so i bought fallout 3 during the steam summer sale and it doesent work i dont have any mods installed but it still doesent work if you know how to fix it please tell me

You should provide a much more detailed account. What kind of error messages are you getting? Do you CTD? If so, then when?

Is your load order properly conducted? Sometimes things can get screwed up. Have you checked the integrity of your game cache?

when i start the game it crashes to desktop and i have no enb or mods installed

You might need to run the program that kills Games For Windows Live.  Fallout 3 won't work for me until I do that.  Specifically this one:

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/1086/?

I've used it on four separate occasions, works like a charm for me and even allows you to run the game without Steam.

G4WL is the worst idea in the history of software. Whoever came up with it needs to be tarred and feathered!

Which version of windows do you have installed? Maybe something screwed up during installation so try verifying integrity of the game cache. Run game as administrator or using comparability mode for some other Windows versions. Try using the GFWL fix above.

It may also be an issue with installing directory, I mean, even new vegas does that magic trick in which in won't start if not installed in the default steam directory...but I have faith the other suggestions here will work, if not, this is worth a shot

I never had problem with fo3 until I started to mod it but it is recommended to install fo3 and fnv in another directory.What I did was create a folder in my c:drive\games folder, then I put the steam exe and the SteamApps folder in the folder I created, delete the old steam folder in program files and run the steam exe in the folder you create in the c:drive\games it will update and run and steam will be running in your custom folder and all your games will be downloaded to it. I had steam installed before I did this. I am not sure if it will work for you but it did for me.

Tesvixen wrote:

You might need to run the program that kills Games For Windows Live.  Fallout 3 won't work for me until I do that.  Specifically this one:

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/1086/?

I've used it on four separate occasions, works like a charm for me and even allows you to run the game without Steam.

G4WL is the worst idea in the history of software.  Whoever came up with it needs to be tarred and feathered!

Most likely this is your problem in which case it will work.

But what OS are you on and check to see if your F03 was installed in to your Steam folder so it can run it off of steam like it was meant to be sicne you bought it off steam. If it is in steam folder then i would go with what Tes said and use the Windows live disabler or i think FOSE automatcially does it so try installing FOSE and running the game through that, your going to need FOSE eventually anyways if you mod(which who doesnt) so its worth a shot.

I had a similar problme the first time I bought Fo3 for PC. The problem was a missing .dll file. Try downloading a d3d9.dll file and putting it in the data folder. Worked for me a long time ago.