I have been having issues with fallout 1.
I am in junk town and just got dogmeat. So I went into Gizmos place and people keep attacking me and the game bugs out in this area, some sort of memory error.
I have Fallout version 1.2.
Should I download this patch?
http://nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=57362

I was having the same problem elsewhere, namely after killing Hightower and ending combat Fallout would crash. I managed to get around it by leaving my companions (Tycho and Dogmeat) behind while I finished the quest, and, voila! No crashing.

I was also getting crashes after turning in the water chip and being teleported to the Vault Library, which is what got me thinking that companions might be the problem. This isn't really a solution, unfortunately, but I hope it works for you!

Well If any thing I think the fan patches might fix it. As you can command the companion AI.
Yet I'll wait till I get a conclusive answer Thanks I appreciate the info.

I'd be wary of the Fixit patch, it caused some serious issues for my game and it did for others it seems. For one thing, it royally screwed up the resolution and colors of my game. I'd go for the 1.2 patch, followed by the 1.3.5 patch instead first.

Next, the patch that seemed to fix the NPC crashes for good can be found here: http://www.teamx.ru/site_arc/mods/f1npcmod.rar

The NPC mod updated to fix the crashes that occur with leveling up and requesting armor changes. Works great for me so far, hope it does for the rest of you!