Fallout Issues...
 

Playing through Fallout 3 gave me the urge to revisit the original game. So I installed it. Only problem, every few minutes to a few seconds the screen will turn black and I'll have to 'scrape away' the black, or open up the pipboy or character screen. That clears it up momentarily, then it happens again. I'm running on Windows Vista, same old HP set up, all factory parts except the power supply. I seem to remember fallout running fine on this computer in the past. The only thing that's changed is having attempted to run with a new video card that died after a week. drivers have since been rolled back to the default set. Though one anomoly that I've noticed, is in task manager occasionally process will show up shortly after booting up called daemonu.exe, described as an Nvidia update manager or something like that. Not sure if that could have anything to do with the issue.

I should also add that I've installed the unofficial 1.2 patch and high resolution patch from NMA. One of the threads I'd read said they might fix the issue. They did... Then I saved, exited, and when I reloaded the game the issue was back.

another site recommended something called sfall, but it turns out that's only for fallout 2.

Re: Fallout Issues...
 

On a moderately related note, I found the folder containing the daemonu.exe file. I don't see any uninstall options, but I uninstalled the deceased video card's drivers completely. Would it be safe to assume there would be little to no issues from deleting the folder and it's Nvidia related content?

Re: Fallout Issues...
 

Are you using animated wallpaper or anything animated in the background? Shut it down.

What a coincidence, I'm also playing Fallout 1 at the moment.

Re: Fallout Issues...
 

Nothing animated, only thing I can think of is Norton firewall MIGHT be doing it. That's the only thing running in the background when I boot up the game. And come to think of it, I think I didn't have any AV software when fallout wasn't giving me any problems.

Several options present themselves when clicking the icon in the taskbar.
1) Turn on Silent Mode, not sure what that is exactly or if it could help
2) Disable Smart Firewall, the most obvious choice, if the problem is in fact the firewall running in the background
3) Disable Anti-virus Auto-protect, Similar to item 1 I'm not sure if this would help the situation, though it seems pretty obvious what it does.

Add:
Found this on silent mode,

Re: Fallout Issues...
 

Ok, reinstalled fallout 1, made sure to do everything in the same compatibility mode, 98/ME in this case. In vanilla 1.1, still had the black out issue, with and without the firewall active. 1.2 unofficial patch, same thing. Hi-res patch, same thing. Till I decided to tweak the resolution and color settings in the new menu provided by the Hi-res patch (note to self, READ the readme files, thoroughly). Even with firewall running, I have a playable experience. occasional flicker of the screen, like it turns black, but clears almost as fast.

Re: Fallout Issues...
 

So, after about an hour of playing (I'm one of those guys that want's to kill every rat in the first cave just because they're there.) Going to vault 15 and running back to shady sands because there wasn't any rope in the lockers. I'm chatting up the town greeter and experience black screen. Still if it only happens every hour or so, it's not so bad. The main problem for me is that it occurred during dialogue, so I couldn't pipboy or character screen it away.

I may have to try disabling my firewall and hopefully that will clear up the issue altogether.