallout3 stopped working".

WIN7
AMD FX-8320 8Core
8 GB RAM
AMD Radeon R9 280X

Any ideas?

The same thing happened to me as soon as I tried any mods, including DarnUI. There are some anti-crash mods I know of, and I'll update after testing, but I'd wager this boils down to the more-than-one-core issue this game has always had.

I just installed Fo3 from GOG.com and it starts a little bit different than DVD version I've got.

After Fo3 Launcher (when I hit "Play") I can see black screen only with Win7 "busy circle"... but in the center of screen is area where mouse cursor looks like normal for Win7. When it was in "center area" I clicked and hit Esc key and game started. Such screen showed only once and next time Fo3 run normal.

dobry wieczor... and hi to poland :) i don't see anything but a small window in the top left corner of my main monitor for a second, than the standby screen shows and crash. really frustrating

nope. tried that just now and still the same. and it does this from wherever i start the game, galaxy, startmenue, just the exe-file. doesn't matter.

so to sum up what i tested:
xp sp3 compatibility
start as admin
windowed mode
switched off second monitor via settings

so far no fallout for me :(

Having no luck on my end either. Might just do a clean install and then see what mods/updates crash this thing.

there where remnants of old save files and .ini files from corrupted old installations.....
i deleted them and still it crashed, but it wanted to test my graphicscard. so i looked into the options, chose my resolution according to my monitor and switched from HDR to bloom and there it goes.
changed settings to ultra and HDR again and it works now.
the old savegames and inis seem to cause these problems... sigh, my pc is a mess. i need to make a clean setup sometime.... so thank you all...

i'm glad, too. but now im off to sleep and the wasteland has to wait a bit...... thanks again for the quick response.

Yeah I have an idea.

Follow this link: http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/34778/?tab=1&navtag=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexusmods.com%2Fnewvegas%2Fajax%2Fmoddescription%2F%3Fid%3D34778%26preview%3D&pUp=1

Download the .dll file and drop it right into the Fallout 3 folder from the compressed RAR file. It should help your issue. I was having the same issue with this game and will also try for New Vegas next. It was crashing on start despite my efforts to bypass this. The file got it going.

Hope this helps.

I had this issue but have just fixed it by installing the scripted extender and then the New Vegas anti crash plugin, you can find it here:
http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/53635/?
It has loaded every time since for me. It crashed every before I tried it.

I was having the same issue for Fallout 3, so I googled for a solution and found this thread; I tried your method and it worked perfectly! At first I thought a mod I was using was causing the crashing, but after un/re installing with no mods, it still kept crashing; now everything runs great and I haven't had any crashes since. Thank you very much for posting this, as it helped me out a lot!