Hi, I just suffered a system crash caused by Fallout: New Vegas. The crash was so severe that my PC would not boot Windows anymore (I have Windows 10). In the end I had to use the Windows disc to attempt repairs and after some time, trying different things, I got the PC to boot up again.
Let me just take a moment to say, thank goodness for physical discs, if I had a purely digital Windows 10 copy I still wouldn't be able to use my PC.

I would just like to know if anyone else has ever suffered this sort of crash and if there is any way to prevent it?
Fallout: New Vegas is the first game in months that I have actually found interesting enough to play and it would suck if I couldn't play it anymore.

I will be posting this in the support section to see if they can give me any advice in order to avoid the problem in future.

Any chance that it was something else that borked your win10 installation, such as an OS update that occurred in the background while you happened to be playing that game?

I won't say that a game couldn't cause that problem, but I think there are some other causes that are much more likely. And with the win10s big reduction in the amount of customer control over the update process...

Man, I really hope that is all it was.
Windows was running some background updates or repairs after I managed to get everything working again. I just figured that it was repairs related to the crash but perhaps it was finalising the updates that caused the crash.

I have repaired my Windows installation with a USB stick with Linux on it, mainly becasue it was nearer than the Windows disc; both work.

Yes, I think I'll do this from now on. I always used to game offline to avoid this sort of thing.
I figured that modern programs will have sorted out these stability and compatibility issues, or that Microsoft would have the forethought to not update while other programs are running. Guess I was wrong.

Set your connection to a metered connection. This will stop Windows from updating automatically.

Yeah, I hear ya. As much as I love Win10, which for the most part, I have found it to be the smoothest running of all the previous ones I have used over the years; it unfortunately, as HereForTheBerr mentioned, has given us users less and less control over our OS. I simply just can't trust it not to start running in the background, connecting to who knows where and running in the background, doing who knows what if I leave my connection intact. You can't even decide what updates you want to install anymore like we could in the past Windows iterations. Ah well, seems we can only play with the cards we are dealt, if we decide to use Win10, so that's why I choose the adapter. At least gives me some power as to when Windows can actually call home, and try to engage in possible mischief. As far as Microsoft giving a shit if we have other programs while it goes about it's business, it doesn't. I think I remember it actually advertising that running in the background doing it's thing, without our input, is a "good" thing, because it can do all these "chores" in the background quietly, freeing us up to happily continue using our computers for what we deem important, and without the "hassle" of having to give updates and such another thought. Sucks, but that's the price we pay for using Win10 I suppose. Anyway, best of luck in the future....cutting Windows access to the internet, is at least one thing we still can control to some extent...at least for now, lol.