my fallout new vegas game crashes to the desktop after 10-20 mins of gameplay.i still dont know whats happening to it

There's a very broad range of reasons why the game can crash, without specifies like load order and system specs it'll be difficult to find out why.

One thing you should definitely do is install NVAC: http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/53635/?

It could eliminate or reduce the crashes, at the very least it'll produce a log that might help identify the problem.

Yeah, I highly recommend NVAC. I used to have the same problem with crashes happening every 10 minutes for when I play. But once I installed that I rarely get them now. But like hitman said, I would make sure the load order is set to best It can.

Is it crashing at a specific area?

Going to have to see a load order to be able to help out more if you are still crashing after using NVAC.

New Vegas Anti-Crash saved my desktop. With all of my weather mods and Millenia gun mods, my fallout crashed every 5-10 minutes. My problem was fixed by uninstalling and re-installing Groovatron and adding NVAC.

Hm never heard of NVAC. I would occasionally have same issue with new Vegas
I night look into it. If you are running the game off of a laptop, make sure that air is well circulated and vents are uncovered. Otherwise your laptop might shut down. Anyway, archive invalidation invalidated always helps. It MIGHT have been the issue in my case.

Good luck

I've honestly got my fallout new vegas install running virtually crash free.

This is what I'm using:

Fallout New Vegas Optimized, does some ini file tweaks
New Vegas Stutter Remover, just get this if you don't already!
ENBoost, works better than the 4GB enabler

Also running the game in windowed borderless mode helps a lot.

I had a similar condition. Crashes would get worse when entering new cells (that's when it'd die).
-shut off extra applications
-ini file tweak (iNumHWThreads = 2)
-There was a mod to clear old cached information.
-4GB launcher
-make sure drivers for video card are up to date.

Mat, about the ENBoost, do you need to have an ENB package to use it?

Tupolev wrote:

I had a similar condition. Crashes would get worse when entering new cells (that's when it'd die).
-shut off extra applications
-ini file tweak (iNumHWThreads = 2)
-There was a mod to clear old cached information.
-4GB launcher
-make sure drivers for video card are up to date.

Mat, about the ENBoost, do you need to have an ENB package to use it?

No, there's a standalone version on nexus http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/51670/?

Though i now recommend using the 4GB loader instead, ENBoost has increased stuttering for me. And when i fire weapons like the incinerator cannon my fps drops to 30 

Well... not just FONV, other games like FO3 and TES4&5 have the same problem - bugs and errors.
The game itself has bunch of bugs and errors even after installing the latest patch and without installing any mods. Since I believe there are only few people would like to play without any mods, there are just too many reasons for CTD or other crushes; even a single wrong alphabet or punctuation mark would cause serious errors or crushes.

And yes I know you might have seen these answers for thousand times - check your mods, reinstall the game, and so on; but like I said, a little error would cause crushes, there are only few easy ways to make your game " a little more" stable( well, not unless for those have the skill to debug or rewriting entire game system).

The first one and it's quite a common method, is using FNVEdit and activate the mods you play with, then find out the red sections, those are conflicts of your mods, or the conflicts of the mods with the original game. Simply set them with correct references( the green sections) will do the trick, but no promises for keep crushing again.

As for using NVAC, this is the resolution for keeping the game from running out of memory capacity. You see, I used to play FONV and Skyrim with 32bit OS, and then after 20~30 minutes, missing or wrong textures problem were start to kick in, then after 5 to 10 more minutes, CTD. Then one day I just felt enough is enough, I installed 64 bit OS and increased the memory from 3G to 8G; the problem was eased up but still remained (well, at least CTD happen after an hour or two now). Since the problem still there, I install and use NVAC now. Still, the game would still CTD with a message says " out of memory." But well... at least it's much more stable now.

There are still more ways to decrease the chance of CTD, such as playing without mods as much as you can, or merging the mods to decrease the number of your mods. For example, there are a lot of mods only adding one weapon or armor to the game; you can consider to make a weapon pack or armor pack, or better yet, merging them into just one equipments pack. This can also be done with FNVEdit, just make sure to correct the conflicts.

@bft90679

Not all conflicts are bad and going trough a mod and charging all red entry to green is generally a bad idea, unless you know what your doing.

For example, if you have a two mods that both change the damage of a sword, the one that loads last wins the conflict.
if you want the damage value from the mod loads first you can copy the value in to the one that last, but the record is still gonna show up as red because they are still conflicting the the Vanilla master, so to get a green entry you would have to change all the values to match the vanilla one, so why use the mod at all?

I hope that makes sense, sorry I'm bad at explaining stuff. if you want i can come up with a better example.   

Well, I know it's impossible to change all red entries to green and make the game more stable, since there are some mods are actually fixing the bugs from Vanilla esm data.
I suppose the best example are Unofficial Patch and other error-fixing mods; lots of changes and red entries but they fix the game instead of crush it.
What I'm trying to say is sometimes some modders would accidentally change some default and crucial settings which would result in a crush(well... this happens a lot from time to time, especially when modders are sleepy or get distracted. Making a mod, even it's just adding a new weapon or armor to the game world could be quite complicated and tiring). Then this would need some know-how to correct them.
And BTW, your explanation is quite easy to understand and helpful; no need to apologize.

I forgot to ask... I'm using Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650, so which one I should use when tweaking fallout.ini? "iNumHWThreads=2" or "iNumHWThreads=4"? And what's the name of the mod that clears old cached information? Or where to find it?

Oh i see, yes with mods like the unofficial patches its good to ensure its fixes are carried forward, as long as you have a basic understanding of what the record is used for. with scripts its more complicated because there might be good reason  they need to stay the way they are, if a mod is deliberately keeping a script vanilla.

Its knowing whats a mistake and whats intentional that's the difficult part, dirty edits are common but not as frequent as in skyrim. plus this engine is a lot more robust then people give it credit for, most conflicts are not going to crash your game.

You are right people can always use more know-how.

Regarding Quad cores:

With a quad core in New Vegas the iNumHWThreads line shouldn't be needed at all, unless you are really desperate for a potential performance increase. the reports of better CPU usage and stability with it are sketchy at best, its never done me any good and may of actually worsened the problem for me.

In fallout 3 it must be set to 2, to prevent crashes when entering small interiors.

Cached data:

By cache clearing I'm guessing you mean PCB, this is probably what you're after: http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/49319/?

I must warn you that excessive use of PCB will inevitably corrupt your save. if you're suffering from slow menu loading then it'll reduce the problem temporally, its up to you if you want to take that risk.

I hope this helps.  

I managed to make quite stable build, using about 120 mods (5 merged patches of total 90 mods+)

I use

NVSR
NVAC
4GB patch


Also ENB for FNV is kinda broken, I got a serious FPS hit in some areas, also a water bug, which I fixed, but still got an unpleasant feeling from having it.

I tried and now using Dynavision 3 instead of ENB. Feels actually better will much less problems. The only problem from Dynavision is an invisible NPCs bug in some areas, which cant be fixed, as far as I know.

Never tried borderless window mode, cant say if that helps, usually windowed mode runs heavier and potentially causes more problems.


Hitman,

Can you please explain, how purge cell buffer corrupts a savegame? Its a first time I hear something like this...

hey hitman thanks for pointing out the NVAC mod, it stopped all the CTDs i've been having. don't know why i've never heard of it before.

@Visious

Basically purge cell buffers unloads cell data that's no longer being used at the time, but not everything it removes is not needed. save games relies on certain data still being present at the time its created, when loaded it with stuff not there it hiccups a bit and carries on 99% of the time.
however do it enough times and it can build up, things stop loading when they should, loading times become a little longer even if you've already loaded the cell during the session, infinite loading screens become more frequent and so on.

That said its impossible to directly link this to PCB, you could play for 100 hours while using PCB every 15 minutes and never have a problem, I'm basing it off personnel experience in fallout 3 and i once heard that New Vegas handles cell memory differently to FO3, handles it better if i recall.

I shouldn't of used the word inevitably though, i should of said maybe instead. sorry if i misled you or anyone else, it was not my intention.

Regardless if your game needs excessive or auto use of PCB then it may have problems elsewhere that need to be addressed, clearing cell buffers will not prevent crashes, it will only help with gradual slowdown due to an overworked engine.

What it may do is increase the frequency of crash due to forcibly unloading data, but as with everything there's no guarantees, it up the user to decide if they really need fast looting.  

@eggstreamman

You are welcome, glad i could help.  

Hm,

I`m using purge cell buffer in Oblivion with no problems for about 120 hours, it really helps with huge texture mods and Better Cities + Better LOD.

Also I`m having about 55 hours in current character, constantly using PCB, also no problems.

That's cool, like i said there are no guarantees.

I have very little experience with modded Oblivion.

I'm glad your game is working for you.   

Well, Oblivion do handle cells differently, I beleive. Main problem with Oblivion is overgrown vram usage, when it hits the card limit, game will crash (I have GTX 680 with 2GB, and imagine that - with better cities I got ALL Vram at full within 15-20 minutes near cities, yeah, for the game with official requirements - 512 mb of vram)

Want to get GTX Titan soon, but still waiting for the price to go down.

For FNV - I had a previous game with about 220 hours of gameplay with extencive PCB usage, I never used NVAC and NVSR back then and even on that game I rarely had CTD, but got freeze-load quite often though.

Wow I'd never of thought that vram would be a problem in oblivion, considering that high quality textures back then are not very high rez by today's standard.

You would think that ram would be a bigger issue due to complex scenes in better cities and the fact that oblivion can't be made large address aware easily. (that i know of )

Yep loading freezes could be attributed to missing data due to PCB, you can't be sure tho.