Not sure if anyone else is having this problem or not, but when I finish trading with a merchant, my game will often times CTD, other times the screen will flash black for a couple seconds, then the game will manage to catch back up. Is anyone else having this issue? I'm on Windows 7 64 bit with an Nvidia GTX 285 graphics card and 4GB of RAM if it matters. I made sure to get my latest drivers, I performed the NPC slowdown fix (as I was also having that issue,) and I still find myself afflicted with this issue. Any assistance would be appreciated.

Bingo! Thank you Mord27.
I'm fine until I talk to the Caravan guy (down in the S/W corner where the giant statues shaking hands are).
I saved standing right in front of him.
Then I do my business, and lose weight from 210 down to whatever, 88 or something (much better).
I also buy leather armor and coupla hats to repair stuff.
Not bad - weight gone, money received! And I can repair my Steam leather armor... even though it's not in too bad condition.
BUT now any save I try is instant CTD - quick, auto or full.
Aaarghhh... Sooner or later I must save! This svcks.
I haven't been playing; was going to wait a week or 10 days, until I see what they come up with.
But if you're getting it too, there's hope...
So thank you! You give me hope (that I'm not the only one).
I have been prepping myself to start over, but not at all looking forward to that...
Regards

Hi folks,

Im having exactly the same problem as Gryphon, at exactly the same NPC!

It will either CTD after I complete the trade or failing that, crash to desktop when I try to perform any type of save after interacting with him (auto save, quicksave etc).

I spent around 2 hours trying different things last night trying to fix it but to no avail! As bad as it sounds Im glad Im not the only one experiencing this frustrating problem as hopefully it will be addressed!

Im running Win 7 64, Geforce 295 & Intel i7 920 running at 4g.

Thanks for your time,
Creep

Well, I'm sorry to hear about you guys' problem, but I don't think I have exactly the same thing. I get a crash (or extended black screen and then a recovery) after talking to ANY merchant, from Goodsprings to New Vegas! If my game does manage to retain it's stability after dealings with the merchant (which is a rarity) however, I am able to save just fine. Regardless of the slight differences in our issues, it seems like Merchants in general are causing issues for quite a few of us.

Thanks for post Negative-creep.
I have been really spittin' mad about this!
But reading that I am not alone, a curious calm has spread over me...
Knowing it is not only me is comforting somehow; plus, they might fix it!
Creep, what d'you think - if they told us our savegames were dead, and we must start over at the beginning again, would you be less than pleased?
L8R

Sorry bro.
Just checking for others crashing after dealing with merchant (that one in particular, for us).
Funny how I haven't touched that .dll file fix - I have no slowdowns or video issues at all.
I run 1680x1050 no AA 4x AF Medium settings.
People with vid probs are often trying to run higher res with 8xAA etc, heheh...
Dumb down your settings a bit (just for research purposes) and see if that helps you any.
I'm still not playing, that's it for me until a major patch is launched!
Too bad - I've got my new nVidia drivers (just released) too. :cryvaultboy:

Update:
It still crashes, but it liked the new drivers up until that point.

This is actually a very accurate description of my problem.
Just now, it crashed moments after I pressed the "Accept" button on our complicated transaction (which I have performed many times).
I didn't even get to try to save yet.
L8R

I too am having trouble crashing after the same vendor at the statues. My video card is the ATI Radeon 5770. I just gave up and went to another vendor. THERE is a problem there. Someone will fix it...eventually...hopefully.

I realized I was crashing whenever I tried selling certain Caravan cards.

I've had similar issues, though not with that particular NPC. I hit the issue slightly further North with the NCR armour in the tent - if I have that in my inventory my game is VERY prone to crashing - flashing screen, blank, then white, but never recovers for me.

If you are able to get into a save long enough I suggest trying to drop anything you purchased from that merchant, and possibly anything you combined through repairs.

This is interesting.
I never sell Caravan Cards - but I buy them!
I bought 1/2 dozen from this guy, this caravan merchant.
Also I bought Cowboy repeater, leather armor, and three hats (to repair ones I carry).
Apart from that, I sold him stuff but just the usual crap, half-broken weapons etc...
These Caravan Cards, I'm collecting the ones from Hotels but ignoring basic 'generic' ones.
I might fire my game up, and try to repair and tidy my inventory BEFORE attempting a save.
Who knows? Might help.
Or painstakingly buying & selling one thing at a time might identify a particular item the game is choking on...?
But I have neither the time or the patience to figure this out.
That's what bloody quality-control testers are supposed to do!
Ack...

Got the same problem...what's weird is why is is just this particular Caravan? You'd think they all use the same
base code and just access a DB of goods assigned to them. Its gotta be an item glitch.

Maybe I wont buy all those cars next time!

The CARDS!
It was the cards (specifically, King of Hearts - Ultra-Luxe in my case).
Lose the cards - all of them!
Man, my inventory is a whole lot tidier now, anyway.
No more cards = no more problems for me.
L8R

Hey guys, an update on my specific problem - it doesn't seem to be just trading with merchants that causes my crash, but changing inventory with anything in the world. I've noticed that I get the same issues when giving my followers items or placing items in containers, such as the wardrobe in my Lucky 38 Suite. As usual, when any of those actions are performed, my screen will stutter for a bit, go black, and usually crash after that. Just reporting my problem, I don't know if anyone else is having something similar, but if anyone has a solution I would LOVE to hear it, because this issue is trying my patience something fierce.

Also, I did try lowering my settings, but that didn't seem to affect the issue whatsoever unfortunately, neither did updating my video card's drivers.

Thanks for your time.

I don't mean to sound rude or anything guys, but this has already been figured out. It's already been narrowed down to the cards in like...3...or 4 other threads. I remember posting one of the first ones (if not the first one, which it seems that I did, but I don't wanna say that I outright did). It's a few pages back now, so that's probably why no one saw those threads, so it's understandable....the traffic here at the forums is quite congested and there's tons of posts going on as I type this already.

Anyways, I believe it is narrowed down to that one merchant regarding the cards, but to be safe, I avoided the Caravan cards anywhere else. My solution is to simply just ignore the cards until the problem is addressed.

I should probably add that I don't carry any cards with me either, just the deck that Ringo of Goodsprings gave me.