Fallout 3 Locks up in opening sequence

[marcusmiller360]

Just installed Fallout 3, downloaded all the DLC and updated to version 1.7.

Go to play the game, and........... locks up at random points during the opening sequence.

I have the latest driver for my video card and motherboard. Windows 7 Home Premium, updated current as of today. Running the game in Vista SP2 Compatibility Mode with Administrator rights selected.

Now, here is the part that may put some of you off.....

Computer is a Sony VPCCW26FX. That is right, a notebook. Corei5 @ 2.4 gigahertz, GT330M graphics card and 500gig hard drive. The Hard Drive is a 5400rpm unit but once the game is loaded, that shouldn't make too much a difference. Has 4 gigs of RAM and I can see (using task manager) that the game is only loading two gigs out of the four. I can hear the cooling fan spinning up, but its been much louder and faster on other games, so that leads me to believe it isn't overheating. Really, not part of the machine is hot when the thing locks up.

What gives? Whats behind the lockup?

 

[marcusmiller360]

In fact I can be ultra sure its not overheating. I opened it in Windowed Mode but with all the settings cranked to high. The the CPU meter barely ran up past 15%. Surely the GPU was running up but I've ran games up to 80% CPU before needing 3 gigs of RAM. Surely thats just as hot.

I seem to remember something about a patch you had to download from Microsoft....