So I was playing the game with the patches for children, the 1.2 update, and the 1.3.4 update and all was going fine until sometime in the middle of the game, I killed the mutants (including one of the Super Mutant leaders) in the Boneyard along with Ian in my party. I go to exit the area (the exit to my immediate left) when the game all of a sudden crashes on me. I load the game up to try it again, crash. So I try to go another way, going south to Adytum first but then, yep, crash. Running as administrator only resets all the saves, moving the main folder did the same. So now being forced to start all over again I refuse to go through the trouble of playing through this again if the same problem is going to occur, and evidently the patches were no good in this case. My computer's a Windows 7 64-bit btw.

EDIT: Oh and I forgot to screen cap the error message I got but it seems that it was the exact same one that someone else got here here

So, what's the deal here?

...

Based on the thread you linked to, it looks like a problem involving saving during combat (I never ran into it, but the last time I really did a Fallout run was before the unofficial patches were so popular).

And, based on the thread you linked to, this can be solved with a save game edit.

What do you mean by "resets all the saves"? If you have multiple saves, have you tried using an earlier one? Better to replay an hour or two as opposed to the entire game.

I saved the game after the fight (combat was turned off too as I had spent some time looting the corpses beforehand), so it definitely wasn't that.

And by reset, I mean "erase" technically, although when I ran the game normally and not as administrator the saves were still there. And they went away yet again when I moved the file folder away from the GOG one in the Programs(x86) section. I'm guessing the files would come back if I moved the folder back but I just decided to do a clean sweep and erase everything and re-install the game.

Also, not sure if this makes a difference, but I had a short run through this game beforehand without the patches, and after I installed them the saves no longer would work so I started a new game with new save files overwriting them. I did notice during game play that didn't happen before was music occasionally skipped and that load times were slightly longer.

OK, going through another playthrough of the game and the same error message comes up when I give Katja the leather armor and tell her to change to it, this time in Necropolis (though I imagine it doesn't matter where I do it). I found out afterward that she already has leather armor so I guess the action isn't necessary, but still having a game consistently crash for any specific action or reason is never a good thing, and besides that will the game crash on me again if I actually find better armor to give her? Or do anything else for that matter? Why does this keep happening? Arrghh...

Patches I have this time: children patch (again), f1npcmod, Falche character editor (which I didn't use yet) and the fatal damage mod. And the directory is no longer in the GOG folder. Interesting that both instances of the game crashing for me (as well as the one the other user was having) seem to involve an NPC companion in some way. Totally incidental to what the actual problem is or does the game only like you when you decide to fly solo? An irritation in any case!

OK, more things to report, and things aren't looking much brighter here...

First of all, I got the water chip and brought it back to the Overseer along with Katja. After I was told to go to the library, the game crashes. So, after this, I decide to test something, since my most recent save was right before this, and this time, I bring the chip back to the Overseer again, only without Katja, and, lo and behold, the game does NOT crash when I go to the library this time! So the game does not like you having NPC companions after all!

Oh, and later I get Ian in the party, and try to give him the leather armor in the Radscorpion Cave (I believe all he has is the leather jacket) and tell him to change it too and, surprise, the game crashes there as well. So it not only does it not like me having NPC companions it doesn't like them being well-protected either. Christ, this is driving me up the wall! But at least now I SORT of know what the problem is, now if only there was a proper way to fix/patch it that doesn't involve abandoning NPC companions altogether!

YES! I found the solution! Though finding a working link proved to be a bigger pain than should be necessary:

http://www.teamx.ru/site_arc/mods/f1npcmod.rar

I think I will show this link to those who have been having the same problems as me!