sadness at 6:05am

Started playing Fallout 3 - similar to Stalker, although no comparison.  The game stalls...crashes...I downloaded a patch, it improved slightly, still plays like a pirated disk, disconnects every 4-5 minutes.  I defragmented it, turned off all secondary services, but still it does not play well.  It's too bad, because I like this game. 
I will try for another day, and if the enjoyment of game will be severely jeopardized by these issues, I will start on Settlers 7.  Hopefully, it will play on my computer well.