I am also suffering the Fallout 3 has stopped working issue.
I don't have an ASUS card and am running Vista home premium, I have tried updating sound and video drivers, copying shaders, running as Admin, running from exe, installing patch, reinstalling. I am sure i'm overlooking something. Any help would be greatly appreciated

Try disabling your startups in MSCONFIG and then testing the game. If it works, you know it is a startup in the list that is causing the issue.

Thanks i'll give that a try; I had disabled a few but I will be a bit more severe in the cutback and see what happens.

I'd say go even further than being severe - select not to show System related entries and disable all.

ok, tried disabling startups, then non microsoft services, then a most of these (when i did all, it woyuldnt load because there was no sound driver and iwas unsure which one would keep it going). Still no luck at this time.
My video card is a gigabyte nvidia 9600gt, i have realtek onboard sound.

Could you try running it without the patch?

ok, thanks, reinstalled and tried, same issue. Oblivion works fine if that helps.