Duck and Cover

Hey, I am running Fallout 1 on Windows XP w/ the 1.1 patch.
It runs perfectly except for one tiny thing:

every 3 to 5 minutes or so, the entire screen will go black, but it will not freeze. When I click on buttons like Inventory or the pipboy or whatever, the screen will go back to its original, colorful state...or if I move my cursor around enough, I will slowly (square by square) get the screen back to its original state.

The game runs very smoothly, but its irritating to have to do this every 5 minutes, anyone have this problem? any ideas for solutions?

From a glance, it sounds to me like some other window is grabbing the focus every so often - You might try shutting down all other applications you might have running and see if that fixes the problem.

I just tried what you suggested... I shut off all other programs running EXCEPT my antivirus programs.

No luck

I just finished installing it on my desktop (i have it on my laptop), it has pretty similar stats as my laptop, and the same problem occurs: black screen, if I move the cursor around or click on my weapon or pip boy screen returns to normal, there is no freezing or slowing down of the game

Try pressing F1

I blame poor legacy DX support

Hi Guys
I wonder if anyone has figured out how to get past the black screen problem that has been described?

If so please let me know

DOS Box of Microsoft VM seem to do the trick. Other than that, there is really no way to get past the screen blacking out.

It's all down to dumb luck as to FO1 working on your particular computer. It may work on a PC exactly like yours and not work on yours. No one knows why.

Downgrade to Win2k, mebbe. All my old games work on Win2k.

I remember my FO shit not working right on ME.
Then kinda working on XP.
Then it all works fine now. No probs.
Fuck it.


Maybe shut off the graphics card.
Fo/Fo2 doesn't even try to use that shit.
Could be the card trying to assert itself.
( assert , in this case has a special compsci meaning...)

I have the same problem, and haven't tried turning off the graphics card. How do you do that, because I'm at a loss?

Funny. I'm having the same problem. I don't suppose the unofficial patch fixes it? :-P

Same thing happens to me, But I just move the mouse around the screen and it clears it up, or interact with menu items..pip etc .

It is the Windows DOS, seen as they had to emulate the XP DOS to be capable to handle 32x mod, rather than the 16, normal DOS mode. You will have to get DOX Box (best emulator I know of), not hard to setup.

Say you install fallot to:e.g. C:\Programe Files\Interplay\Fallout

Just copy that address, from your address bar, and past it at the bottem of the DOS BOX cfg and put in quotes.

and add

Mount C "C:\Programe Files\Interplay\Fallout"

So when dos box opens it should automaticaly set C:\Programe Files\Interplay\Fallout as the C Drive.

Hope that works, and helps...If you didn't know =/

I've been running it with VDMS and it doesn't happen as often, but it still happens. >.<

As ApTyp said, press F1 when that happens. It's a lot quicker than moving the mouse cursor around. Plus there is no loading when you press F1. It just brings up the help screen.

Update: I just finished the Glow without one black screen error. VDMS Sound is definitely worth using to play Fallout. Try it out if none of the other methods work for you.

It used to happen to me some time ago. Now I'm having the 3rd run through Fallout without it.


It sort of fixed itself. (Or I'm just extremly lucky)

Don't you guys have the windows version of Fallout?

It happens to me when something else steals the focus, as mentioned but that is the only time.

ok, i've been trying to get it to work on DOSbox, however, after i mount and try to run the executable, DOSbox returns:

this is a Windows NT windowed executable

what's up? this black screen thing is damn annoying.

I am actually having the same problem. I haven't tried closing out all the other programs but its wierd that I haven't had the problem up until a few months ago.

I had the problem a few months back. just work
your way around it with some creative mousework
and bring up the char screen once in a while.

That's a wierd one, ain't it? It didn't happen the last time I installed the game, but it is this time. It only happens every fifteen minutes or so, though, and I just clear the screan with the pip.