Fallout 3 crashing when it hadn't before...

Hey there, I'm a bit computer illiterate when it comes to this sort of thing, so please, bear with me.

I've been playing Fallout 3 (GOTY, if this is relevant) recently on my computer for a while, and I recently took a break from said computer, only to hop back on and it tells me that it has found a 'solution' to a problem with Fallout. I have no idea what this means, of course, because there hadn't been a problem last time I played. I pop in the disc to check and when I hit play it tells me "The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000005)." I've tried to download the patch (1.7, though I'm not sure if I have to download all the others first?) and update my computer and this still solves nothing.

I cleaned out a few old programs and am running some disc cleaners and will defrag soon, but I have a feeling this won't work, mostly because I've had similar issues with other programs. (Namely the Complete Collection of the original Sims, though that isn't Vista compatible to begin with, and therefore probably not comparable.)

My Vista's information (I believe) is as follows:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+ 2.60 GHz
2 GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce 6150SE nForce 430
Service Pack 1 (?)

It's also about four to six years old(horrible that I can't remember this), and a small factory model(HP s3220n).

I don't know what other information might be needed to help, but anything would be wonderful, and fully appreciated.

Hello and welcome to the forum.

Can you tell me is it a laptop or desktop.

What is the name of you computer Anti-Virus..

Ah, thank you for the reply!

It is a desktop.
I had one of Microsoft's free Anti-virus programs(Security Essentials, or something), which I downloaded between play-sessions, but it shut down some of my computer's basic defense and it didn't really like that. I removed it just recently. It currently has the simple protection that comes with the system.

Hello

Do you have malwarebytes on your system if not download it and I will give you there site and you can download the free version and run a full scan using them first, lets rule out any Virus or malware.

Malwarebytes

After you have run a full scan let me know the results, please

0xc0000005 error is a standard error for an access violation, have you tried running the game with adminstrator privileges?

MrNeeds

americancritic said:

Do you have malwarebytes on your system if not download it and I will give you there site and you can download thefree version and run a full scan using them first, lets rule out any Virus or malware.
After you have run a full scan let me know the results, please

Click to expand...

All right, I'm working on setting that up now, so we'll see what that turns up.

MrNeeds said:

0xc0000005 error is a standard error for an access violation, have you tried running the game with adminstrator privileges?

Click to expand...

Ah! I get that error a lot, and I never knew what it meant.
I've clicked the 'Run as administrator' option, but it still gives me the error messege. I'm not really sure what to think at this point.


EDIT: The Malwarebytes discovered a few things on my computer and took care of them. However, the game still will not run, even as Administrator.

Hey, thanks for the reply.

My machine runs at ~37% physical memory, nothing going on.
I tried that and it's still giving me the code error or whatever. The game was perfectly fine until just recently, anyways. Something's crashed in a bad manner and I can't find it.

Fallout 3 is designed to be compatible with dual core processors. I can't recall how many times I checked this. I haven't even installed the DLCs, as its setup won't run. (Bethesda has already acknowledged the second disc is faulty and difficult to manage, however, so it doesn't worry me at the moment.)
This isn't what it does when the machine hasn't hit minimum requirements in the video card, as I tried it on a machine that doesn't hit it. Game will run, but will stop at "New Game". This is not the issue at hand, I believe, though I have considered it many, many times.

I'm really down to the point where I'm going to have to make back up data and ship it somewhere to get fixed, as now another one of my programs won't work and several are trying to update for no reason, even after being uninstalled.
I think I will have a friend look at it before I do, however, since he knows more about these things than anyone else I know.

Either way, thanks to everyone for the help, and I'm still open to suggestions, but I think I'll have to try Bethesda's forums and tech support for some deeper analysis.