Highly anticipated and quite a joy to play, Fallout 3 comes with its fair share of problems for both Xbox 360 and PC versions of the game, similar to those Oblivion had when it was launched (but somewhat lighter). In other words, Fallout 3 simply locks up from time to time, but Bethesda luckily has the answers.

So, if you have Fallout 3 for Xbox 360 and it locks up, according to Bethesda Softworks VP of Marketing and Fallout 3 product manager Pete Hines, all you have to do is clean your console’s cache and the game will no longer crash. In order to do that, follow the next steps:

-Go to the Dashboard and select System Blade -> Memory.
-Highlight HD, then press Y.
– Follow on screen instructions or press: X, X, Left Bumper, Right Bumper, X, X. Confirm the System Maintenance and enjoy your game!

For the PC version of the game, the problems seem to be bigger as the game crashes when it starts, and even though there are no official answers for the problem at the moment, it appears that the problems are caused by the soundcards (the 3D surround options in Fallout 3, to be more specific).

So, if you have Asus Xsonar, Creative or Realtek sound cards and your Fallout 3 game crashes when you start a new game, you can try the following trick reported by Bethesda forum user zsmono:

Just turn off the GX mode if you have a Xonar card. “For the others. This DS3D GX thing is part of Xonar’s drivers which is responsible for restoring EAX and multichannel sorround sound under Vista. Similar to Creative’s Alchemy or Realtek’s 3D SoundBack. Try to disable them, or change the speaker config to stereo.”

Hopefully that helps. We’ll keep you updated on official information regarding the Fallout 3 lock ups and crashes and solutions for the situations.