Mass Effect 1 won't launch (Win7)

@71ColonelSMD97 

The game is compatible to Windows 7.

The easiest way might be to redeem the cd key in Origin to get a digital copy.

(Origin menu > Origin > redeem Product code.)

(Origin menu > Origin > redeem Product code.)

I've tried this. Does not work. And the EA person I talked to on the phone said that hard copies were not transferred to Origin. 

@71ColonelSMD97 

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71ColonelSMD97 wrote:

I've tried this. Does not work. And the EA person I talked to on the phone said that hard copies were not transferred to Origin. 

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They'd be in the past, I will past this on.

For the problem:

Please create a DxDiag in text file format and post it with your next reply.

Also go to your Reliability monitor > Press the Windows key and "R" at the same time and copy and paste or type "perfmon /rel" (without the quotes) in the new Window > hit “ENTER” and look if it has entries for the "MassEffect.exe" and the "Origin.exe".

If yes double click at the last entry for the game executable, copy the info to the clipboard, and save it to a text file.

You can attach the DxDiag text file you created (and the “Reliability monitor” text file as well) to your post in the “Reply” window with the “Choose File” button. 

Here's the DxDiag. No reliability monitor txt since I could not find any with the appropriate entries.

Thanks.

@71ColonelSMD97 

The DxDiag looks good so fare, the only thing is that your GPU driver is relatively old.
But that should not be the problem here.

I guess that the problem you have is the same discussed in this thread. (Please read the post I linked to)

A specific DLL, the "paul.dll", that is part of the authorization process of the game is outdated and makes it impossible to authorize ME1. 

There are only two ways to fix this.
Contact EA about the isuue and hope that they fix it.
Replace the "paul.dll" with a newer version from a different game or a different machine.

Thank you for your effort.

I just went over the thread you linked and maybe I overread it, but I simply removed the paul.dll from the folder and now the game works again. I wrote "overread", because I mostly read about others replacing the paul.dll with a later version. Since non of my other hard copies of ME2 and ME3 have a paul.dll, I just removed it from ME1 and now the game is running. Maybe it's just me and I misunderstood all along, but this is the simplest solution and I'm surprised that no one mentions this anywhere.

@71ColonelSMD97 

Thanks for mentioning that deleting the "paul.dll" helped you. That is very interesting indeed. 👍

@holger1405 

Also, the game rewrites the paul.dll after some time. This of course results in the game not being playable, so in order to play, one needs to remove the file again.