Fallout: New Vegas bugs

General advice and notes

 * Make sure your game is patched to the latest official patch. If your game is not up-to-date, do not report any bugs you may experience.
 * Save often and in different slots. Do not rely too much on autosave. A frequently overwritten autosave slot can become corrupted.
 * If you are playing on the PC, make sure your computer meets or exceeds the minimum system requirements. If any component of your computer falls below the minimum system requirements, do not report any bugs you may experience.

Mods

 * The Vault does not cover information concerning third-party mods for Fallout: New Vegas.
 * If you have any mods installed, do not report any bugs you may experience, even if it seems to you that your issue is not mod-related. Please visit the Bethesda mod forums for information.

Using the console
On the PC, many NPC, quest, and player-getting-stuck issues can be resolved through the use of console commands.

It should be noted that after using the "Duplicateallitems" command the game can crash when going into your Pipboy.

Crashing, freezing and other hardware- or software-related issues
Stuttering, crashing, freezing, and slow-down issues are often hardware- and/or software-related. Please visit the Bethesda Fallout: New Vegas hardware forums for information regarding these issues. In particular, read through the stickied threads at the top of the forum pages.

NPC-specific bugs

 * For NPC-specific bugs, please see the respective NPC article page.
 * For bugs that apply to NPCs in general or to followers in general, please see the General NPC bugs section below.

Quest-specific bugs
For quest-specific bugs, please see the respective quest article page.

Location-specific bugs
For location-specific bugs, please see the respective location article page.
 * at the power plant just north of scrap yard when going out the back door(to the solar panels). old ladie - will spawn with her dogs.

Exploits
Please see Fallout: New Vegas exploits.

General solutions

 * Leave and re-enter the area.
 * Load a save from before the glitch occurred.
 * Exit the game, restart the game, and load a save from before the glitch occurred.
 * PC users may be able to fix some issues by using console commands.

Clipping

 * Clipping (items and actors getting stuck in the ground or in other items) is a common problem.

Crashing, freezing and slowdowns
Crashes and freezes may happen occasionally to anyone. Crashes and freezes are only notable when they are repeatable (e.g. they happen under the same set of circumstances often). If the crash only occurs on one particular save, then the save itself is most likely the source of the problem. Please verify that crashes and freezes are repeatable on more than one save game before reporting.
 * Severe slowdowns are occurring on all platforms. Restarting your system may help.
 * One freeze in particular effects 360 users (known as of now). When traveling on foot from Primm and heading south, the game will freeze if you look at the vast expanse of desert wasteland.
 * when walking to the scrap yard passing under a rock you will freeze {verify |10:44, October 21, 2010}

Engine Bugs

 * Control and HUD loss on reload from save. Known to happen on all three Gamebryo Engine games.
 * (Seen on Xbox 360) Hacking in Bison Steve's casino sees the gameworld blur, then brings up only the audio of the hacking minigame. This can be repaired by quitting to the console dashboard and restarting and reloading, but is likely to recur.  Similarly, attempting to lockpick in Bison Steve's may result in a blank hacking minigame console appearing instead of the correct minigame.  Again, this can be solved by restarting and reloading, but again may recur.

Radio-related bugs

 * Subtle audio-normalization issues on the radio, making some songs noticeably quieter than the announcer (Mr. New Vegas).

Animation bugs

 * When putting away pistols (9mm and such) if you're running the sprite will enter your characters back and stay there until you draw your weapon again, if you hold still while holstering your weapon it will go to your side as normal.
 * When equipped with a two-handed gun in First-Person Mode, the weapon often clips mid-view, distorts, and slides to the top of the screen and behind the player's perspective.
 * The Weathered 10mm Pistol is missing the meshes for weapon mods. There are severe and obvious visual distortions when adding mods to this weapon.

Crashing and other hardware- or software-related issues
Stuttering, crashing, freezing, and slow-down issues are often hardware- and/or software-related. Please visit the Bethesda forums for information regarding these issues. In particular, read through the stickied threads at the top of the forum page.


 * Strange black and white boxes appearing at long view range with Nvida GTX 4xx cards (seen with a 480, 470, and 460 so far).


 * With trait selected with 20% slower firing speed gun at time "spasms" firing multiple times, possibly due to stacked fire commands.


 * Indoor HDR lighting will frequently flicker in areas close to light beams and other nondescript areas. This bug is intensified when the PipBoy light is on.