So I picked up my copy of NV today. I was disappointed to see it uses Steam, but, oh well.
I installed it without issue, but got a strange bug right off the bat. In the first screens of the game itself (after the menu, movies, etc.), the old man's head didn't move and the scripted sequence didn't play out, except when I went in to the menu, and then back out, it played OK. Whenever anyone had to do an action (get up, sit down, etc.) the game would hang until you went into the menu and then back out. Then they'd sit or stand or whatever and things would carry on as usual. I got through the character creation sequence this way, noticing that the audio was not syncing up properly either. After I had my character, I saved, closed the game, and started it again. Now things seemed to be working OK; object interactions worked properly.

Except when I left the starting house and went outside, I noticed something seemed "off". Certain sound effects were not playing! I talked with a random NPC, and while he moved his lips, he made no sound. I also made no sound on jumping or walking about. When I went in to the menu, a bunch of sounds (such as jumping) would play. Naturally I went about finding a fix on my own.

I have tried the following:
-Update the audio driver: didn't do anything.
-Update K-lite Codec pack & add exception for NV to the audio list. Didn't do anything. Added exceptions for Steam and for "GameOverlay" too, just in case. (This is why I hate Steam -why do I NEED another program running when I want to run my game!!!??)
-Add the "magic .dll" file from The Nexus -the one that supposedly fixes a raft of stuff. Didn't fix the audio lag.
-Set system audio to two speakers (for some reason it was set for four, I have never had a four-channel output, I use an ordinary stereo for my sound as opposed to overpriced PC speakers)
-Adjust the process' priority in the task manager (set it to "above normal") -this made the audio sync up, but now the game stutters stupidly and freezes up for a minute or two every three minutes or so.

I want this damn thing to just work. I know it's a new game, and I know the Fallout series is perhaps the most bug-laden major game series ever (I played through Fallout and Fallout 2 without ANY PATCHES at first!), but this seems like such a stupid, simple issue.

And of course because everyone would flame me otherwise, and I'd deserve it, here's the system specifications:
Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GhZ with Hyper-threading
4.0 GB DDR2 RAM (3 GB addressable)
NVidia GEForce 9500GT 1.0 GB RAM driver version 258.96
Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live! 24-bit, driver current as of today.
Windows XP 32-bit
DirectX 9.0

I think I have the exact same problem as Red_October (and similar system specs).
He describes perfectly what happened to me during the intro with the doctor.

Patch fixed slowness of the game, but did nothing about the audio problems.
I tried most of the suggested fixes such as uninstalling codec packs and etc.
Adjusting the process' priority in the task manager to "high" or "above normal"...
syncs up audio but the game stutters and freezes up for a minute or two every few minutes or so.

In my case the game also seems to speed up a bit at times and my character sometimes keeps on
going in the same direction I was moving for a few seconds after I stop pressing directional keys...
In other words probably another manifestation of the lag I get when I change priority of the game process.

On another note, it pisses me off how we keep getting told to post our dxdiag...
Clearly we were all able to run Fallout 3 or we wouldn't have bought New Vegas.
While it's true that posting our specs makes it easier for Bethesda to address certain issues...
that doesn't mean we should be okay with bending over and doing the jobs of beta-testers.

They should just come out and say it clearly "yeah we (bethesda/obsidian/whoever) screwed up and need you guys to beta-test and well throw in some free DLC to people who bought the game on launch". Instead by going through this forum I get the impression (whether it was intended or not) that some of the problems are with our specs and some of us can't run the game...
Even though almost everyone here likely played Fallout 3 without such ridiculous problems. (P.S. I really wish Obsidian made new animations at least...would've felt less like a big mod and Fallout could really benefit from some passable animations... guess that would've been too much work if they couldn't even debug the game properly.)

What irritates me is the game was running fine UNTIL this patch. Now the sounds and lip movements are off and the npcs walk around in slow motion. It's like watching a bad english dub of of a kung fu movie. I'm going to reinstall fresh tomorrow when I wake up.

I have the same issues. I don't know how it was before the latest patch came out, but with the audiolags the game is absolutely unenjoyable.

I found out, that you can "force" the audio to sync for a moment through hitting esc. before a npc says something. You just have to do that before every bit of spoken dialogue.....

I had the same problems for the last few days and I finally found a fix on another post that actually worked and might work for you. Its seems to be that the game just utilizing only a fraction of the GPU causing it to be a bit sluggish. First you have to boot up the game and once you to the main menu, press CTRL-ALT-DELETE and this should minimize the game back to the desktop and show you the task manager. Next click on the process tab and look for a process called "FalloutNV" and right click it and select "set priority" and set it on high and close it. After that, go back into the game by clicking on the game in the taskbar and you should be all set. I can only confirm how this works on XP and do not have Vista or Windows 7 and wouldn't know how it works on those OSs and hope this helps solve your problem. But for me it just led me to another one as I'm now experiencing some gameplay lag as reported by others when fighting enemies and can only wait for some other fix to show up. BTW, you have to do this every time you start up the game otherwise the problems will just start up all over again until they release some kind of hotfix in a future patch.

Oh lord, perhaps I don't want to DL the last patch. I do the "reset priority" thing and just deal with the hiccups now, don't want it to be worse. It svcks, is low graphics, etc but it is playable... but definitely not at a $50 value. If it were bug free, probably $80 value BUT these bugs KILL it.

XP here. Installing 7 for gaming makes no sense IMO. If it ain't broke...

I use 7 and Vista on other computers... but there not for gaming primarily. XP just seems much smoother even as old as it is.

EDIT:Vista not by choice... it's proprietary software for the hardware on the laptop so can't do diddly

Works for me. Yet I demand a patch for that issue.

Ok, I uninstalled, did a completely fresh reinstall from disk, let it update, then plugged my mods back in. Lips and voices are back in synch. No clue why. I even redid some of the edits I had done to the config before.

I read the thread.

Pretty strange stuff. I've no clue sorry.

For whatever it is worth, todays patch didn't screw up the audio sync on my system. Seems fine to me .

Puzzler.

@Grayewolf: which mods do you use?

Dumb question, I'm a newbi!
Where are the F:NV files loaded? How do you load a mod now that steam controls installs?

Better Binoculars.esp
CaravanCardFix.esp
Centered 3rd Person Camera.esp
ClassicPack.esm
FNV-BeardEyebrowFixV1_0.esp
FOOK - New Vegas.esm
GoodspringsPlayerHome.esp
Imp's Timescale Adjuster.esp
T3T_MiscItemIconsNV.esp
URWLNV.esp
Weathered10mmFixed.esp

Tried Master1947 suggestion to set Fallout to priority...did not work.
How do actually get it to install from disk. My install said it was loading from disk, but I could not detect that the disk drive was running. When you install from disk does it actually put the F:NV files on your computer (data files, etc)? I can't find anything other than steam files.

Good question . You prob should start a new thread in appropriate forum rather than divert this thread.


but here is a pointer and you have much to learn, grasshopper.
http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?c=346,347,351
or http://www.thenexusforums.com/ and go to FNV subsection.

Falloutnv files should be in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\fallout new vegas

Mods are installed in the Data dir tree under that.
you'll have to learn about archiveinvalidated.txt and archiveinvalidatedinvalidated for more advanced use (and ease ) but that comes with time.

Sadly, it is hard to find a congealed FAQ for nubs. The Nexus is great but a new wanna be mod applicator has a rough learning curve.
SPend time there. It is the place to be for Oblivion-and fallout mods.

Thank you SO MUCH, you just made my game playable.

How do you load mods in Fallout NV.
Found the answer to my question...go to
http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/250302-where-to-install-mod-in-fallout-nv/

Had the same problem, but came up with an easier fix. This also worked on FO3 to resolve problems. The game engine has some issues with processors that have more than 2 cores. You can force the game to only use two of them and doing so stopped this issue on my system.

Open up the fallout.ini file in: My Documents\My Games\FalloutNV Find the line: bUseThreadedAI=0 change it to: bUseThreadedAI=1 Add another line after it and insert: iNumHWThreads=2 This will limit the game to 2 cores and prevent the engine bug from causing problems.

Surprisingly, this worked like a charm on my quad core processor, so it sounds like this was the culprit. This is also easier than ctrl-alt-esc everytime you play.

Checking back in to say that I am still in the same boat, after updating my video drivers again and adding the above lines to my ini file. I still have to manually set the game's priority to "Above Normal" to correct the sound issue, and doing so still causes it to hang up occasionally, and once last night it did crash quite hard, requiring a full re-boot of the machine to recover from. Has any progress been made at all in this regard?

Try this fix:
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1128853-possible-sound-fix-for-audio-problems/

I'll be damned, the silent hill fix worked! I am playing now with the priority unchanged. I have no idea how a fix for a completely different game is working, but it is!