Windows Mass Effect 2 technical help!

Hello everyone. Hope you all had a good Christmas!

I bought Mass Effect 2 in the Steam sale. While I'm loving the game, there are 2 major technical issues that are starting to put me off playing.

1st issue (kind of fixed) Long load times I found a partial solution on another forum where you alt-tab out the game, change the CPU affinity in task manager to single core then back to dual core. This completly fixes the long load times but I have to do this every time I start the game.

2nd issue (can't find a solution) Random 2-5 second pauses This happens randomly throughout the game. Can be a 5min-30min apart. But the game will freeze (sound still playing) and then randomly go back to normal. It's getting very annoying.

The game runs solid on my machine, so I don't know why the pauses are happening.

In case this helps:
Windows 7 64
Core2Duo E6300 @ 2.7Ghz
Radeon 4890 with latest Drivers and new CCC
Sound Blaster X-Fi
Steam version of Mass Effect 2

Any suggestions would be grand

 

How much memory do you have? When I cut down from 4GB to 2GB because of a defective stick, I found I had quite a lot of random pauses in games and slow loading times. What about the quality of your hard drive too? Are there any other games affected by these problems, specifically any UE3 games like Mass Effect 1, Dragon Age, Unreal Tournament 3, etc, or is it just ME2?

 

I also found it made the load times shorter, weird huh.

Don't experience the second problem, it runs like a dog but it doesn't freeze.

 

worth double checking stuff like no virus scans running in the background, as that can cause random pauses.

 

freezes like that are usually due to loading the next part, if you don't have enough memory thats is almost certainly the reason.

 

I have 4GB of memory which is more than enough to play ME2. I don't have this trouble with other demanding games such as Fallout NV, Crysis etc. I don't have any other unreal engine 3 games installed at the moment so I can't check that.

I've disabled the virus scanner while playing and turned off auto save but it makes no difference

I don't think it's a memory issue as the game runs very smooth at full settings, It just seems to be random pauses. I've even tried changing the video options as low as you can but I still get the pauses. Very odd issue! Any other suggestions?

 

well since your already in the task manager playing with affinity- might as well set the priority above normal too

I have powerstrip do this or you can do it with a vb script

http://www.activexperts.com/activmonitor/windowsmanagement/adminscripts/processes/

you can change the icon afterward to match.. right click and properties

 

I very much doubt the pauses have anything to do with the guys amount of ram. I've only got 2 gig in my rig (W7 64bit) and it plays ME2 perfectly.

I've experienced the long load times. Strange, as the game never used to do it at all. Makes me think that one of the DLC's or patchs must have changed something for the worse. My way of fixing it was just to close the game and restart it. That always fixed the issue. And the problem doesn't return while the game is running properly, only ever seems to happen occasionally when you start the game up.

Nice to know about the task manager trick. Will save me a little time when it next happens.

 

I have never had any of these problems. The game ran flawlessly throughout.

My only disappointment was not being able to play across my three monitors from this one issue which is down to FOV and no one has come up with a fix.

Cheers,

Simon.

 

Haha I'm so sorry you can't get it running on 3 monitors Simon! However I would be happy getting it working on just one monitor ;-)

I've now tried batman aa, as it uses the unreal 3 engine. It's works perfectly.

I think it may be a sound card issue. I'm going to switch back to my on board sound card and see if it's the X-Fi that's causing the problem.

Any further suggestions would be grand cheers for your responses so far!

 

I have heard that the X-Fi's do sometimes cause issues with some games like Mass Effect - apparently the ASUS sound cards use or bypass something that gets around this? Onboard sound should be ok also? Im sorry I cant remember where it was that I saw this, but I think that it was distinctly Bit-Tech-related!

I shall have a hunt around...

 

Thanks to thehippoz for solving my problem!

Changing the process priority to above normal has fixed the stuttering issue. Should have tried this before I pulled my X-Fi card out! doh!

I am now enjoying the game even more. Still, I expected better of bioware. I've never had this much trouble with any of their games before.

Thanks very much for all the help. I'm a happy chappy

 

I'm Commander Shepard and I approve of this thread!

 

Hey! I saw you approve another thread as well!

LoL...