Okay, as far as I know this is only a solution to the black screen that occurs when trying to load The Strip, so for those who have different problems, I'm sorry. I should also preface this by saying that I didn't come up with it, I'm just trying to spread the word.

Okay, so basically the problem lies with the hat that you took from Macgreggor's (or whatever his name was) body and gave to the sister in the bar for the debt collectors quest. What you have to do is go to the Crimson Caravan place (right next to the New Vegas medical place). Once inside, walk forward a bit and you should see on the right, a couple shelves with supplies on them. Next to the First Aid Boxes are two hats, kneel to see if you're detected or hidden, if you don't want to get caught, and take the "Old Cowboy Hat" and return to Freeside.

This is the most important part: MAKE SURE YOU'RE WEARING THE HAT AS YOU ENTER THE STRIP. Otherwise, it doesn't work. You should now be able to get in, but DON'T THROW AWAY THE HAT.

Hopefully now that we know what the issue is, Bethesda can create a patch so we don't have to wear those hats whenever we want to get into The Strip, but at least you can still progress in your game.

Hope this works for you too!


Edit: OTHER "OLD COWBOY HAT" LOCATIONS:

1. Mick and Ralph's in Freeside has three of them if you talk to Mick.
2. Powder Ganger Camp West inside the camper.

ALSO, make sure you don't leave the hat in The Strip as suggested somewhere in this thread. It works for a while, but then it stops working, and if you don't have another hat, you're pretty much screwed.

Thank you dear sir, you have fixed my problem =)

I hope Bethesda gets a new patch up soon that doesn't have gamers relying on this temporary fix though.

Thank you, it worked for me, but isn't there a way by taking the monorail in, or does that also cause the freeze to occur?

Okay, as far as I know this is only a solution to the black screen that occurs when trying to load The Strip, so for those who have different problems, I'm sorry. I should also preface this by saying that I didn't come up with it, I'm just trying to spread the word.

Okay, so basically the problem lies with the hat that you took from Macgreggor's (or whatever his name was) body and gave to the sister in the bar for the debt collectors quest. What you have to do is go to the Crimson Caravan place (right next to the New Vegas medical place). Once inside, walk forward a bit and you should see on the right, a couple shelves with supplies on them. Next to the First Aid Boxes are two hats, kneel to see if you're detected or hidden, if you don't want to get caught, and take the "Old Cowboy Hat" and return to Freeside.

This is the most important part: MAKE SURE YOU'RE WEARING THE HAT AS YOU ENTER THE STRIP. Otherwise, it doesn't work. You should now be able to get in, but DON'T THROW AWAY THE HAT.

Hopefully now that we know what the issue is, Bethesda can create a patch so we don't have to wear those hats whenever we want to get into The Strip, but at least you can still progress in your game.

Hope this works for you too!


Edit: OTHER "OLD COWBOY HAT" LOCATIONS:

1. Mick and Ralph's in Freeside has three of them if you talk to Mick.
2. Powder Ganger Camp West inside the camper.

ALSO, make sure you don't leave the hat in The Strip as suggested somewhere in this thread. It works for a while, but then it stops working, and if you don't have another hat, you're pretty much screwed.

Okay, as far as I know this is only a solution to the black screen that occurs when trying to load The Strip, so for those who have different problems, I'm sorry. I should also preface this by saying that I didn't come up with it, I'm just trying to spread the word.

Okay, so basically the problem lies with the hat that you took from Macgreggor's (or whatever his name was) body and gave to the sister in the bar for the debt collectors quest. What you have to do is go to the Crimson Caravan place (right next to the New Vegas medical place). Once inside, walk forward a bit and you should see on the right, a couple shelves with supplies on them. Next to the First Aid Boxes are two hats, kneel to see if you're detected or hidden, if you don't want to get caught, and take the "Old Cowboy Hat" and return to Freeside.

This is the most important part: MAKE SURE YOU'RE WEARING THE HAT AS YOU ENTER THE STRIP. Otherwise, it doesn't work. You should now be able to get in, but DON'T THROW AWAY THE HAT.

Hopefully now that we know what the issue is, Bethesda can create a patch so we don't have to wear those hats whenever we want to get into The Strip, but at least you can still progress in your game.

Hope this works for you too!


Edit: OTHER "OLD COWBOY HAT" LOCATIONS:

1. Mick and Ralph's in Freeside has three of them if you talk to Mick.
2. Powder Ganger Camp West inside the camper.

ALSO, make sure you don't leave the hat in The Strip as suggested somewhere in this thread. It works for a while, but then it stops working, and if you don't have another hat, you're pretty much screwed.

Okay, as far as I know this is only a solution to the black screen that occurs when trying to load The Strip, so for those who have different problems, I'm sorry. I should also preface this by saying that I didn't come up with it, I'm just trying to spread the word.

Okay, so basically the problem lies with the hat that you took from Macgreggor's (or whatever his name was) body and gave to the sister in the bar for the debt collectors quest. What you have to do is go to the Crimson Caravan place (right next to the New Vegas medical place). Once inside, walk forward a bit and you should see on the right, a couple shelves with supplies on them. Next to the First Aid Boxes are two hats, kneel to see if you're detected or hidden, if you don't want to get caught, and take the "Old Cowboy Hat" and return to Freeside.

This is the most important part: MAKE SURE YOU'RE WEARING THE HAT AS YOU ENTER THE STRIP. Otherwise, it doesn't work. You should now be able to get in, but DON'T THROW AWAY THE HAT.

Hopefully now that we know what the issue is, Bethesda can create a patch so we don't have to wear those hats whenever we want to get into The Strip, but at least you can still progress in your game.

Hope this works for you too!

Edit: OTHER "OLD COWBOY HAT" LOCATIONS:

1. Mick and Ralph's in Freeside has three of them if you talk to Mick.
2. Powder Ganger Camp West inside the camper.

ALSO, make sure you don't leave the hat in The Strip as suggested somewhere in this thread. It works for a while, but then it stops working, and if you don't have another hat, you're pretty much screwed.

We're definitely working on getting this fixed. In the meantime, using the cowboy hat as a workaround appears to be working for a number of folks.

Does anyone know if theres a way to get around the stip gate being locked? Does the cowboy hat work for that too? (i now im asking a lot of questions im just tired of doing side quests and not being able to finish the main story) I think it started when i got the debt collector quest. Will finishing the wuest make it go away?

I wish I could make this solution work, I really do. However, I now can no longer load my most recent save. The autosave is corrupted, and when I go back to the last regular save, it freezes on the load screen. And I really don't want to go further back, because that puts me before I particularly nasty section in the Ultra Luxe.

Thanks, Obsidian!

It could be stickied with a big neon sign saying "Free Xbox 360 & PS3 for posting in this thread" and you'd still get half a dozen lazy people starting new threads and refusing to actually read any others, because they are the center of the universe.

So, all I can do is keep having six with Beatrix until its fixed.

I wish I knew about the bug before I ever did the quest and killed McCaffery. I did it in a weird way with another bug, when finding escorts for the other Garret, I came across Santiago and somehow all the debts were paid for the quest that leads to killing McCaffery. It's weird, because at this time McCaffery is still in Atomic Wrangler when I kill him. Since I didn't have any knowledge of this bug I went and got services from Beatrix (the ghoul cowboy prosttute). I am now STUCK completely in her room forever until they decide when the appropriate time to fix this bug is.... and it better be soon. So, all I can do is keep having six with Beatrix until its fixed.

That svcks, but it's a good lesson learned. That lesson being that you should have more than 1 (preferably more than 5) save slots with none (or at least only 1 or 2) of them being in the same location. Having to revert 2, 4, 10 hours back because something like this happened really svcks, but it's better than having to start from scratch.