WORK IN PROGRESS
Often with games the issues/troubleshooting can be somewhat confusing, is it a mod I downloaded? is it the game? my pc? a graphics car driver I updated?
Not all people know a lot about computers, most just want to play a game and thats it, so it can be so frustrating when a problem arises. What do you do, how do you find out what the problem is? Do you take a hammer to it and be done with life - Ops, sorry getting a little carried away again.......
Professional who problem solve, tend to break things down into sections/groups, smaller parts and work on one at a time.
So how can we do this with Fallout 4, without ruining your game? We need to first look at the two areas that make up Fallout 4:
(1) The Core Game - Fallout 4 and any DLC's you may have
(2) Mods
The first step will be to test the core game, we know that the DLC's don't cause many issues, so we can leave then in for now.
STEP 1 - Stripping the game back
Opening your mod manager (We are using NMM as an example) turn off all mods, leaving only the main, hightlighted in yellow or any/all of the DLC's you see below
STEP 2 - Backing up you saves
Simply go to C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\My Games\Fallout4\Saves
(a) The easiest way I find is to Rename the "Fallout 4" by adding Backup (as highlighted in yellow)
(b) Create a new folder called, funny enough Fallout 4
(c) Now go to Nexus Mods and download this file
Clean New Saves
or
Ms. Vault 111
(d) Download and place this in your empty Fallout 4 saves folder
STEP 3 - Play your game
Depending on how long it took for you game to CTD (Crash To Desktop) depends on how long you should play the game, if you game crashes, go to STEP 5, however if your game runs perfectly fine (well as perfect as Fallout 4 does) then you will be looking at a MOD issue, go to STEP 4
STEP 4 - Reverting Back
Simple, delete the Fallout 4 saves folder and change the Fallout 4 Backup to Fallout 4. My best advice from this point on, is to seek advice on the mods you have installed in the HELP section of this forum.
Step 5 - Troubleshooting the Core Fallout 4 game
(a) PC Specs
- Windows 7/8/10 (64-bit OS required)
- Intel Core i5-2300 2.8 GHz/AMD Phenom II X4 945 3.0 GHz or equivalent.
- 8 GB RAM.
- 30 GB free HDD space.
- NVIDIA GTX 550 Ti 2GB/AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB or equivalent.
Verifying the integrity of game files is just simply to make sure they are not damaged or missing and a very simple process.
Done.
(c) Graphic Card drivers
Whether you own a AMD or Nvidia card, one thing crops up a lot, is about install issues, automatic installs are NOT always the best way, so my advice is to first try downloading the current driver and trying a manual uninstall/reinstall and if that doesn't work, try downloading a previous version of the driver.
Nvidia Grahpic Card Drivers
AMD Graphic Card Drivers
PLEASE NOTE: Both of these link to the uk site. Also to find older version is a GOOGLE search away
If you game now runs fine, go back to STEP 4 - Reverting Back, if not, then you might be looking at a hardrive or graphic hardware issue.