Weird coloured pixels on old pc games

[i7omahawki]

So I bought Fallout from Steam the other day, seeing as I played Bethesda's new ones and the mythos seemed interesting. It runs but there is a weird bunch of coloured pixels dotted around the screen, and during play most of the screen turns black.

Obviously I'm running this on a relatively new laptop, and Fallout is an old game, but does anybody know how I might remedy the situation?

 

[maximusw00t]

Try going to your game folder in steamapps/common, right clicking on the fallout.exe and selecting compatibility mode in its properties.

 

[Kabutos]

It happens a lot with older games.

What you have to do is run it as administrator, as well as XP SP2 compatibility mode and disable visual themes and desktop composition.

Then right click your desktop and click screen resolution. Leave the window open and launch the game.

Alternatively, open up task manager ingame and kill explorer.exe

 

[GiantRaven]

If this is the same thing that happens to me with Fallout, then if you just quit and reload you should eventually get the game to load 'properly'.

 

[Irridium]

Do what others have suggested. Run in compatibility mode/as administrator.

Alternatively, if you have $6 to spare you can re-buy Fallout from GoG.com [http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/fallout]. They've optimized the game to work with all current operating systems(XP, Vista, 7 and both 32 and 64 bit). They also give you the manual, Fallout bible, and soundtrack. It also has no DRM, and you can do whatever you damn well please with it.

But nobody likes re-buying games, so I can understand if you don't want to do that.

 

[i7omahawki]

Hmm thanks for the advice, a mix-up of all the different ideas has got rid of the colour corruption, but I still have black screens quite often...and don't fancy rebuying the game. Shame I didn't know about that earlier really.

Gonna try various different ideas at the same time and see what happens, half the problems gone anyway, thanks .

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

You could try buying the Fallout Collection from Amazon <a href=http://www.amazon.co.uk/Avanquest-Software-Fallout-Collection-DVD/dp/B000FUD16A/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1309967164&sr=8-3>(here) for £4. This pack includes Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics (a mix of Fallout mythos and X-Com gameplay) and runs fine on my Vista system with no problems whatsoever. I don't know what the deal is with Steam but I've never heard of store-bought copies having any graphical issues. I appreciate you might not want to re-buy after your initial purchase but at £4 for three games it's not exactly gonna bankrupt you.

 

[Jamboxdotcom]

So I bought Fallout from Steam the other day, seeing as I played Bethesda's new ones and the mythos seemed interesting. It runs but there is a weird bunch of coloured pixels dotted around the screen, and during play most of the screen turns black.

Obviously I'm running this on a relatively new laptop, and Fallout is an old game, but does anybody know how I might remedy the situation?

It's to do with color depth. Run at 16-bit color instead of 32 (or whatever). You change that in the same window on the desktop as you change your resolution.