Mass Effect and Windows 7 64-bit General Protection Faults

[drebo]

Has anyone solved these?

I've spent hours googling only to come up with a bunch of threads where all anyone ever says is to google the issue and a couple of references to people claiming that the issue is because my PC isn't "properly optimized".

I recently bought the game from Direct2Drive ($5 sale this weekend) and installed it. I can't play for more than 10 minutes without getting a GPF crash. The game's only 3 years old...are you seriously telling me it doesn't run properly on Windows 7?

My PC is an Athlon 64 X2 6400+ BE, running at 3.2ghz stock speed, with 2gb RAM and a GeForce 9600GSO. Nothing is overclocked, everything is running at stock speeds. My Power Supply is plenty powerful and has not given me any other issues at any time. Not great, but more than capable of running ME with High graphics quality. Except that it crashes after 5 minutes of play.

Here's what I've tried:
- Upgrading to the latest GeForce drivers
- Downgrading to a 197.xx GeForce driver version as referenced somewhere
- Renaming the OpenAL.dll in the /binaries folder
- Uninstalling OpenAL
- Upgrading my sound card drivers (ADI SoundMax, not realtek)
- Installing BDtS
- Installing 1.02 patch
- Adding an exception for the ME folder to Microsoft Security Essentials
- Turning off Microsoft Security Essentials
- Running in WinXP compatibility mode
- Running with themes turned off
- Running in winxp mode with themes turned off
- Running as administrator, with all of the above.

Things I have not tried:
- Running at a lower graphics quality setting, as I should not have to.

I'm at a loss as to what else I can do. It's only a 3-year-old game. It should not be having these issues. Hell, Dungeon Keeper 2 runs better than this on my system.

I don't buy the excuse that my system isn't "properly tuned" because I can run litterally any other game without issue.

So, I'm not interested in responses that tell me to google it. Been there, done that. Have the T-Shirt. I want to hear from someone who has had this problem and has solved it and what you did.

It's appalling that this is even an issue and that BioWare has not yet fixed it. I mean, Windows 7 has only been out for the better part of 2 years now.

 

[Mem]

I just loaded up retail ME on my Win7 x64 with my ATI card,no issues so all I can think of is have you tried downloading lastest DX9.0c since I have that installed as well,http://www.filehippo.com/download_directx/ .

 

[AstroManLuca]

I hate to sound unhelpful, but have you tried simply uninstalling the entire game and reinstalling? I didn't see you mention that you had done that so I thought I'd ask.

For the record, I have Mass Effect and am running Windows 7 x64 and I've never had a problem. Well, nothing outside of glitches within the game itself. Then again, I have an ATI card, not nVidia, and my last PC had an ATI card as well, so I've never run it on an nVidia card. Also, I have the Steam version, although that shouldn't matter.

Does it perhaps have SecuRom? I remember hearing that the PC version of Mass Effect uses SecuRom, and that it was only removed from the Steam version. So it could be related to that. There might be a way to disable or uninstall SecuRom since I don't think an older game like ME1 requires authentication any longer.

EDIT: Try this: https://support.securom.com/removaltool.html

 

[Red Hawk]

With an older Geforce card like the 9600 GSO you need to roll back the graphics driver to an older version for Mass Effect or you get all sorts of problems. I use the 197.45 drivers with my 9800 GT, but you said that doesn't work. So you might have to roll back even farther. It's not like the 9600 GSO really benefits from newer drivers.

 

[drebo]

I guess I'll try even older drivers, then. I'll also try removing Securom.

I wonder if I can register the key in Steam and use the Steam version. Although I'd hate to download the stupid game again.

 

[AstroManLuca]

I guess I'll try even older drivers, then. I'll also try removing Securom.

I wonder if I can register the key in Steam and use the Steam version. Although I'd hate to download the stupid game again.

Unfortunately that only works with a select few games, listed here:

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7480-WUSF-3601

Mass Effect is not one of them.

 

[Tobal-G]

I ran across the same issue. You have to run either Steam and/or ME.exe as an administrator. It will run fine after that. It's a known glitch. Good luck.

 

[drebo]

I ran across the same issue. You have to run either Steam and/or ME.exe as an administrator. It will run fine after that. It's a known glitch. Good luck.

I've tried that, by itself, and in combination with every other fix I tried.

 

[Joepublic2]

Random GPF? Try disabling DEP for the mass effect executable. Windows ORB -> My Computer -> Right click, Properties -> Advanced System Settings -> Advanced -> Performance (settings) -> Data Execution Protection tab

 

[Nintendesert]

I don't think you can blame the developers as I have windows 7 and even from the beta build never had issues with Mass Effect. I'm running the latest drivers on everything and with a 5870 I've yet to have a crash or problem. I wish you luck though.

 

[drebo]

From what I can gather, it is a combination of my having a multi-core AMD processor and an nVidia graphics card. It's definitely a game engine bug, as were it a driver issue, it would bluescreen the system.

That said, I seem to have stumbled upon the fix, at least for me. Setting the processor affinity to a single core allowed me to play for a couple hours tonight with no crashes. Hopefully this helps someone else with the same issue.

 

[drizek]

Phenom II, Nvidia 460, Win 7 64bit.

I've been getting the same problem. I just set up a Kill A Watt today and so I assumed hte problem was coming from that, but it is exactly like what you describe. I loaded ME up 4 times, twice I was able to play for over an hour without problems, but the intervening two times it restarted itself in around 10 minutes.

 

[ikachu]

I have a Phenom II and a 6970 in Win7 64-bit and it's worked fine for me for about 10 hours so far.

Your theory about AMD CPU + NV GPU might be correct...

 

[AstroManLuca]

Phenom II, Nvidia 460, Win 7 64bit.

I've been getting the same problem. I just set up a Kill A Watt today and so I assumed hte problem was coming from that, but it is exactly like what you describe. I loaded ME up 4 times, twice I was able to play for over an hour without problems, but the intervening two times it restarted itself in around 10 minutes.

Tried setting the affinity yet?

PS. congrats OP on getting it to work, I suppose that's why you generally want to go AMD + ATI or Intel + nVidia, not that that's an excuse

 

[drebo]

Tried setting the affinity yet?

PS. congrats OP on getting it to work, I suppose that's why you generally want to go AMD + ATI or Intel + nVidia, not that that's an excuse

Well, my motherboard is an nVidia chipset.

My next system will likely be Intel + ATI.

 

[Mem]

Well, my motherboard is an nVidia chipset.

My next system will likely be Intel + ATI.

My board is Nvidia NF4,only difference is I use an ATi card.

 

[Red Hawk]

I guess I'll try even older drivers, then. I'll also try removing Securom.

I wonder if I can register the key in Steam and use the Steam version. Although I'd hate to download the stupid game again.

While you can't register the game with Steam, you can register the game with EA's own download manager.

 

[ramj70]

I have an AMD cpu and nvdia card and never had a problem with mass effect. Great game, hope your issue is fixed

 

[slag]

Has anyone solved these?

I've spent hours googling only to come up with a bunch of threads where all anyone ever says is to google the issue and a couple of references to people claiming that the issue is because my PC isn't "properly optimized".

I recently bought the game from Direct2Drive ($5 sale this weekend) and installed it. I can't play for more than 10 minutes without getting a GPF crash. The game's only 3 years old...are you seriously telling me it doesn't run properly on Windows 7?

My PC is an Athlon 64 X2 6400+ BE, running at 3.2ghz stock speed, with 2gb RAM and a GeForce 9600GSO. Nothing is overclocked, everything is running at stock speeds. My Power Supply is plenty powerful and has not given me any other issues at any time. Not great, but more than capable of running ME with High graphics quality. Except that it crashes after 5 minutes of play.

Here's what I've tried:
- Upgrading to the latest GeForce drivers
- Downgrading to a 197.xx GeForce driver version as referenced somewhere
- Renaming the OpenAL.dll in the /binaries folder
- Uninstalling OpenAL
- Upgrading my sound card drivers (ADI SoundMax, not realtek)
- Installing BDtS
- Installing 1.02 patch
- Adding an exception for the ME folder to Microsoft Security Essentials
- Turning off Microsoft Security Essentials
- Running in WinXP compatibility mode
- Running with themes turned off
- Running in winxp mode with themes turned off
- Running as administrator, with all of the above.

Things I have not tried:
- Running at a lower graphics quality setting, as I should not have to.

I'm at a loss as to what else I can do. It's only a 3-year-old game. It should not be having these issues. Hell, Dungeon Keeper 2 runs better than this on my system.

I don't buy the excuse that my system isn't "properly tuned" because I can run litterally any other game without issue.

So, I'm not interested in responses that tell me to google it. Been there, done that. Have the T-Shirt. I want to hear from someone who has had this problem and has solved it and what you did.

It's appalling that this is even an issue and that BioWare has not yet fixed it. I mean, Windows 7 has only been out for the better part of 2 years now.

Its not a bioware issue. its an issue with your hardware or software configuration. I played the game through from beginning to end with no crashes on windows 7 64 bit

 

[drizek]

It has crashed two out of the three times for me when I try to buy upgrades from the guy in the ship.

 

[FuryofFive]

i had this problem...was horrible and i never got it fixed. did all mentioned above. just ended up playing on another computer

 

[QuantumPion]

I had a bunch of crash-to-desktops at one particular point in the game. I think the problem was caused by using the disable movies command line option, which was really annoying. Do I seriously have to wait 30 seconds for every area to load just so the animation can finish, which was designed for slow-as-molasses consoles?

 

[zerogear]

Did you try to run in Compatibility mode + UAC off?

 

[paul.ingle]

Hey guys, I have the same problem with mass effect. I have a nearly one year old acer aspire 5750, intel core i5-2430M 24.ghz with turbo boost up to 3 ghz. Intel HD Graphics 3000, up to 1760 MB Dynamic Video Memory. The game usually plays for 5 mins before crashing with a general protection fault. I have installed the patch but haven't tried anything else yet. I'm not as savvy as some of you guys...
Any help would be appreciated!