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Claymix93's avatar
Claymix93
7 years ago
Solved

Mass Effect 1 crashes whenever I load any save game

I have Mass Effect 1 through Origin. It's run fine for awhile now. All of a sudden, the game crashes everytime I click Resume Career or Load Game. No save files work.

All the save files appear, but when I click "Load Game" the game completely locks up. The menu music continues to play in the background, but the game is completely locked up. I can't close the game, I can't even access task manager, because the game will never minimize. I have to restart my computer everytime.

If the game is set to windowed mode, it will actually display as Not Responding and Windows will let me close it.

I can create new careers and the game loads fine, but any attempt to load a save results in a crash. I have changed nothing in the game files. It literally worked fine last week and now it doesn't.

I tried adjusting compatibility settings, repairing the game files, even reinstalling the game. In amongst my troubleshooting, I was able to get an Auto Save to load exactly once without crashing. At the time, the game was windowed and the resolution was so awful that half the game wasn't visible, but it worked and was playable. I tried to reproduce the steps I took to get to that point, but it has never worked since then.

For reference, I am running on Windows 10.

Any ideas? I'm at a loss.

  • holger1405's avatar
    holger1405
    7 years ago

    @Claymix93 

    • Make sure Origin is closed.
    • Go to your "Documents\BioWare\Mass Effect" folder.
    • Move the "Save" and the "Config" folder to your desktop.
    • Start ME and close it again after it is fully loaded.
    • Move a single Save file back the "Documents\BioWare\Mass Effect"
    • See if this save works. (Try with a few different save files if the first don't works.)

10 Replies

  • holger1405's avatar
    holger1405
    Hero+
    7 years ago

    @Claymix93 

    • Make sure Origin is closed.
    • Go to your "Documents\BioWare\Mass Effect" folder.
    • Move the "Save" and the "Config" folder to your desktop.
    • Start ME and close it again after it is fully loaded.
    • Move a single Save file back the "Documents\BioWare\Mass Effect"
    • See if this save works. (Try with a few different save files if the first don't works.)
  • Claymix93's avatar
    Claymix93
    7 years ago

    Thank you for the reply! I will try this as soon as I can and update this thread.

  • Claymix93's avatar
    Claymix93
    7 years ago
    @holger1405 I moved the saves, launched the game, quit, moved one save over and... it worked. So then I moved them all over, launched the game, and all the saves work now. Then I synced with the cloud saves again and it's all bueno!

    I don't get it. These are the exact same save games that didn't work earlier, and now they work fine. Does that mean the config files got messed up somehow?
  • holger1405's avatar
    holger1405
    Hero+
    7 years ago

    @Claymix93 

    vspr417GPXpohf  schrieb:

    I don't get it. These are the exact same save games that didn't work earlier, and now they work fine. Does that mean the config files got messed up somehow?

    Yeah, that's the most likely conclusion.

    Have fun gaming!

  • YourPunkPrinces's avatar
    YourPunkPrinces
    6 years ago
    @holger1405 Any other possible solutions? I've had this problem myself and none of my saves work (neither manual, auto, or quick) after trying this method
  • holger1405's avatar
    holger1405
    Hero+
    6 years ago

    @YourPunkPrincess 

    First it would be of interest if both, the "Save" and the "Config" folder are on their destined location and filled with the right data.

    Cold you provide a screenshot of your "Documents\BioWare\Mass Effect" folder and the subordinate folders?

  • Claymix93's avatar
    Claymix93
    6 years ago

    I should note: I had Mass Effect installed twice on my computer in different folders and that was causing my issues. This can happen if you owned Mass Effect through another store (physical copy or bought through another website) and you used your key to get it in Origin too. Also, if you back up your game files to install mods like ALOT. 

    You can end up with multiple shortcuts to Mass Effect and not know which is correct and apparently even Origin can become confused. I'm almost positive this lead to my issue (among others).

    Just a thought! 

  • VanguardDragon's avatar
    VanguardDragon
    4 years ago
    @holger1405 This was a long time ago but perhaps not too long to get some help with this. I'm encountering the same problem and I've tried the above suggestions.
    I get to the step where you launch the game after moving the folders but for some reason the game doesn't regenerate the config files after they've been moved. I don't think this is relevant though as it falls back to the default backup files anyway with low screen resolution, but when I try to load a save, it still freezes in the same way.

    I have the compatibility set correctly and I even installed the legacy physx drivers just in case, but no dice.

    My last save was dated 2017, it was on this machine though and it worked perfectly fine back then.

    I'm totally stumped yet it feels like it could be something simple to fix and I'm just doing something wrong. Are there any other suggestions I could try?
  • holger1405's avatar
    holger1405
    Hero+
    4 years ago

    @VanguardDragon 

    Please create a DxDiag in text file format and post it with your next reply. You can do that  with the "Choose file" button at the bottom right corner of the reply window. 

  • VanguardDragon's avatar
    VanguardDragon
    4 years ago

    Many thanks for your reply Holger1405, I've attached the file.

    Just to give a little more info; when I emigrated years ago I brought over an external drive with a copy of most of my data including my Mass Effect folder (installed from CD) which contained a HD texture mod.

    I copied it over to my current machine and it still worked perfectly dispite being in a portable form. I played this for a while a few years back and only recently became excited about getting back into it again. 

    Since my last post I have now downloaded and installed the game via Origin on a separate drive and attempted to load my saves but this still didn't work. I've tried the original solution of moving the Save and Config files several times now but it always crashes in the same way. Even my very very old saves no longer work and I have backups of those so it's not that they've spontaneously corrupted.

    Creating a new character will let the game actually load in although I haven't yet tried making and loading an entirely new save, I'll have to try that after work.

    I wondered about Claymix's suggestion of the game not liking multiple installations but I assume that is only relevant with Origin, and I've never before installed it on this PC via that client.

    Thank you so much for your time.

    Edit:

    Well I figured it out and it was actually very easy! After testing the newly created save from a fresh career, which worked correctly, I had a hunch to try loading my old save from within the game itself and this was the solution. For some reason it loaded perfectly and I was able to create a new save which loads every time.

    My old original installation still crashes when trying to load the new save, perhaps if I were to create a new career from within this installation it would salvage the save in the same way, but I'm content with the fresh installation with the latest texture mod.

    Thank you all the same! Hopefully this will help someone in the future.

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