"import character" button doesnt work

@Benzocain94 Hmmm,  I wonder, was your system a Windows 8 or earlier version previously? Or did this system have W10 from the start?

I have seen some cases with off security restrictions after an upgrade. 

If you go to the MassEffect2.exe you can right-click it and choose Properties. 

In the Security tab, click Edit then add the name for the admin account on your system. Click through the requests, and hopefully this will let the game make the changes it needs, if I've guessed the source of the issue correctly. 

Thanks. 

hey,

thanks for your answer!

No my system is about 5 years old and first it was a win 7. then 8 and now 10. I tried to manipualte the securtiy restrictions which astonishingly went off without a hitch.

but it didnt helped me out with my problem. the "import character" button still wont work. im aware that this is a very rare issue. i couldnt find anything like that on my web research.

the button is just dead. usually i would just hit it and then the intro would play. but when i press it, nothing happens.

i just dont get it.

did a origin repair again.

manually copied the save files into the ME2 folder.

nothing works.

please dont give me up ☹️

with kind regards,

Richard from germany

@Benzocain94 Thanks for the update. 

Next, I want to try deleting a bunch of folders. Please make a backup of them beforehand, just in case something goes wrong. 

Navigate to My Documents\BioWare\Mass Effect 2 and delete the whole folder after backing up. Then try launch again, and copy over the saves. 

If this has no effect, next I'd fear a registry issue. You can try using ccleaner, it may help: https://help.ea.com/en/article/how-to-use-ccleaner-to-fix-pc-issues/

hey,

im not quite sure if i understood everything right. i deleted the Mass Effect 2 folder in my documents. then launched ME2, closed it and copied over the saves from ME1 manually.

that didnt do anything.

just to be sure i didnt messed up anything i led origin repair ME2.

then i used CCleaner and cleaned the registry and so on.

sadly that didnt helped either.

regards,

Richard

hey,

sorry for the late answer. was quite busy lately and hadnt got the time repairing attempts ^^

i manually unistalled origin ran ccleaner and installed and downloaded it again.

it didnt worked.

guess we are running out of alternatives, huh?

thanks,

Richard

@Benzocain94 Yeah, now I'd be thinking of moving to deleting individual registry keys, but that's not something I want to post about online, as it's very possible for someone to misunderstand and break their PC. 

Just to take a step away from registry stuff, you might want to do a quick restart with a Clean Boot, perhaps we've jumped too far forwards and there's a simple software conflict:https://help.ea.com/en/article/how-to-clean-boot-your-pc/

Thanks. 

hey,

thanks for your response.

first of all i somehow managed to make ME2 work! with imported characters!

wu-*-hu!

i had so much problems during this time. in the meantime i gave up and started with a new character. then i noticed after 2 hours playing that the game wont save. it just refused to create save files... it was like a really bad joke. then origin didnt even started it anymore when i tried to import the files through the config.exe in a last desperate attempt after reinstalling/redownloading literally everything... again...

but then i felt like making a joke myself and just simply deleted the WHOLE save folder of ME2. (the ones from ME1 where there too) let origin repair the whole game. after that i let the config.exe do its job (knowing that it wont work) then deleted the files and just manually copied the "char_...." files which are located in the saves folder from ME1. then i created a sub folder called "ME1" in the save folder from ME2. then i pasted the files right into that sub folder. closed everything and started ME2

and there it was! the magic happend!

it worked.

the "import character button" wasnt dead anymore. i was able to magically start the game with imported characters. the game was also able again to create save files.

to sum up some facts that could help anybody out there who encounters similiar problems like i did:

using the config.exe somehow corrupts something in origin or whatever leaving origin unable to start the game. just dont use the config.exe!

to play with imported characters just manully copy the "char_" save files from ME1. (located in documents -> bioware -> Mass Effect) and i mean ONLY the "char_ " files

somehwere on the road i deleted the config.exe too and let origin repair it. i let origin repair the game so many times i forgot if i did it the last time before it started working. just try, you cant do anything wrong since origin downloads every missing file in order to repair the game so you wont * up anything.

if the game is not saving, it helped my cause to simply delete every save folder the game created (located in documents) and to let origin repair the game.

i hope i made sense above and that it could be useful for anybody who has the same problems.

in the end,

i just want to say thank you EA_David for your persisting attempts in helping my cause and not just giving up on me.

great support work!

thank you a lot.

with regards,

Richard

Wonderful, thanks for coming back with the fix in the end. 

just wanna say thank u from the future because your post just helped me solve this seemingly random problem with the import character button right now!