Duck and Cover

A few days ago I re-installed Fallout 1 and have been playing it for hours. However, today when trying to play it, it constantly hangs on the first LOADING screen and will not close at all using any of the normal methods (alt+f4, CTL+ALT+DEL etc) so I have to manually reset my PC.

I decided that untill I get help with Fallout 1, I'd play Fallout 2. However Fallout 2 seems to have an installation problem, at least it seems that way. I installed it and tried to run it and got the following error:
couldn't find/load text fonts
So I checked the directory and there didn't seem to be anything there, that would suggest it installed the whole game so I double clicked the drive icon in my computer, by accident as I wanted to explore it, but I came to realize that the option to play was not on the autoload screen, nor was there an uninstall. So I tried uninstalling from the start menu and got an error about some files were not on the system.

So I have no fallout to play. I need help and can't find it anywhere. Hopefully someone should be able to help me....

BTW, my OS is Windows XP Home if it will help anything.

This is from the technical FAQ you can find stickied in our fallout forum.

If anyone has any problems installing the game or getting it to run, check this FAQ out first, it might solve your problems.

If you have any problems, you can disscuss them here, I'll later delete those posts and add them to the faq.

Fallout and XP
Problem: Installing Fallout on XP.

Solution: This thread.

Problem: Game works up until the videos at the beginning start playing, the screen turns green and freezes.

Solution: turn on hardware acceleration for monitor.

Problem: Bad quality of colors.

Solution: Check this thread out.

Niether of those links addressed the issues I am having...

Try reinstalling following this >>


NT users can get around the installer by manually installing the game themselves. Note however that you must have at least NT 4.0 with Service Pack 3 in order to play the game. Also, Fallout should work fine but was not tested very much under NT.

1. First, create a folder for your game called fallout (ie c:\games\fallout).
2. Copy (CDROM):\program\win\falloutw.___ to the folder you created and rename it to falloutw.exe.
3. Now you have four choices, depending on the installation size you want:


Small Installation: Do not copy anything else
Medium Installation: Copy (CDROM):\master.dat (318MB) to your fallout folder (ie c:\games\fallout)
Big Installation: Copy Copy (CDROM):\master.dat (318MB) and (CDROM):\critter.dat (150MB) to your fallout folder (ie c:\games\fallout)
Humongous Installation: Copy Copy (CDROM):\master.dat (318MB), (CDROM):\critter.dat (150MB) and Copy the entire d:\data folder to your fallout folder (ie c:\games\fallout\data) 4. Create a text file in c:\games\fallout called fallout.cfg and add the following line to it, depending on your installation:

Small Installation:
[system]
master_dat=d:\master.dat
critter_dat=d:\critter.dat
[sound]
music_path2=d:\data\sound\music
free_space=0

Medium Installation:
[system]
master_dat=c:\games\fallout\master.dat
critter_dat=d:\critter.dat
[sound]
music_path2=d:\data\sound\music
free_space=0

Big Installation:
[system]
master_dat=c:\games\fallout\master.dat
critter_dat=c:\games\fallout\critter.dat
[sound]
music_path2=d:\data\sound\music
free_space=0

Humongous Installation:
[system]
master_dat=c:\games\fallout\master.dat
critter_dat=c:\games\fallout\critter.dat
[sound]
music_path2=c:\games\fallout\data\sound\music
free_space=0

To run Fallout 1 under XP, make a shortcut to the falloutw.exe file and right click the shortcut, and select "Properties->Compatibility" and select either Win95,98 and it should work fine..

Ok, I will try that, but what about the problems for Fallout 2?

use the same method.

I figured out why Fallout 2 wouldn't install properly;

It had a big gash on the disc =/ How it got there beats me, since I take care of my CDs... Though it didn't look like there was one when I took it out to install it, so maybe it was the damn drive... I hope my resurfacer can fix it...