Ok.. The most common and most.. trolled... about problem seems to be with FALLOUTNV.EXE crashing to desktop all the time.

Now, by all means I assume this wont fix everyones problem... heres my breakdown:


First Batch:

When I first installed the game, with the caravan pack add on... The game would crash the moment you would normally start playing. The main menu was fine.. but the moment it would put you in first person...ingame rendering.. falloutnv would crash.
FIX: Updated my NVIDIA drivers to latest version of 260.99

Second Batch:
After an update to steam yesterday, Fallout NV would do the same crash issue. Stopping the moment a game would be loaded and put you ingame. Lots of troubleshooting and picking through the forum didnt help.. BUT
FIX: I found out that there was an update to my Logitech G35 headphone software/drivers. Updated that, and boom game is working again.


anolysis?:

I know it sounds weird, but it seems that steam might be releasing these invisable patches that are either on purpose, or accidentally forcing the game to quit if it finds that any of your key drivers arent up to date. How weird is it that both issues that rendered the game unplayable was because I needed to update my video and sound drivers? (G35 is a 7.1 simulated surround sound hedset that is basically its own sound card, not needing anything from your systems normal sound card)

Perhaps STEAM, or the patches given to steam that are applied by STEAM, have some sort of built in check that is forcing you to use the most up to date drivers... if your not, it shuts down your software. I could see this as a method to weed out all the problems being reported that are simply solved by update to drivers.. that are already meant to fix that problem.
Alot of the posts here of people having problems, come back with people saying.."ooh updating my *XYZ drivers* fixed the problem... perhaps this is a method to weed those out?

All I know is updating my drivers for my sound, which worked before STEAM did its update...fixed the issue.. The patch notes for my G35 update does say there was a problem with massive memory leaks..so who knows...



Second anolysis?:

Perhaps the FALLOUTNV.EXE game core is picky about how your system uses its memory? I noticed how FALLOUT 3 and ESIV: Oblivion would crash on launch if you didnt keep the loading window as the "active" window.. i.e. if after you click the launch button and goto another window, or another window becomes "top" window.. the game wouldnt launch and crash.. Perhaps something to do with memory and process priority causes the game to get picky and shut down.. who knows?

Hopefully this gives people some ideas and gets their game to work again..

PS...Stop blaming steam for your problems.. they dont do it on purpose.. they are just trying to help and make everyone happy.. they arent psychic and cant predict every glitch in their array of games.. caused by them or otherwise.. at least they are actively working to fix problems.. even if its not fast enough for some of us.