Hey all! Hope you're well. Now I'm "one of those people" A retro gamer as such and I have a really cool Windows XP machine that I use for all my old games, Well XP era old. My Win95 and 98 machine are for the older ones. But I've been trying to get Fallout 3 working on it and I just can't. I cannot find a version that isn't packaged with Steam, Which sadly as of 2019 is no longer supported on XP. I have an original disc and all but still sadly.... Steam. So my question is, Is there anyway I can get the GoG version working on XP? Or does anyone know how... Thanks for your time!

You could try extracting the files from the installer using InnoExtract.

For XP you want MyPal68 by Feodor2 or the browsers (typically NewMoon) by roytam https://rtfreesoft.blogspot.com/search/label/browser
There is also a fork of Chrome by the Chinese that others have supposedly removed the telemetry from if you're brave enough to try it. https://msfn.org/board/topic/182876-360-extreme-explorer-modified-version/

As far as the Steam ver of Fallout 3 I don't have since I have my original copies but typically for Bethesda games you can use Steamless (Don't ask here just google it) to remove the Steam requirement for your copy so you don't have to use Steam. Also if your copy is the newer version of Fallout 3 with GFWL then you'll need to use xliveless. If you have both F3 and New Vegas you should look into using TTLW to integrate both.

Not sure if it's a factor or not, but MS stopped supporting Win XP in 2009 and Fallout 3 came out in 2008. Any updates to the game may have stopped it working with XP ... presuming it did work with it when it was first released.

If you own the game, then to get a copy that works, try an abandonware site for an old enough version.

No luck with anything so far. I think Fo3 might just be too recent for my XP machine. Short of finding a version of professional and getting a 64bit OS. Oh well! I still have oblivion and fallout 1 and 2 on it.

Fallout 3 works fine on XP. Post the errors that you receive.

I don't deny that it does, My issue is basically I just can't install it because everything I find is either for 64bit or packaged with Steam and won't run. I don't have an install of the game that installs on 32bit XP

The original disc release was not a Steamworks game and I would assume ran on XP just fine. You could buy that used somewhere I guess. It had Games for Windows Live but it did not require online activation so you could just make an offline profile and ignore it.

I wouldn't consider Fallout 3 a real "retro PC" kind of game btw, but maybe that depends on your age I guess.

The original release had GFWL!? Man I've passed up 2 physical copies of that to go with the bare black version which doesn't actually state Steam anywhere on it. Okay... I will try that, Luckily they're super cheap here in Australia. Like 4 bucks a copy

Hi,

my Fallout 3 (original retail version) works fine on my Windows XP (32-bit). I never had connect this machine to the internet and there is no steam client installed. Maybe there is a different beween the german release and the release you use? Which release do you use? Austrailian, UK, US?

In the US it had GFWL that needed to be patched out.

If your issue is installation then install the game on a newer OS and then copy the files over to the XP machine.
Then troubleshoot from there.
If you continue to be vague the likelihood of anyone being able to help is going to be pretty low.

Best I can do for you since I don't have a Steam or GOG version of Fallout 3 (I don't buy games I already purchased). Bethesda really should have released a patch for the retail ver to remove GFWL.

For Fallout 3 that came on DVD

1. Install from media (You can do this on XP or on a newer version of Windows)
2. Patch to v1.7 (You need to do this since it removes copy protection from the launcher otherwise you'll have to hunt down a crack )
3. Try the launcher, If the launcher doesn't recognize that your game is installed you'll need to make sure the registry is correct.
a. 32bit windows Copy the following into a .reg file import with regedit /s. Edit with your installed location.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Bethesda Softworks\Fallout3]
"Installed Path"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Bethesda Softworks\\Fallout 3\\"

b. 64bit windows Copy the following into a .reg file import with regedit /s. Edit with your installed location.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Bethesda Softworks\Fallout3]
"Installed Path"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Bethesda Softworks\\Fallout 3\\"

4. Download xliveless and place the config file and .dll in the game directory so you don't have to install GFWL

5. In the "Fallout_default file in the game directory make the following changes:

bUseThreadedAI=1
iNumHWThreads=2

6. The above was tested on Windows XP.

7. If you want newer Fallout 3 executables (they remove the GFWL requirement) then they may not work on Windows XP.
For instance the the idiot that compiled the Epic version of Fallout 3 compiled the Fallout executables with a newer version of Visual Studio which does not work on Windows XP and requires additions VS .dlls.
It's likely that the GOG and Steam executables work fine as long as steamless is used to remove the Steam requirement from the Steam version. For instance the Steam version of Fallout New Vegas works fine on XP.

You can also try this but I've never tested it (Unknown if it removes GFWL if you are already at 1.7.03):https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/24913

/EDIT v1.7.0.4 Steam ver requires Vista or above. The v1.7.0.3 Steam ver should be fine.
Assuming GOG version is 1.7.0.3 then should be XP compatible
Note that any ver that has v1.7.0.4 can just swap out the executables with the v1.7.0.3 ones to be compatible.
// The Anniversary patcher just uses xdelta to revert to the previous executable version as well as the additional tweaks so nothing special but it will give you a v1.7.0.3 executable that doesn't require xliveless to disable GFWL
///So assuming GOG is at v1.7.0.3, if they do "upgrade" to v1.7.0.4 then they need to make sure that the executables are compiled with at the most VS2017, if they don't care then the bare minimum they should do is have the v1.7.0.3 executables in addition to the v1.7.0.4 executables especially for mods.
////Newer versions TTW are supposedly incompatible with XP due to 3rd party addons being incompatibles so for those wanting to run it would either have to use an old ver of TTW or seing if those addons can be earlier versions or swapped out.
/////If the GOG version requires GOG galaxy then the GOG galaxy .dll requires Vista so you'll still need to swap out executables with or use the patcher.