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Anonymous

Approved

Re: Mass Effect PC (Steam) - General Protection Fault

Thanks for your reply. My version of Mass Effect is 1.02 as it is automatically updated through Steam.

I'm reluctant to roll back my drivers as I would rather not lose support for a lot of more recent games (Mass Effect 3 included) so I'm leaving this as an absolute last resort. I appreciate that while this may be the cause, I've not had issues with any other games released around 2007 or other games that use the Unreal engine.

As I said, the initial crash was caused by wrap_oal.dll which is something to do with audio, so I tried the following fix http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/106/index/656205/2

"1) in /program files/Mass Effect/Binaries locate the OpenAL32.dll and wrap_oal.dll files

2) Rename OpenAL32.dll to OpenAL32.bak

3) Rename wrap_oal.dll to OpenAL32.dll

4) Launch as Admin by using the MassEffect.exe"

However, I got another general protection fault error, this time reading as such;

Faulting application name: MassEffect.exe, version: 1.2.20608.0, time stamp: 0x4a55fea1
Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 6.1.7601.18229, time stamp: 0x51fb1116
Exception code: 0x40010006
Fault offset: 0x0000c41f
Faulting process id: 0x3e4c
Faulting application start time: 0x01cee01460f2b6cc
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Mass Effect\Binaries\MassEffect.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\syswow64\KERNELBASE.dll
Report Id: deae1d03-4c07-11e3-a6c1-f46d0439bfcb

This time, the faulting module was kernelbase.dll which as far as I am aware is something to do with running 32-bit programs within a 64-bit operating system so this time I assumed the fault lay with compatibility. I ran Steam as an administrater and ran Mass Effect in Windows XP SP2 compatibility mode (I read somewhere to use SP2 specifically but I'm not sure what difference that would make). So far, I've gotten through all the crew dialogue on the Normandy where the crashes originally occurred and played about an hour of the game without any crashes. I'm very reluctant to say that the issue is solved so I'll keep a look out while playing further.

4 Replies

Anonymous
12 years ago
Approved
I was all set to send you the same link you refered to in your response. My children make me slow, apparently.
How has it gone? If you get to some point where it looks like things are going to keep working (maybe even beating the game) do come back and mark your second message as the solution.
Anonymous
12 years ago
Approved
Like I said, the first fix worked for a while until that compatibility issue came up. Apparently ME1 doesn't like running on 64-bit operating systems (or my one, at the very least!).
I've managed another couple of hours of playthrough with no issue so I think the above sorted the issue. Also, do check out the mod I posted in the first link, really brings out the best in the game (and fixes the awful vanilla film grain and Garrus's face texture!). Running in XP compatibility mode does mean I can no longer monitor my framerate using MSI Afterburner but I guess I was getting 100-150 frames per second most of the time so that isn't that big of an issue.
I guess I would add that my advice for anybody suffering from the general protection fault is to click start, search for 'reliability' and open 'view reliability history'. Isolate the source of the problem and go from there.
DangerStepp
12 years ago
I am having the same issue as everyone else and I am absolutely perplexed that a solid solution has not been provided.
While I am not experiencing any GPFs that prevent me from progressing, they occur often enough to warrant me Googling for a solution every other time it happens.
I will try the solutions as suggested above to see if I have better luck.
I'm running ATI HD 7950 (although older forum threads from Bioware users swear this is endemic of Nvidia cards only...wrong!) @ 5276x1050 resolution. I'm also using the updated Mass Effect textures pack, which judging by the number of threads created by the this problem, have nothing to do with it.
I see the span of time this has been an issue and no one has a clear answer and it floors me.
Anonymous
12 years ago
Approved
The issue lies around the fact that there is no one cause of the problem. I myself had the problem turn up due to two completely unrelated things. I think we just have to accept that Bioware are far too busy messing around with Frostbite 3 to come back to try and sort this out.
Like I said above, view your reliability and isolate the source of the error (ie, the faulting module). Hopefully that will give you some clue as to what caused your iteration of the GPF.