FALLOUT NEW VEGAS RANDOM CRASH INSTALL
FALLOUT NEW VEGAS RANDOM CRASH DRIVERS

Entering Dead Sea's Barracks in Nelson may cause the game to freeze.

(I hope that means a truly excessive number, and not the dozen or so I have.

Slightly contrary to the advice under 'All Platforms,' having too many saved games can cause crashes.

If you want to equip a cowboy hat, take the extra minute or so and do it through your PIP-Boy.

Why you'd want to is beyond me, but I guess someone did it and found at that it can occasionally make the console freeze up. Don't equip cowboy hats via a mapped key (that is, the D-Pad shortcuts).

FALLOUT NEW VEGAS RANDOM CRASH INSTALL

If, after installing, you get messages that the disk is unreadable, uninstall and then reinstall the game - the install files are likely corrupt.(This has helped me on every glitchy/slow-loading game I play.) Install the game if you have the hard drive space available for it.If you're still experiencing crashes, head over to Bethesda's PC Issues page and see if others are experiencing them, and/or if a fix is known.Scrolling the list of saved games can cause the interface to freeze and crash.If you have installed custom mods, try removing them and seeing if the issue disappears.Do not ALT+ TAB out of Fallout: New Vegas.

FALLOUT NEW VEGAS RANDOM CRASH DRIVERS

Keep all your system drivers (audio and video in particular) up-to-date.

Make sure your system meets (or preferably exceeds) the minimum requirements to run Fallout: New Vegas.

(Note: I have zero experience with the PS3 version all of this comes from The Vault or my own experience troubleshooting other PC games and issues.)

As for any game, crashes may mean defective hardware.

If one saves at the beginning of the game while editing your character the Level up system can crash.

Crashes or very severe slowdowns are common when the player character reaches the top of a hill or ridge and the landscape and sky beyond become visible.

Crashing or freezing upon entering The Strip is fairly common.

Crashing or freezing when entering or exiting areas is somewhat common.

Crashes often when you near completion of the game.

Do not rely on Autosave save manually, save early, save often.

Always use multiple save slots - a lot of issues in Gamebryo-based games come from corrupted save files.

Always use the latest patch of Fallout: New Vegas.

Some of these issues may be resolved in more recent patches if so, please update this answer and remove them. It's Community Wiki (notably because most of the content comes from The Vault, so I can hardly be credited), so please feel free to edit and add more to this. I figured that this may be a good opportunity to make a general Fallout: New Vegas crash/bug troubleshooting list for everyone here. It seems that Chance has found the solution for his crash.

Fallout new vegas random crash