Fallout 3 “Launch error on Windows 11”: Possible fixes, reason, and more

Fans of the Fallout franchise have been revisiting the games a lot lately, thanks to the success of the Amazon series. Some even go as far back as Fallout 3. However, the game does not seem to be working optimally for those who have a PC running on an OS above Windows 7.

The title frequently crashes for them and, on certain occasions, gives them a black screen upon start-up, before automatically closing. This has been a long-standing issue for older Bethesda games, and there does not seem to be much in terms of a permanent solution.

The error occurs due to compatibility problems between the game and the OS. Fortunately, there are a few community-found workarounds that you can try to solve it.

Today’s Fallout guide goes over how you can fix the Windows 11 launching error for Fallout 3.

To deal with the Fallout 3 launch issue, here are a few things that you can do:

The first thing you should try is run the game as an administrator. Follow these instructions to do so:

Apart from running the game as an admin, the next best thing you can do is run the game in Windows Compatibility Mode. To do so, follow these steps:

If the above two solutions don’t work out for you, you will likely need to wait for a patch that deals with a majority of the performance issues that the Fallout franchise is facing.