OK, so now I've run into an inpenetrable wall. After meeting the diplomats and securing the female Krogan it's reboot time over and over at the same simple cutscene, where Hacket looks at the Crucible. He looks, screen goes black and it's a hard reboot. Repeated thet three times now. Always at the same stage, it's a reboot.
Community Admin@AbC2563a9120374 Hey, thanks for the detailed post. From your description I'd guess at a hard drive issue, or a very damaged game install.
I'd start by uninstalling ME3, then I'd run a chkdsk to search for errors with the HDD's hardware.
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ee872425.aspx
Thanks.
You know, I go with a damaged install as one possibility.
As I said, my system runs very stable with every other application. Not once was I forced into hard reboots.
And, as I said, it only happens at cutscenes. Not during player controlled action. That's just fine for hours.
Let me give you a quick rundown. Character creation in ME3 leads to an extended cutscene. First try is almost always a hard reboot. Second, cutscene approaching mars. Somtimes a hard reboot. Third time and always a hard reboot at first try, approaching the Citadel for the first time. Things go fine, until the ship approaches it's docking position, where the game always reboots the system.
So, mmy guess is, it has to have something to do with the format of the cutscenes. But without knowing what format they're in, it's hard to lay my finger on the issue at hand.
Update.
It definetely only happens at non interruptable, non interactive cutscenes. Everything else is fine. And by cutscenes, I also mean the ones with Normandy docking somewhere, but not exclusively.
Community Admin@AbC2563a9120374 I suspected it was hard drive related due to the stated issues with the install process, and I'd recommend running the chkdsk anyway, to at least discount HDD issues.
Thanks for the extra info though, the videos you mention are stored at C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\Mass Effect 3\BIOGame\Movies and are in the binkmedia format (.bik)
I suspect there's an issue with the video player used, possibly due to the previous install issues.
As a test, and if you're familiar with changing filetypes and using different media players, you could copy some of the .bik videos from the location mentioned above. Convert them to .mp4 and check if they play in wmp without issue. I suspect they will, but it's an easy enough way to discount issues with the actual video files themselves.
If the videos themselves are corrupt, right-click the game panel in Origin and choose the repair option, let this run and hopefully it will do so with issue.
If this has no effect, or you encounter a problem while repairing, please uninstall the game (you can try backing up the entire Mass Effect 3 folder to save on a redownload) then uninstall Origin using the steps in this article: https://help.ea.com/nz/article/manually-uninstalling-origin/
Restart with a Clean Boot then freshly reinstall Origin. If bandwidth usage isn't a concern I'd then redownload the game, being sure to keep an eye open for any prompts from Windows' user account control or your security software.
Let us know how you get on, thanks again.
Thanks, David.
It seems to be some kind of issue with the video player, not the videos. I do some more fiddling, but thanks for your support.
Does your PC crash after you download Bink Video Player and attempt to play the cutscenes in that?
Well, I can play them with Bink vbideo player, but I'm specifically looking for two (almost certain) crash points. The first, right after character creation when the game switches to Anderson asking "How bad is it?", which introduces a lenghty scene leading up to Shepard watching the kid on the lawn. The second one, right after securing the Krogan female, where the scene is about Shepard reporting to Hacket and Hacket turning to watch the Crucible.
These two are always trouble.
I haven't found these two videos so far. At least not by name.
Yeah, I've found one of them and it plays fine on the player, yet without sound. So something else has to be triggered ingame, which might cause the issue.
proear_intro_Animatic
One last reply.
After extensive web reasearch and fiddling I seem to have solved the issue. Seems as if flash player and it's hardware accelaration played a major role. Since I disabled that I had no more hard reboots.
