I wanted to share my launch day experience with Steam and installing FNV on a machine with access to only dialup.

I already had an updated Steam client before attempting to install FNV.

So I connect to the internet and launch Steam. After I enter my password, the Steam login screen stays up and I download about 2mb before Steam loads. This takes around 10 minutes. This is normal and what I experience every time I log into Steam. I throw the install disc into my drive and wait... no prompt so I click on add new game. I put in my serial key and Steam verifies it. No prompt, so I click on install, next and oops. I'm downloading it now instead of installing from the disc. My fault, I hit cancel. Steam locks up. I have to bring up task manager and end process.

I log into Steam again. Same 10 minute process. I get it back up and install the game from the disc. While the game is installing, I notice the addition of FNV to my games library. I try to head off any sort of launch day updating so I click on it and hit properties and change the update setting to "don't update automatically". I hit ok. Steam locks up again. Task manager, end process.

I log into Steam again. 10 minutes later I'm installing the game again. I get through the install and am informed that an update will now start automatically. In fact it has already started before I hit ok on this box. I check the "Downloads" page and it looks like I need 16mb to be up to date. Ok, that's not terrible. It takes about an hour and a half for me to dl that much.

Two and a half hours later, Steam has downloaded 32mb, applied 16 and I now have the option to play. I click Go offline and disconnect from the internet. I hit play. I then watch a box that says "Preparing to launch FNV..." for the next five minutes while the dots at the end ascend from one to three and over again. Finally I hit cancel and beside Fallout New Vegas in my library the message "update paused" appears.

I log into Steam again. 10 minutes. I resume update and go to download page. It now needs a total of 8.2mb. Ok, not terrible, that should take less than an hour. An hour and a half later after Steam has downloaded 16mb and applied 8.2 I have the option to play again. I click play while connected this time and it loads. Great. So I exit. Click "Go Offline" and disconnect from the internet. I have been playing no problem, offline, since.

I have had some experience with this in the past, so I wasn't expecting to be able to play it as soon as I got home. Imagine, and it is easy to imagine considering that this is a single player game, that this is someone's first experience with Steam and dialup. I even started with an updated client. In total it took a little more than 5 hours to get it running.

God, I don't have any experience with Steam whatsoever. I was planning on installing it within 2-3 hours this evening,
but reading this I guess I'll have to consider the possibility that it might be wishful thinking. I knew it wasn't going to
be easy but this sounds pretty bad...

Create a shortcut next time to your steam.exe, and add -install F:, where F is the letter of your DVD drive.

So that it reads "Drive:\........\steam.exe -install F:"


And disable update at once, if you're on dial-up and don't want them.

This was launch day Gelmir. If there has been any more updates released, more than likely you will have to download them as well before you can play it. I hope for your sake that they weren't large ones. Good luck.

yeah, the Steam client doesn't seem to like dial-up, which is why I'm planning to wait & get the GOTY version hopefully all the patches will be on-disc

Maybe I'll just get a console for future Fallout games, but I just don't like using a controller unless it's on my Mega Drive.

In order to get the game running on my other machine, I just copied over the steam folder with FNV installed and updated. I still had to log in once to put steam in offline mode on that computer but it worked that way. That machine is older with XP and is having the sound and stuttering issues that others have well documented on here. My windows 7 machine thankfully does not. It still has some bugs but no game breaking issues.