(Well maybe not perfect, I did get the odd occasional crash but nothing all that perturbing, ...considering...!)

Last summer I built a gaming rig (i7-975, GTX 480, 16meg DDR3, Win7 Pro (64bit), SSDs) in anticipation of FNV. I tested it out on FO3, Oblivion and Morrowind and it worked wonderfully
on Ultra high without having to tweak a thing (and all modded up). Pre-ordered FNV, loaded her up, Ultra high - no tweaks (all modded up), played for weeks with almost no problems.
Returned to real life and left the rig idle for a couple of months. NEW DLC! Fired her back up, updated all drivers, tested her out, still no problems until...Windows downloaded SP 1,
Steam downloaded FNV patch. Started a new game and half way through Goodsprings...crash on save and crash on entering a building (and an odd missing mesh symbol where Doc's kitchen
table used to be!). Downloaded Dead Money on the rumor that it included a new patch...no joy.

Uninstalled. reinstalled, disabled all auto-saving, started a new game, same thing. Used the old Oblivion hack of suicide-to-reload (which I never needed before) and it helped a bit
but after about 3 or 4 more saves it started again (no one wants to be a serial suicider anyway!). Went to Steam, de-fragged the cache, verified the cache...1 file failed...auto
download...verifyied the cache...1 file failed...auto download....ad infinitum. Searched the internet, lots of people having these problems, lots more not so much (by inference). At
any rate no one seems to have figured this out yet and given Betheseda's track record on these forums I'm not waiting with bated breath for any joy from them either.

Bethesda - I understand that Gamebyro is a bear, especially with modern hardware and operating systems, but it's YOUR bear (at least until TES 5). If you are unable, for whatever
reason, to address all of the various issues expressed in these forums perhaps you can renegotiate your Gamebryo license and release the code to the community (no one will probably use
it again commercially anyway). I'd bet dollars to bottle caps that within a week or so your TES and FO games would start running smoothly on a wide variety of computer platforms and
consoles. We are a large "cloud" community with many adept members who could accomplish en mass what no single corporate entity could afford to. This in turn would reinvigorate
interest in all your Gamebryo franchises which of course would reinvigorate your bottom line through increased sales. (You might even re-think giving TES 3 to PCGamer!) All at no cost
to you! (Wait a minute I'm beginning to sound like an infomercial...) At the very least could you give us the specs on the rigs you use to test the games with so we could try to
approach problems from that side (assuming of course that they run fine for you prior to release)?

Anyway...as for my immediate problem, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Maybe over-writing DirectX 11 with DirectX 9.0c or uninstalling the SP1?

Thanks

SOLVED!...

...For me at least...sorta...

Before resorting to such drastic measures as rolling back DirectX or uninstalling Win7 SP1 I decided to just go back and see how FO3 was doing now. She's still doing great (after an
hour or so of play where I threw everything in the book at her), so Microsoft is off the hook. (How weird is that!?) Which of course leaves only the latest patch from Obsidian
(presumably) which was intended to lay the groundwork for Dead Money (my CTDs started after the auto-patch but before I purchased the DLC), right? Wrong! It seems the good folks who
bring us NVSE ( http://nvse.silverlock.org/ ) may have been a bit too quick on the draw with their corresponding update. The two don't seem to play well together at the moment.

That's not to say that the game patch doesn't need to be patched, perhaps Silverlock got it TOO right and the patch is more to blame. I have no idea.)

I personally use Fn4gb to launch ( http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35262 ) and had to delete the hook to NVSE in the shortcut for best performance but that of course
dorked up all my NVSE mods which I am unwilling to part with right now. So I re-hooked it and am dealing with the consequences (still no CTDs but now about every hour or so I get a random
freeze instead. However I can again quick save or manual save any time I want with no corruption (love that sense of security!).

This is how I fixed my problem and it may work for various other recent CTDs if one is willing to start a new game (may work for some existing saves but all of mine were corrupted thus
I'm unable to vouchsafe) -

[Might as well do the most painful one first, but save the folder elsewhere just in case a better fix comes along]

1.) Go to Libraries/Documents/My Games/FalloutNV/Saves...and delete 'em all.

2.) Go to http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36901 Download and install FOMM (if you haven't already.)

3.) Go to http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=37004 (Download and install ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated. (Ditto)

4.) Go to http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34703 Download and install FNVEdit (Ditto. Don't worry it's nothing to be afraid of!)

5.) Go to http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=38413 Download the manual and bring it up (don't worry you won't have to read the whole thing!)

6.) Go to page 23 - Master Update and Master Restore - Follow the directions for creating each (pictorial guide too!) and execute the instructions. (You don't really need Master
Restore unless you plan on creating mods yourself.)

7.) Go to FOMM on your desktop (presumably) and check Archive Invalidation (under the Tools header). Close FOMM, reopen it and un-check Archive Invalidation then close FOMM again, re-open and re-check (it's
a good idea to disable and re-enable anytime you install a new Mod too). Launch the game from FOMM or from Steam, or whatever you wish. MAKE SURE YOU THEN DISABLE ALL AUTO SAVING! (You'll still be able
to use quick saves and manual saves.)

Like I said, this worked for me, your mileage may vary.

Good Luck, Hope it works for you too!

-------THANK YOU!!!---------
I have been all over the internets trying to find a solution that works. I was having the Crash On Save bug and was only able to negate the effect by using the "Kill Yourself to Live" method as a temporary solution. I tried everything I could find. Updated new drivers, removed ffdshow codecs, any and all advice I could find. But nothing actually worked until I tried this. I don't know enough about programing or the game software to pretend to know why, but the MasterUpdater fixed my problem. Unfortunately this was on my second play through, same problem first time started at about 40 hours (level 23-ish) game time. My second, this time around, started at only about 10 hours after a clean install. Even though my game install was clean, my save folder was not. I wonder if the bug has something to do with that, since it started so much sooner (about 30 hours less game time?) Anyway, thanks again for this post. I urge others to try this if nothing else has worked for you.