Mass effect

[Luke]

Picked up mass effect for pc at bestbuy (for $18) and i thought it looked pretty interesting the first few mins but it just keeps crashing...it is beyond annoying. Sometimes it will just stop mid game , the sound will do some funky stuff and the only way to get out of it is to restart, others it will do the same but i am able to open Task Manager and kill it. When im able to do that it says there is a General Fault Error (message box for the game) so im assuming it's crashing because of this. Would a patch fix it? (prob can't get a patch with my dial up if it's to large though)

EDIT: ok downloading the 1.01 patch now (hopefully will have it by morning) but what is causing this? im not even sure a patch would fix it. Any insights into what is wrong?

 

[Luke]

Ok several new things to add.

First the patch for mass effect did not work, i think the errors might be related to this:

Starting the game up it says my system clock is off and i have to go online to get the right time, i connect to the internet, do that, the game runs, i have to do this everytime the game starts, but it still crashes mid game all the time. No bsod yet during the game. Also now it is not limited to mass effect, i got an error trying to start stalker, it said a file was missing, also spore is now doing the same time requesting thing although it will not run even after getting the time online. Also i tried starting up Rainbow 6 vegas two and it said there was a 3d error, i tried again and same thing. I restarted and it worked though with no crashes. These games (spore and R6V2 had no errors previously and spore did not need the time thing...)

So the only question i have is,,,, what the heck is going on?

This all seems to be happening right after i got my new video card (core 216), could it be a major driver issue or something? as i have not downloaded new drivers, as it would take me along time on dial up...i need help.

 

[philbar71]

hmm it very well could be a driver issue. i assume it's activated properly.

the drivers would probably take you a long time cause for me they were like 90mb and on dial up it would take forever.

are you in xp or vista?

 

[Luke]

Yes it is activated properly, i am probably going to leave my comp downloading the driver tonight, hopefully it will be done by noon tomorrow. I'm using xp.

 

[philbar71]

you had the one off of the driver cd correct? what about windows updates? might want to run that over nite. hopefully it's just the graphics drivers.

 

[Luke]

Yes off the cd that came with the card, i always have windows updates running, in fact an update is 78% done right now.

 

[philbar71]

hmm, well what does it say when the game crashes? does it say "masseffect.exe has stopped working"? i have only had that happen once and it was totaly random. my dude was just standing there (in the citadel, chorras den) and i left the game un paused to go get some watar and i come back and it crashed. but other than that it has never crashed on me.

 

[Luke]

i have general protection faults mostly, but i can't see the error until i use C-A-D to get out of the game, then i see it. I have seen masseffect.exe has stopped working once i believe. I had spore problems for a bit but it is now working, but still, to play spore or mass effect i have to check my system time to online servers, that synchronize it. Then mass effect and spore will run, spore does not crash, mass effect does. I don't see why my system time would have to be correct anyway...its very strange.

 

[philbar71]

possibly a failing cmos battery or something similar. i had the prob where i had to sync the time only once and that was when i was playing the orighnal fear. i dont know what that is about.

 

[Luke]

^hmm, never would have thought that, it is possible, this computer has only been running for about a year though. Come to think of it, i have never had to replace a cmos battery.

My time settings are correct though, after turning my comp off for several hours then coming back the time is still correct, when i sync it the time never changes...