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missy20201's avatar
5 years ago

ME1 Will Launch But Won't Run (Win10) - Edit: Not Solved

...I hope that title makes sense. Let me explain:

I hit Play in Origin or else I go to the Binaries folder and use the .exe, and either way the game will open, the screen will start rearranging itself as it does when you play a game made for different screen sizes, and then everything adjusts itself back to normal size and puts you back on whatever screen you started on. Mass Effect never actually crashes, but attempting to click it again just does the same thing again and again (sometimes with a split second of audio). If you hover over the app preview it's a black screen with a few vertical silver lines. I haven't played this game in a few years, but I'm assuming it's freezing on the opening video/animation?

Tried all the common fixes I've seen online already. Tried restarting, running both Origin and the exe as admin, running in XP SP2 and SP3 compatibility, quitting Origin entirely and launching the game that way (it doesn't even open when I do that), Repair, even tried making sure to force the game to use the Nvidia display driver instead of Intel... Not really sure what else to do ☹️

I'm running Win10 with an RTX 2070, 32GB RAM, Intel i7 processor... Not too sure what else you need to know, since I'm not a huge computer person myself. Attached are the dxdiag and ME log files though! If those help. Thank you in advance for any advice!

7 Replies

  • Well! That was embarrassingly easy, after messing around for a couple of hours. Figures I'd fix it right after posting, right?

    Turned out the game was still trying to launch with Intel graphics drivers. After changing the Nvidia Control Panel settings to always use the Nvidia drivers, you have to actually restart the computer for that to take effect. Who'd'a thunk. Anyway. We can leave this up for future reference or just delete, either way is fine by me. Thanks! 😂

  • missy20201's avatar
    missy20201
    5 years ago

    Okay... Well, not as easy as it seemed, I guess. By the time I finally got the game to launch and take me to the main menu nicely, it was already 3:30 am, so I went ahead and closed it again and went to bed. Now it's back to doing the same thing I described in the OP. I haven't changed anything since I got up. The computer is still set to use the Nvidia graphics driver. I restarted again to see if that would help. No dice. Here are updated dxdiag and log files, although I don't honestly know that they changed anything. Still running the exe as admin in XP SP3 compatibility, doesn't play nice launching from exe or Origin.

    Again, thanks in advance ☹️

  • missy20201's avatar
    missy20201
    5 years ago

    Update again (sorry to keep replying to this!): I can run it if I use the config exe to make it windowed. If you open it that way and go into in-game settings and deselect the windowed option, it then kicks you back out and refuses to stay on-screen again, as described in the OP. Again, no game crashes or anything. It's the strangest thing. Even if it's an Intel vs Nvidia thing, I don't have a clue how that'd translate to "yes, I'll play in a window, but don't you dare try to fullscreen me" LOL. I guess this is fine for now, but I really am curious if anyone has a better idea what exactly is wrong here 😅

  • missy20201's avatar
    missy20201
    5 years ago

    Hi! Thanks for the advice. Gave it a try and no cigar.

    It still runs without any compatibility settings and without Origin in Game, but still only windowed. Using the config exe to make it full screen, or doing so inside the already-launched game, still kicks you out of it. I don't mind playing it windowed, but I really am curious what's up!

  • holger1405's avatar
    holger1405
    Hero+
    5 years ago

    @missy20201 

    Please preform a clean boot and test the Game in clean boot mode.

    Make sure your virus scanner and other security software and also Afterburner and similar software is disabled.

  • This worked for me just now!

    Step 1:
        Open EA Desktop

    Step 2:    Look for the Mass effect .exe file

    Step 3:    Right Click it

    Step 4:    Click properties

    Step 5:    Click compatibility tab

    Step 6:    Change the Windows XP Service Pack to Version 2

    Step 7:    KILL ALL ALIENS

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