Fallout 3 bugs

List all known Fallout 3 bugs here, to help other players cope with them and hopefully to help the developers fix them. ''' •READ THE LIST AND GO INTO DISCUSSION BEFORE PUTTING A COMMON GLITCH ON THE PAGE

While growing up in Vault 101

 * Unable to proceed past the book when you are a baby. Fathers leg clip into door. (Not sure if this is a bug, as the baby can open/close the door to unstuck the Father.
 * At 10th Birthday, upon being given PipBoy, you are unable to move, but able to look around. So you sit there looking around.  Eventually your father leaves.... and the guy goes to the bar, and you still sit there.

Quest specific

 * When completing the Waters of Life quest, when you need to get to the control center, the door wont open...you cannot exit the game, or reload from existing saved point because of auto save.. and you cannot exit the building, restart another game.
 * During the Big Trouble in Big Town quest, after bringing Red and Shorty back to Big Town, when presented with the option to defend the town by repairing the damaged robots, the game can sometimes glitch and the robots will not be in the town. A reload to an earlier save does NOT correct this issue.
 * Related to the previous bug: The robots actually flew through the air and died at my feet as I entered the town for the first time. As such, I didn't know it was a bug that would affect anything...I thought they were just enemy robots.
 * Just before Mr. Burke shoots Lucas Simms in the back after you report Burke's plan to blow up Megatown, if the player fires upon Burke he will begin to point back and forth between the player and Simms with his gun, eventually shooting in a random direction until he is killed. Simms will walk to the exit of the building after this, and upon leaving will appear dead on the other side of the door.
 * Moriarty disappears. I came across this when I enabled his quest to find the druggie, but went off to complete other quests first. When I finally got around to completing it, the PipBoy showed a marker on Megaton and then to Springvale Elementary. He wasn't in either place.
 * Wasteland Survival Guide quest gets stuck if Pinkerton gives you the proof again about Rivet Citys true history (he does this if you ask more about doctor Li) after completing that part. Moira just wants to hear from Rivet city and you cant return other quests.

General bugs

 * When traveling to Paradise Falls there was a line connecting the character to one of the attacking slaves. V.A.T.S didn't work properly.
 * It is possible to get "stuck" between rocks with no way of escaping (jumping, crouching, etc.) User can fast travel to escape (if no enemies are near by.)
 * It is possible to get "stuck" in "your" home at Megaton between the bed and the wall with no way of escaping (jumping, crouching, etc.) The user can NOT fast travel to escape.
 * It is possible to get "stuck" in "your" home at Megaton by sleeping and having a big sized companion. The user can NOT fast travel to escape, but can dismiss/kill the companion to escape.
 * To fix these problems on the PC, open the developer console (tilde, or `) and type tcl. When you are unstuck, type tcl into the console again.
 * When you pass between the rooms, radio may be glitched because of loading. It repeats a part of the song/speak until the radio returns to normal.
 * Using the Mister Sandman perk on some children while they're asleep leads to unlimited experience. You get the experience, but the children can't be killed so it's possible to do it repeatedly.
 * Radio songs and news skip occasionally skipping to another song or another piece of news
 * Twitching bodies: when you walk into an area with dead bodies purposely placed there the bodies will load in off the ground and land at an awkward position that makes the bodies twitch
 * It is possible when you kill something/someone, the corpse gets stuck and moves his/her/its body parts wildly.
 * When fighting the Super Mutant Behemoth in Evergreen Mills if you stand on the walkway so you can throw a Frag Grenade at it, the Mutant may start to rise in the air and get stuck there, appear next to you and other strange things (if it gets stuck in the air, when it falls down it dies giving you a great advantage).
 * at least in megaton, and at least twice when reloading a game the Player Character got stuck in looped attacks, without buttons being activated. This is related to firing while loading a new zone, reloading saves will continue to exhibit this behavior. Closing and re-opining the game will fix this
 * three dog dissapers after the qeast galaxy news radio

Technical problems

 * Vertical Sync may force an unsupported refresh rate for some monitors, resulting in no display. Disabling v-sync may correct this issue.
 * When launching the game a 'Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library Runtime Error - C:/Program Files/Bethesda Softworks/Fallout 3/Fallout3.exe - The aplication has requested the runtime to terminate it in an unusual way.' error pops out. Pressing any key exits the game.
 * When reloading a saved game, your character will have nothing in his/her inventory, just access to Enclave Radio and Galaxy News Radio.
 * At 10th Birthday, upon being given PipBoy, unable to move, but able to look around. So you sit there looking around. Eventually your father leaves.... and the guy goes to the bar, and you still sit there. :Solution: This can be fixed by going to Control Panel->Sound and Audio Devices. Under Speaker Settings click Advanced. Under the Performance Tab lower the acceleration tab to "Basic acceleration" or lower and it should fix it. Enjoy! :If that doesn't work, typing enableplayercontrols in the console forces the game to let you move around. Doesn't fix any of the sound issues though.
 * Not responding when launching the game on XP
 * Crash when launching the game on Vista x64 - Program has stopped working message. Note that updating video drivers tends to fix this.
 * With Sound Blaster sound cards using surround sound, some sounds such as NPC speech do not always play.
 * No games saved when clicking "save". Possibly related to having a roaming user profile. Check if your saves are located in your save game folder. If they are, start game and scroll down to the bottom of your save game list, and your saves should be there.
 * Severe drop in FPS at random times while playing in the wastes. Reloading a different save or minimizing/restoring the game usually fixes it.
 * Crash to desktop without a send/don't send error report.
 * Crash to desktop if Anti-Aliasing is turned on, usually when tab is pressed to bring up the Pip-Boy, but sometimes just on the loading screen. Turning AA off solves this issue for some.
 * Crash to desktop when tab is pressed to bring up the Pip-Boy
 * Crash when "getignorecrime" is entered into console.
 * Crash to desktop on exit. (Also present for some Oblivion users.)
 * Crash when "New Game" is pressed in the main menu (related to ffdshow - adding fallout3.exe to the exception list in the Audio Decoder Configuration apparently fixes this, but usually doesn't work.).
 * Crashing and corrupting top save to be back at beginning of game.
 * Crash when "Play" is pressed in the launcher splash screen (Discuss specific issues/solutions on Talk:Fallout_3_bugs).
 * APPCRASH with faulting module Cinemasteraudio.dll. Removing Roxio software, uninstalling Fallout3, then reinstalling Fallout3 appears to fix this.  First encountered issue in the bar, later saves also had issue.  The fddshow method above may be an alternative to this.
 * ~ not working to open console. Going into Device Manager Device Manager->"Human Interface Devices"->"Microsoft eHome Infrared Transceiver"->'Update Driver Software'->'Browse my computer for driver software"->'Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer'->'Infrared HID Device'->'Ok'->'Close' (Note: same fix works for TOEE) Once the driver has been changed, it can be changed back.  Somehow changing the driver frees the ~ mapping.  Note: Just updating the driver is not sufficient, it needs to be changed.
 * Crash on loading screen when trying to load saved game.
 * Crashes happen more frequently the longer the game is played, resulting in a "log in and crash straight back out" effect after only an hour or so of game time.
 * Crash with error "APPCRASH Fault Module Name:	d3d9.dll"
 * Disk unable to be read, viewed or otherwise seen as media on some DVD drives such as a Sony DRU-720A.
 * Memory leak related to excess processes, on-board sound card, and/or SLI.
 * VATS - severe drop in FPS for some users when entering VATS. Disabling anti-aliasing in the game launcher fixes this
 * Some sound clips get stuck and loop until very far away from source. - fixed by lowering or disabling "hardware acceleration" in Control Panel > speaker > advanced [Seemingly related to EAX support]
 * Mouse lag and strange acceleration. Force vsync off in your graphics Control panel to fix.
 * Due to an error in installing, certain sound effects (like gun shots/reloading and monster sounds) do not play.
 * Drop in FPS after playing for an extended period of time. Restarting the game fixes this.
 * Rebinding The Pip-Boy key only rebinds the key to open, the closing key is still default. NOTE: As a workaround, since the three categories Stats/Items/Data of your Pip-Boy are also hardwired to the F1-F3 keys (this is unrebindable, not shown in the in-game >controls >action mapping menu and NOT mentioned in the game manual at all), you can use those instead of needing 2 different other keys for opening / closing the PB.
 * Some key bindings are dropped (very rarely) after loading a saved game.
 * Wait function does not work when button is rebound to "w" key.
 * Sometimes when firing full auto or pistols too quickly causes sounds of weapons to be silent for a few shots.
 * With 5.1 surround sound, sounds from behind come through front speakers and vice-versa.
 * Streaks, flickers, and graphical corruption on full screen with Vista and SLI enabled. Running in Windowed mode solves the problem.
 * When the Pip-Boy's color is changed, the color does not change in third person view. (In other words, if color is changed to amber, then the pip boy remains green until activated)
 * Turning on radio causes graphics to stutter, possible solution: turn down the graphics a bit, if your graphics are walking on the edge, throwing in the sound might be just too much for a few seconds, and cause the stutter.
 * On some configurations, no 16/9 or 16/10 resolutions are available in setup.
 * Can't exit vault 101 - game crash. Loading imported save do not help - game crash after walking anywhere.
 * Suddenly unable to play holotapes. Reverting to a previously saved game seems to fix it.
 * Music on the pipboy crackles and pops, while the DJs are coming in crystal clear. Is fixed by installed K-Lite codec pack, opening FFDshow and moving the DirectShow slider all the way to the left. *Note a properly functioning radio will have a slight underlying hiss the farther away you are from the station. This is not to be confused with the crackling/popping which is a symptom of broken codecs.
 * Defeated enemies weapons sometimes spontaneously disappear from their inventories, leaving only the ammo behind. Loading an earlier quicksave didn't help, but restarting the game and loading the very same quicksave again did fix this.
 * Pressing Tab does not exit Pip-Boy when in the Items->Misc->Keys submenu.
 * After playing for a long time, textures start to be loaded at very low resolution. Restarting the game resolves this.
 * Raiders spawn inside the stone bridge ramp between Wilhelm's Wharf and The Citadel. Raiders can shoot out from inside the solid walls.
 * Bad Z-sort of transparent hair texture when Grandma Sparkle is wearing goggles.
 * In VATS, at certain zoom levels, it won't highlight any areas on the target until you either select a new target with the left or right arrows, or unless you move the cursor to a far edge of the screen and back again.
 * If an Xbox 360 USB controller is plugged in, and if "Enable Xbox 360 Controller" is set to "Off" in the controls menu, key bindings in-game will still show as the controller. (e.g. In the HUD, instead of displaying "Use E)" which is really the keystroke you would use if the controller option was set to off, instead when your crosshair is over an item, it'll show up as "Use A)" as if it were still using the controller.) Unplugging the controller will remedy the bug. You can also go to control settings and set "Enable Xbox 360 Controller" to on, and then off again to fix this, but you will have to do this every time you restart the game.
 * In the Inventory screen, when interacting with the various boxes and containers of the game world, it's not possible to scroll the item highlight cursor up/down with the arrow keys. When you try this, all you get is an unhealthy "flicker" between items as if the cursor is stuck somehow. NOTE: This only happens when you still have the mouse pointer hovering over the list, i.e. it's not a bug at all.
 * Sometimes when user plays with an Xbox 360 Wireless controller, the game disables it and user must press on Xbox guide button in order to re-enable it.
 * In the wasteland, if user looks at the mountains, the geometry flickers even with Ultra settings.
 * When walking in the wilderness it is possible to have your feet seemingly stuck in the ground, or walking in mud, and jumping only makes a tiny jump. This followed by warping back to earlier positions and finally a crash.
 * Game is freezing for 3-5 minutes, then you can play for 3-10 minutes and it's freezing again...
 * Jumping key is very unresponsive at times, i.e. sometimes my character jumps when I press it and sometimes not. This is especially annoying when you want to jump from one building to another or across an irradiated body of water. Note 1: This may be caused by encumberance. Note 2: Nope, it also happens with empty pockets and is more likely related to being on uneven terrain.
 * Scrolling with mousewheel in Pipboy 3000 causes fatal crash, monitor turns off and you have to reboot system
 * On the Rivet City Flight Deck, pointing towards the broken Bow is a portion that is a good deal lower than the rest. The game fails to realize this and has the player walking on thin air.
 * Cannot talk to "Mister Burke" character in the bar in Megaton (have tried disable/enable fix to no avail)
 * Small black screen on launch.
 * Wild dog totally vanishes when I brought my PipBoy up in order to change weapon. Dog vanished when exiting the PipBoy.
 * Scroll wheel problem. Using scroll wheel makes anything usable by the scroll wheel constantly up or down. e.g either fully zoomed or out on map, either fully zoomed in or out for 3rd person to 1st person, either fully scrolled up a list or down the list. If you scroll up (wheel) the scroll bar will move up to the end and will be unmoveable unless you scroll down one click with the wheel to try and put the scroll wheel in neutral, scrolling two much down will move the scroll bar down to the end. Sometimes when the scroll bug is activated after talking to someone even through it wasn't activated previously. This also affects VATS.
 * User cannot quit the game normally and has to reboot the computer.
 * Upon exiting VATS, graphics will have automatically reduced to low settings with jagged edges, flickering buildings and trees, and brightly lit pixelated shrubs. Game restart will revert graphics back to normal state.
 * Fawkes's Gatling laser will occasionally cause a sound glitch when fired at a target that has just died, quicksave/quickload resolves this.
 * The game freezes during the character creation stage, a few minutes after selecting the gender for the player.
 * Complete crash of entire system when opening gate for Washington Monument.
 * Attempting to enter the Arlington Library after the entire building has been cleared (but before any books have been turned in to the Scribe) causes the game to crash (Faulting application fallout3.exe, version 1.0.0.15, faulting module ntdll.dll, version 5.1.2600.2180, fault address 0x00001230).
 * Attempt to exit the Jefferson Memorial during the "Scientific Pursuits" mission crashes the game to desktop. This bug appears to be triggered by completing the main quest missions out of order and perhaps related to the bug which crashes the game when getting within a specific distance of the Jefferson Memorial.
 * Pink screen during few seconds after launch while background music and voices are playing and then crash on desktop. Mostly for ATI videos.
 * Game freezes randomly after entering any house with no NPC present in it.
 * Saving while inside the Nuka-Cola Plant often leads to corrupt saves (game crashes to desktop when loading the save). Sometimes the game crashes during quicksaving there. Seems to be specifically this location that causes those, hasn't happened elsewhere.
 * Blue screens or reboots system when you enter name, use pip boy or get to character creation screen, this is still unresolved for people with this issue.
 * When entering the Super Duper Mart, after 1 minute or less inside the building, the screen starts to show white dashes across the screen (like static) until the game freezes completely requiring a restart, or if the user exits the game quickly, the computer doesn't freeze, but the static remains.
 * Using the scroll wheel in the console (used to scroll through targets) causes a 'Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library Runtime Error - C:/Program Files/Bethesda Softworks/Fallout 3/Fallout3.exe - The application has requested the runtime to terminate it in an unusual way.' error.
 * Crash when kill one of Raiders near Megaton.

Gameplay related
To summon Moriarty you have to do this: 1)Go to his bar 2)Go into console mode (press ~ ) 3)Write and confirm: prid 00003b3c (that is Moriarty's object ID) 4)now you have selected Moriarty and can move him to any item in the world, so you can put him right next to bar stool, so write down this: moveto 00003f61 5) He should be here and act normally
 * Walter is dead for no reason at ground level in Megaton with a lead pipe through his gut.
 * When you are trying to escape from the vault 101, at some point you find Amata being interrogated by her father, if you choose earlier to her keep the gun, the cop will try to catch her when she stand up, and the cop and Amata move very oddly, unnatural. (maybe was just that scene? the AI took wrong decisions? Or it is "scripted" that way?)
 * When selling and buying leather armor to/from Crow (caravan driver who starts near Megaton), armor's repair level isn't uniform (i.e. I bought a set of armor at 75% repair from him and after the transaction completed, the armor was at only 25% repair). Further, selling and re-buying the same suit of leather armor will yield a fully-repaired suit! This is thus partially a bug and partially an exploit, as the player can obtain a 100% repaired suit of leather armor (DR 24!) at level 2 for less than 100 caps.
 * After speaking with Silver in Springvale, cannot find Moriarty anywhere *note* may be on balcony area outside of the bar. Pipboy may show wrong place in world map near the river. If you get this bug do these steps:
 * Speaking with Silver, even if you haven't gotten the quest to do so from Moriarty, gives only dialogue options as if the player had done so (i.e. the game assumed I'd gotten the quest already, and my dialogue options didn't reflect the fact that I'd not even met Moriarty yet, so why would I want to get caps for a drug debt from her?).
 * Sometimes NPCs get stuck on path while advancing toward deployed Frag Mines then instantly appear as though they teleported through it's triggering area. Additionally, Frag Mines have also been observed warping nearby enemies onto the Mine...which then detonate spectacularly.
 * Named NPCs spontaneously die in Megaton, possibly from falling off walkways or rad exposure near the bomb.
 * NPCs and/or corpses appear to float. Restarting the game fixes this.
 * Random named NPCs disappear from towns and are teleported outside of the town wall, floating in empty space. Some quests are unable to be finished in normal gameplay due to this bug. Temporarily solution is using the "tcl" command in the Console to reach those NPCs. Also you can use these commands in console mode to bring NPCs back: prid (disappeared NPC objectID), moveto (AnyObjectID). Object IDs can be find out in console mode (~) by clicking on character/object.
 * AI and scripting bugs related to the "Dogmeat" companion, where the dog will randomly attack friendly NPCs.
 * Scribe Rothchild can get stuck, making the main quest line impossible to continue. Can't be fixed by traveling elsewhere, pushing the character, or making him unconscious. This bug is possibly caused by Rothchild leaning to a wall in his room when you speak to him about the vault. This is fixable by entering console (~), clicking Rothchild, typing "disable" and after that "enable" (worked for me at least). Another possibility that works: If you have a savegame before talking to Rothchild and he is already stuck beside his bed: you can WAIT until night - then Rothchild is suddenly sleeping in his bed and then you can talk to him about the vault. Another solution to this problem is to find Vault 87 yourself (Fast Travel to the Garage outside Vault 102 and head north along the road until you see a rusty bus and possibly two Super Mutants attacking a Brahman. When you get to the Vault the Missions will complete and you can go back and knock Rothchild stupid.
 * Game load state may not exactly match game save state: a fresh set of enemies were spawned next to the player at the graveyard north of Big Town when loading a quicksave that was created after the player had just killed all the enemies in that area. NOTE: Confirmed from here, but for me, it happened in Downtown. Ouch!
 * Those! quest can break if player visits Marigold station and clears it of ants before prompting. When prompted to return, scientist will not be present, queen ant unreachable. This may also be a result of approaching Greyditch from the wrong direction, skipping initial trigger.
 * Jefferson Memorial Crash - While traveling or approaching the Jefferson memorial during main quest the game crashes. (This only occurred after speaking to Dr. Li; walked past Jefferson Memorial without trouble on the way into Rivet City.}
 * Liberty Prime gets stuck and does not progress forward, making it impossible to finish the quest. (Can be fixed by waiting for an extended amount of time with the WAIT function. If this fails, Liberty Prime can be nudged by using the noclip cheat until he no longer glitches. To enable or disable noclip, press the tilde '~' key and enter the command "tcl".)
 * Blood Ties quest is unable to be completed. When knocking on the doors of one of the two locked houses, you get stuck on the "..." message and have to reload a saved game. Possibly caused by entering the West's house before knocking on the 2 doors.
 * If you revisit Vault 87 following completion of the main quest mission (accessing it via the Reactor Chamber), then open the vault door from the inside, there is no rendered exterior and you are confronted with a void.
 * After blowing up Megaton, attempting to reenter Tenpenny Tower results in a crash with exception 0xC0000005; a memory access violation.*
 * Upon saving Lucy's brother from the family and returning to Arefu, any attempt to enter the houses results in the game freezing and possibly wiping all save games. NOTE: I completed said quest and nothing happened to me, so probably it's not a general issue.
 * After meeting with Ian West in Arefu when i had just saved him, all the other people of Arefu turned hostile towards me. The crazy wife was lying dead on the street and I don't think i had killed her. Before that happened, i saw a barrel falling out of the sky. (Confirmed. Not the only user to have the inhabitants of Arefu go ballistic after a random barrel strikes down one of the citizens: http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=898197)
 * In the Republic of Dave, when Dave asks you to tell everyone to vote in the election, after I told Bob to go vote, I went to the wait screen and waited for about 5 hrs to get the sun up, after that I entered the building and he is refusing to move or vote, he stands in front of the box staring at it, but interaction with him is still possible. NOTE: Confirmed. Several People reported the same issues - you tell the citizens of Dave to go voting, but they only stand in front of the voting box, doing nothing. Moreso, after talking to Dave, I don't even get an entry about The Election of Dave quest in my log, no notes, nothing ...
 * The two paladins (Hoss and helper) are hostile towards the player when entering the area for the first time and cannot be interacted with.
 * Disappearing followers: When leaving Rivet City Marketplace after closing time, the "Dogmeat" companion is suddenly missing. This occurred several times after reloading a quicksave inside the market. Fourth try finally worked, so it's possibly avoided by leaving the market earlier on time. ADDENTUM: This has also happened with Charon in a subway station - one second he's right behind, then I pass through a door and he's gone. Also, it looks like all Companions/Followers have a rare but strange tendency to suddenly disappear in rocky terrain, just as if they would sink into the ground. This issue is possibly related to bringing up the Pip-Boy.
 * All Brotherhood of steel members starts as friendly and then turn hostile towards the player after first contact for no apparent reason.
 * There is a large City Liner coach on the south-west side of Vault-Tek Headquarters that can be bashed around by simply walking into it.
 * After killing the guardian ants but not killing the queen ant in "Those" quest, after talking to Doctor, he walks to the Queen Ant and then escapes.
 * It is possible to lock yourself in Vault 92 when attempting to complete quest 'Agatha's Song'. If the player presses the same button he/she used to open the door, then enters the vault, the door will close behind them. Could not find any controls to open the door from the inside. (This particular vault door will open/close by actually activating the door itself. The actual control panel is on the walkway on the left, past the fallen book case.)
 * In the quest 'Head of State', Hannibal takes forever to get to the Lincoln Memorial. I followed him and he was going the wrong way constantly, going to everywhere he could get killed, swimming through the Potomac River and getting stuck there. And why is he walking there? Why can't he run? (Also happened in Xbox version, waited for days, slept and waited for 3 days at Lincoln Monument, slept and waited for 3 more days at Megaton house, and did two more quests "The Superhuman Gambit" and "Shoot Them In The Head" for 3 or 4 days. They finally showed up next to the tunnel entrance, after 9 or 10 days had passed in in-game time.)
 * After bringing Cherry to Rivet City to free her from Dukov, she stayed on the bridge outside of the city. In a subsequent fast travel to Rivet City, she respawned in the same spot, except the bridge was no longer extended so she immediately fell to her death.  It's not a game-breaking bug.  It's just sad.
 * There is one Pre-War Book with a VAL of 5 instead of 1, and it cannot be sold to Scribe Yearling.
 * Attacking feral ghouls or raiders running at the player (to attack in melee) will sometimes pop from 30ft in front of the player to melee range. The new position is usually just to the left or right off screen.
 * Death Claw appearing inside Regulator HQ when entering for first time.
 * Mysterious Stranger perma death by behemoth mutant- unable to fix at reload, have to restart new game.
 * Sonora Cruz at Regulator HQ sometimes flees into the wilderness after a giant scorpion or Yao Guai attack. You can summon her back by entering the console, typing "prid 0006f212", hitting enter, then typing "moveto player".  When you exit the console she should appear next to you.
 * Walter in Megaton sometimes falls to his death off one of the bridges in the town. You can resurrect him by entering the console, typing "prid 00003b59", hitting enter, then typing "resurrect" and hitting enter. Finally, type "enable", hit enter, then type "moveto player" and hit enter.  When you exit the console he should appear next to you.
 * Ahzrukhal and Charon become stuck and cannot interact after informing Charon about his contract. Seems to be related to when Ahzrukhal starts work, he will walk over to the bar and Charon will just stand by his bed.
 * Hacking a terminal impossible, no matching password! I was trying to hack into an average difficulty terminal. After two false passwords I figured out the two letters it told me were correct. But sorting out the rest of the passwords on screen using the correct and incorrect letters left me with exactly no valid password. I checked my results twice, rebooted the terminal, same result. Restarting Fallout 3 and loading the corresponding savegame fixed this.
 * After receiving the quest "The Power of the Atom". I've got infomations about a junkie in town, with my medical skill. I see the junkie, and get him to turn over his drugs with my speech skill. Suddenly I have a optional for the quest "The Power of the Atom". He optional says: Loot Leo Stahl's stash at the water treatment plant for mentats. I go to the water treatment plant and loot the menstats from the desk. Optional quest is still there and aren't done. NOTE: Confirmed. This happened to me in exactly the same way.
 * When doing the replicated man, if you take the android component but reveal the truth to Harkness, it will remain in your inventory, but you will not be able to talk to Dr. Zimmer to remove it for some positive Karma. See below.
 * Ink Container from the Arlington Library for Button Gwinnetts optional quest in Declaration of Independence cannot be dropped/stored/sold after the quest is finished - message says "Cannot drop a quest item" NOTE: Confirmed. Useless Quest items sometimes remain in the inventory and cannot be removed. This has so far happened with the ink, the Android part for Dr. Zimmer and the House: Pre-War theme. You can use 'player.removeitem 3AA2 1' in the console as a quick fix to get rid of the Ink Container.
 * At 10th Birthday I was able to "leave" the bar upstairs by just walking trough the door into "empty space". After falling through the whole map I got respawned in the living room and was able to walk through the whole vault, encountering radroaces and other characters. Being unable to attack or other stuff in this stage of game, I had to reload. This happened after Alt-Tabbing to Desktop and back, but I don't know if this caused the glitch.
 * Galaxy Radio "heavy rotation": Whenever I turn on the station, Three Dog still repeats his initial announcement that "a cat recently left Vault 101" ("... Revolution? Vacation? Somebody fart?"). Problem is, I'm already at level 19, about 40 hrs into the game and if I have to listen to this bloody announcement just one more time, I'm going to eat my Pip-Boy! Possible reason: After kicking ant butt in Those!, I ventured directly to Rivet City and talked, amongst others, to Dr. Li, unwittingly skipping the rest of the Following in His Footsteps questline, continuing directly with Scientific Pursuits. Thus, I haven't finished the Galaxy News Radio (quest) yet and I dearly hope the mindless repetition stops afterwards.

Common User Errors

 * Player stuck unable to move, HUD also missing. Possibly due to bumping the "~",which opens the console to input cheats, directly above the TAB. If the cheat console is not open, pressing the tilde (~) key and typing "enableplayercontrols" will fix this.
 * Sometimes you get stuck in "slow walking mode" CAPS LOCK, which locks down "run", is probably enabled (and possibly toggled when you Alt-Tab out of the program if the light is mismatched), toggled it off by hiting the key again. Player might also be encumbered, carrying too much

PlayStation 3

 * Slow or Jerky Movement while in The Vault. (akin to Lag in an Online game). Likely due to RAM malfunctioning in some fashion, as it can happen with any game on literally any console (randomly), rebooting will fix it in most cases.
 * Graphic Glitch - Officer at Birthday Scene has left eye that stretches out for the entire viewable screen and follows head / eye movement
 * Game freezes during GOAT exam, may be circumvented by saving and reloading.
 * Susie Mack's Test results some times skips completely and she walks out of the room
 * At the birthday scene, the door in the back opens up after some dialogue, and if you go through, you will be warped to another part of the vault, with no way back to the birthday scene
 * While at the National Archives during the "Stealing Independence" quest, if you choose for Sydney to join you, she will sometimes get stuck and run against a wall forever. Even pushing her out of the way doesn't work.  She still returned to the wall again for me.  Tried reloading game a couple of times, still didn't work.
 * Jefferson Memorial Freeze - While traveling or approaching the Jefferson memorial during main quest the PS3 freezes.
 * Random objects blocking models both PC and NPC. If outside fast-travel, if unable to fast-travel load last save.
 * Dogmeat rocks quickly forward and backward as though his physics are off when standing idle. This seems to be triggered when loading a save where Dogmeat is set to the "Stay" command.  Fast traveling and reboot do not fix it.  Only loading an earlier save will correct the problem.
 * After visiting the GNR building, the player may find themselves permanently locked in/out of the building.
 * Speech Errors - NPC's mouth moves during dialogue but nothing is said. Script/subtitles at the bottom of the screen "fast forward". Reloading previous saved games DOES NOT fix error. Restarting PS3 seems to be the solution.
 * When playing with notification messages turned on the game may freeze, the game will return to normal after the notification has gone, go to system settings and turn off notification messages to solve the problem.
 * Megaton NPCs dead for no reason - Possible death from falling from a height. I can at least confirm that Walter can die this way.
 * PipBoy moves up a little in the screen each time you view it. Repeatedly viewing and hiding PipBoy will eventually render the whole PipBoy screen invisible. Keep opening and closing eventually will reset to normal.
 * Loading screen progresses half way then freezes.
 * Sometimes while saving (or autosaving) while in motion or firing your weapon, when you return or reload the save you will be unable to fire your weapon or reload it. Your gun will begin to fire randomly and it persists no matter what weapon you use and the same happens when unarmed or with a close-up weapon. V.A.T.S. becomes inoperable, it will enter slow mode but your weapon will never fire. The only way to fix this is to reload a previous save or to prevent it from happening by never saving while in motion or firing/fighting/jumping etc.
 * Irreparable hardware corruption. A small minority of people have reported issues with the game crashing after which they were unable to restart their PS3 or if it would start it would be unable to play any games or blu-rays for periods of time greater than 30 minutes to one hour. !Freezing does not damage your PS3, but complete crashes have the possibility to! Note: This hardware error has happened before this game was released. Mainly occurred on launch PS3s and repair cost around 140 dollars
 * Graphics Glitch - While in third person mode if you back up into a wall (forcing the camera to zoom in and your character to become invisible)it will glitch if you walk out of it slowly and your body will become invisible (except for your head and your weapon). Reversible by switching in and out of third person and first person mode.
 * If the game is started with the controller set to Controller 2, 3, or 4, the game will still be playable, but L2 and R2 will fail to function. This makes it impossible to enter V.A.T.S. or switch views.  Restarting the game after reconfiguring the controller will fix this problem. Also, holding the PS button, turning off the controller, and turning it back on seems to help.
 * NPC will fall through the floor/ground
 * V.A.T.S. will freeze before showing percentages
 * No widescreen (16:9) when you play on a SD TV (Only 4:3).
 * When heading to Vault 87 through Murder Pass (after you retrieve G.E.C.K and get caught by enclave) the vault door opens and there is simply the end of the map, walk through it and you end up back in the confinement chambers where you rescue the Supermutant.
 * Clover disappears from where you tell here to wait for you after you finish a quest (get captured by the enclave for the G.E.C.K)
 * Pretty early in the game I went to Sewer Waystation. In that location you can hear "Galaxy News Radio" even though I have neither met Three Dog yet nor fixed the antenna.
 * This is not a bug. GNR will still transmit, but it is not intelligible beyond the confines of The DC Metro Area.  Sewer Waystation is likely within the limited range of the station, pre-quest.
 * (SPOILER ALERT) When i was getting Dogmeat for the first time in the Scrapyard i could talk to him but he didn't follow me at all, i told him to go get ammo and wait by Vault 101 but he simply stood there and did absolutely nothing.(SPOILER ALERT)
 * Citizens of Big Town Will all be dead. This happened to me after clearing the Mutants and saving the two from Germantown HQ, the security robot was still active and "guarding".
 * Lyons Pride will attack without being provoked after taking down the Super Mutant Behemoth in front of GNR.
 * Another annoying bug is often when you have two followers, a follower and Dogmeat, you will often have a problem when entering a building that results in them NOT following you in. And 99% of the time it will freeze or cause the game to crash when you try to exit, also it should be noted that it DOES autosave when you exit, therefore it has the possibility of corrupting your data if you turn the PS3 off. NEVER turn off the PS3 by the Hard Reset switch in the back while the PS3 is on, This Will break your PS3! Only solution to this problem is to reload a previous save before exiting the building. The only prevention I found is to keep Dogmeat at home, as it only seems to freeze when Dogmeat accompanies you and your follower. Discovered By: Legacyslayer (PS3) Tried with Jericho, Clover, Fawkes, Charon and Cross

Xbox 360

 * When entering the map with The Family on it in Meresti Station, the "load" screen that you see with the radar/clockface would do its thing for a moment or two, then the screen went slate gray and froze. This happened repeatedly, and only shutting off the XBox and restarting it about 5 times, and attempting to travel to the map again and again undid this.
 * During the mission to escort Dr. Li out of the Jefferson Memorial, Dr. Li disappears into the wall directly in front of the exit to the Rotunda and does not emerge on the other side. The map marker indicates that she is inside the center island in the room.  Restarting has not fixed the issue.
 * When quick traveling to Raven Rock with Fawkes, Fawkes will spawn and not respond/follow you, or, he will spawn partially in the ground where you are standing. Quick traveling to a new area will fix the issue.
 * During early game, near Bethesda Ruins, a horizontal line with a vertical triangle on top towards random enemy shortly before combat, lasted until death. Reverting to save did not fix, but system restart did. May be an isolated glitch.
 * After fixing the water leaks in Megaton, Walter disappeared completely, thus making the mission impossible to finish. Have not found fix yet. NOTE: He can randomly fall to his death sometimes. Look behind brass lantern or the doc's and you'll find Walter's dead body to verify.
 * Cannot read disk during tuning of the "Radio" or any other random event, usually at the beginning of gameplay. The longer you play, the less likely this happens. Restart system fixes.
 * Sometimes while approaching the Jefferson Memorial the game freezes. Clearing cache does not work to fix the issue.
 * Some people have main quest achievement problems.
 * After dying and having the game auto-load, sometimes the primary fire button will get 'stuck.' By this, you cannot fire by pressing the trigger. It will keep firing automatically every few seconds. So far, the only known way to fix this is to completely shut down the console and restart it.
 * After getting into a fight in Tenpenny tower and speed traveling away the game locks upon re-entering Tenpenny tower. The only fix is to re-start from an earlier save.
 * After completing The Wasteland Survival Guide Mission where you hide an observation device in a Mirelurk Lair, Fast traveling back to Megaton causes an infinite load time. It goes to the load screen but never succeeds in loading Megaton. Restarting the Xbox has not helped.
 * When heading toward Three-Dog for the second time, after installing the dish, Pip-Boy screen got progressively brighter until it was no longer readable. A save, and restart of the game through the Dashboard was able to fix the problem. This has also occurred in other situations, and may be triggered by long periods of play.
 * After seeing the Enclave for the first time in the Monument, Dad fills the control room full of radiation. As you try to escape with Doctor Li, load freezes trying to access the next room. Restarting and switching to a friends X-Box has not helped the problem, as well as switching to another disc.
 * After assisting the temple of the union with the Lincoln memorial the refugees never show up if slavers are killed first. The only known solution is to wait until Hannibal asks for help with slavers before eliminating opposition at the memorial. WORK AROUND: Sometimes Fast Traveling around to random locations/ waiting for a few days to pass, after coming to where the arrow shows, they will be there. they're just slow.
 * Upon doing Trouble at home quest, player can only move with the LS, the RS non-functioning yet it works in pip-boy, previous saves, reloads, all have no effect, have to restart unless someone finds a fix, 16 hrs in!
 * All notes have vanished from the Note page under the Data tab for unknown reason. WORKAROUND: Saving the game and using the xxlbrbxx cashe clear code on the dash board solved this problem.
 * Randomly, upon exiting Megaton, a clipping issue occurs where the players legs sink into the "soft" terrain (not affected when on cement or rock). This causes movement to become sluggish/jerky and makes corpses sink and become unsearchable. Loading a previous save seems to fix the problem.
 * Megaton NPCs dead for no reason. Possibly caused by falling from higher ground.
 * After getting the G.E.C.K from vault 87 yourself instead of letting the friendly super mutant do it you will get caught. But after you have been caught and go back to vault 87 and open the vault door to wasteland there's a huge glitch there cause when you try to walk to the wasteland you fall threw the floor. I did this several times to check. The pathway to wasteland is also not visible but a big grey square. A huge bug!
 * When setting Dogmeat to the "Stay" Command, it is possible that upon returning to that location, he may be gone. You will not get the prompt that says he is dead, and so far it is unknown where he has gone. (a message should pop up after letting dogmeat wait for an extended period of time that says Dogmeat is waiting for you outside of Vault 101. this is not a glitch)
 * This Dogmeat error extends to other NPCs as well, some of whom simply disappear when in waiting mode, even from safe locations such as the Megaton house.
 * (END GAME SPOILER) The game randomly freezes when you're following the big robot at the end of the game.
 * Upon arriving in Big Town, speak to a girl named Bittercup, where she will rant about how she has been with all of men in Big Town. In this rant you find out specifically about what happened with her and Pappy. End the conversation with her and talk to Pappy. A couple lines in you'll have a speech option that will never go away and can continue to gain experience as long as the speech is successful (It was 100% when my speech skill was at 30).
 * Game randomly freezes every 10 seconds to 2 minutes. (Cache clearing and HD formatting had no effect).
 * try speaking to a traveling merchant while he is swimming with his head above water so the conversation is allowed. When he's introducing himself his head will make a full 360 turn counter-clockwise.
 * The runaway slaves randomly aggressed only companion and not the player. The only way to escape this is to run away from the compound and fast travel, hoping they haven't killed him by then.
 * IN REGARDS TO "TAKE IT BACK MISSION"When you're in the Citadel science lab and the Lyon's Pride is talking to the "head guy" (forgot his name, the one wearing a robe), they will be in conversation with each other, when you approach them make sure you are visible to the elder guy in the robe (meaning you can see his face), the game locks you in for the in-game cut scene and you cant move, if you cant see the elder's face, he won't be able to communicate with you and you will end up just standing there until you reload the save.
 * THOSE! mission in Marigold Station. There's a fire ant at the bottom of some stairs sitting on the track of a door(half-in, half-out). When approached too close and killed the body sticks to the player. It's headless body dangles and jiggles in front character and can only be gotten rid of by reloading.
 * The giant robot "Liberty Prime" can get stuck on the left side of the highway when heading to install the G.E.C.K. Going forward and fighting some enclave soldiers can fix this problem. (Save immediately when you see liberty prime walking for the first time to avoid this bug.)
 * After fighting and killing a Super Mutant outside Chevy Chase station, upon reentering the station the game froze. When the game was reloaded from auto save after a system restart, the Super Mutant was alive again, but immortal. Repeated bursts to the head did no damage.  Was still vulnerable to splash damage from frags. (after playing Fallout 3 for over 100 hours now this is one of the two glitches i have encountered. I've run into ten or so invincible enemies. VATS wont hit them and neither will free aim. Simply leaving the area solved the issue and the glitched enemies were always outside so it didn't make questing difficult, and like I said its a rare occurrence anyway)
 * When approaching the Super Duper Mart at dawn, all the raiders spawned outside the building at once, creating an unbeatable mob of raiders which spawned right in front of the player. Reloading and waiting a little while allowed them to presumably walk inside.
 * If the player fast travels to the Citadel when escorting Dr. Lee to the location during the "Waters of Life" mission, Dr. Lee will move to the right of the entrance and refuse to move. Attempting to force her to the door is ineffective, as she constantly walks back to the wall and paces back and forth. This glitch in the main storyline is considered to be game-ending.
 * Bridge to Anchorage War memorial covered in land mines has a glitch. One of the mines is active but is not visible by the player. Trail and error to collect mine.
 * Occasionally when climbing the steps to the plaza above Anchorage war memorial the game will crash, This can be rectified by resetting the console.
 * Extremely rare freezing (1 time in 20 hours of gameplay) where the console would freeze for no reason - Save often just in case
 * Crouching and un-crouching while using the mini gun will cause it to stop firing even though it still uses ammo and makes the spinning animation.
 * In one save, after installing the dish at the Washington Monument, I went back to talk to Three Dog only to find myself locked out of the GNR Building. Using the intercom does not help, as Three Dog just tells you that the door is open. Worked my way around this by getting a higher lock pick skill, and picking the door lock on the second floor. The main door remained locked for the entirety of the game. Bug has been reported to happen in several different locations other than the GNR Building.
 * The quest Shoot Em' In the Head is glitchy. After telling Tenpenny that I would kill Crowley for 300 caps and then doing it I can not receive the quest reward or the achievement. I had to reload a save file and give the keys to Crowley to get the achievement. I then had to reload my main game and just accept that I couldn't complete the quest on it. I tried giving Crowley the keys and then killing them and taking them back but that just completed the quest by giving him the keys, not the Tenpenny optional quest of killing Crowley.
 * When player leaves Vault 87 before collecting GECK but after Fawkes is in position to get it --but not told to, yet-- one of the doors on the way to the GECK chamber will be locked when player reenters. It is the door in the room the Enclave will ambush the player in on her way out with the GECK. The lock cannot be picked. I'm not aware of a workaround, currently.
 * "HEAD OF SLATE Side quest" In Downtown D.C. Hamlin appears to get stuck. A Tesla-Photon barrier has been set up but only the generator is visible.
 * In the "Wasteland Survival Guide" quest, in chapter 3, after doing the Rivet city section, returning to Moira, and picking all options other than the lie, then choosing the "Take a break from the research." option, the quest becomes impossible to complete. If you speak to her again, she repeats all of those same options and then only gives you the choice to take a break from the research. The only solution is to lie, which alters the outcome of the quest and gives you bad karma.
 * Sometimes creatures will be stuck in the terrain.
 * In Evergreen Mills, when walking around behind the main buildings, I got stuck in the cliff side with no way of getting out. Had to reload to fix.
 * During the 3 Dog quest to replace the satellite dish, the game would freeze when passing by the Washington Monument on the way to the Museum of Technology. After several trial and error attempts to reach the MOT, it appears that having your radio on when you pass by the monument is the cause.  No idea why, perhaps 3 Dog begins a broadcast that makes the game crash.
 * Randomly, there will be graphical glitches that appear to stretch and obscure your view in certain directions. The fix for this is to fast-travel to a location far away and then fast-travel back.
 * Alien body at the crash site could not be looted. (The body is unable to be looted but the gun and ammo are still there)
 * Right thumb-stick stops responding at random when transitioning between locations. After it has happened you have to load an earlier game to fix it.
 * After doing the quest for the ghouls to get into Tenpenny tower and live side by side with the humans, the dead bodies of the remaining humans that the ghouls will kill do not appear. Probably caused by staying in the tower for 48 hours (about the time the ghouls move the bodies into the storage room). Only workaround is to complete the quest, go and wait or sleep outside Tenpenny tower for 48 hours, and come back to the tower.
 * During the Stealing Independence quest, NPC hands glitch occurs (when the arms/skeleton of the Sydney NPC would retract into the body, stretching the arm textures, causing a floating gun effect). Occurs only after the battle with the super mutants, probably from the massive amount of grenades used, and also the missile launcher used by the mutant. Fix is to enter and exit the area with the Sydney NPC following.
 * After getting the slaves to the Lincoln Memorial, a stuttering glitch happens to the leader Hannibal NPC. Usually because of the interruption of his "lecture" at the monument to his fellow slaves (talking to him during the middle of his talk). Keeps repeating "Bye" over and over again, while the slave NPC's stand clapping, forever. Only fix is to fast travel away from the area.
 * Certain weight/chain traps start spontaneously shaking, probably caused by the level not loading correctly. The heavy weight connected to the chain seems to float in mid-air while the chain violently shakes. No known fix.
 * Issues with teleporting creatures, especially the giant fire ant queen for the misc quest "Those!". Queen ant would be in main chamber, then suddenly teleport to the smaller hallway, blocking exit, thereby resulting in the player frantically escaping by jumping over and/or squeezing through the side of the queen. No known fix.
 * Small lag issue in where the player character would teleport forward as he's walking, dialogue skips, or game stops and tries to load. Usually caused by going into Xbox guide during play through (not pausing), and letting the disc stop spinning. Easily preventable glitch, just pause game and then open Xbox guide (might be on the Xbox's fault).
 * Crazy Wolfgang NPC, Trader Protector NPC, and Brahmin NPC all flip out randomly when Player Character is attacked by other NPCs in vicinity. Specifically, was at Rivet City near the entrance to the drawbridge. After trading with Crazy Wolfgang NPC, Talon Mercenary NPCs opened fire on player character. After those NPCs were dealt with, Crazy Wolfgang NPC and Trader Protector NPC flip out and attack Player Character. No fix, they were killed except for the Brahmin.
 * The option to discuss Charon's contract disappears from Azrukhal's speech. I killed Carol and went back to Azrukhal and he greeted normally with no option to discuss the deal. (Correction: you aren't suppost to kill Carol, you kill the other woman who runs the shop with her, her name starts with a G).
 * When trading with Moira, going back into dialog and then back to trading again can cause you to switch the amount of bottle caps you both have. A bad tradeoff as the player most likely has more caps than Moira.
 * When in the artificial world in vault 112 the game freezes if you repeatedly check your pipboy(which is then a watch).
 * Sometimes when buying the jukebox from Moira it will not appear until later in the game at random points.
 * The quest for rescuing initiate Pek is severely bugged. After several attempts random events seems to happen. Sometimes Pek is dead, and the quest cannot be completed. Other times the paladin Hoss is gone when you emerge from the office building, and then later reappears in random settlements running away from you when you get close. Sometimes both Pek and Hoss is both dead or missing.
 * Occasionally the PipBoy screen will appear entirely green and too bright to read, though the now-unseen menus can still be accessed and inventory / fast travel still works. Fixed by reloading a previous save, or by turning your PipBoy light on and off, and then rechecking your PipBoy. You might have to do the latter multiple times.
 * Scribe Rothchild disappeared, so I can't proceed. He is nowhere to be found, but the quest marker puts him north of Springvale School and east of Big Town.  I've looked all over to no avail.
 * Eulogy Jones in Paradise Falls, as well as other characters that are in the same building may vanish. If any other character is scripted to engage with any of these characters, they will enter the building and then remain stationary permanently. The only fix is to reload a save from before every character in Eulogy Jones' building vanishes.
 * Starting a new game, my right stick will not allow me to turn right, only circles to the left. Exiting and starting another new game does not help.
 * At Rivet City it is possible to get behind the scenery of the broken off bow. I descovered this when attempting the descover the history of Rivet City section of the 'Wasteland Survival Guide' quest. You are required to gain access to the broken bow to obtain records, the only way in appears to be the door that requires 100 lockpick skill to be picked. However it is possible to jump to the exterior if you go to the flight deck (where all the ruined planes are) on the working half of the ship. If you use one of the girders jutting from the side as a jumping platform you can arrive at the outside of the broken bow (this will usualy result in crippled legs from the fall). All the doors are fake and if you head along the face jumping from girder to girder to girder (easier than it sounds)it becomes possible to walk in the air, go behind the exterior face and phase through some of the walls. If you go to far into the bow you fall through the invisible floor and end up in the water. It is impossible to get out from here
 * Robots in bigtown might be missing, even before quest has started. When defending the town from super-mutants these might get stuck after the first dies because of frag mines(or grenades)
 * talon company mercs might teleport out of nowhere right in front of you, during Those quest and leaving the metro station (Mercs appearred in front of me afterwalking 4 or more meters).
 * Dropping a frag mine on a dead enemy might cause a sharp drop in fps and then freeze the game. The only fix is to restart the console.
 * In the Vault-tec Headquarters the door to the Mainbrain in the final room will sometimes not unlock after you have accessed all three computer terminals.