The other day I had bought the 2 year old Mass Effect RPG from Electronics Arts on discount from Valve’s Steam service. I was amazed that on the first time run the game abruptly crashed with a cryptic message. This issue repeated on every attempt to load the game whether using the Steam launcher or running the binaries manually. There is a simple but not so obvious fix that wasn’t fully detailed in my attempts to search for a solution on the web.
In File Explorer you need to find the Mass Effect launcher …
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\mass effect\Binaries\MassEffect.exe
Right click the ‘MassEffect.exe’ program and bring up Properties.
- Select the Compatibility tab.
- Within the Compatibility mode section select the Run this program in compatibility mode for check-box.
- Make sure the pull-down list has Windows XP (Service Pack 2) selected.
- Now select Run this program as an administrator check-box in the Privilege Level section.
- Press OK.
You should now be able to run the game from within Steam without any problems. Once you have launched Mass Effect for the first time I found you could disable the Run this program as an administrator check-box, that way you are not prompted for administrator rights every time you run the game.
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