Mass Effect 2 black screen before Squad Selection

[teoderico]

Hello Everybody,

I am on my second playthrough of Mass Effect Trilogy, with all DLC files (excluded Multiplayer). For this second play, I installed ME1, ME2 and ME3 by Origin on a Micro SD card, for saving space on a laptop with SSD disk only. I did that because I have space today, quite sure not enough tomorrow and I want to avoid to reinstall games and/or programs.

Back to problem, every time I go to whatever mission (click “land” on planet from Galaxy Map) the screen goes black! The only choice is Ctrl+Alt+Del, end ME2, restart and then clicking on “resume” the games load the Squad Selection Screen, and I play the mission.

I specify that ME2 starts by TexMod with ME2Game.exe, otherwise tpf files are not loaded on my PC.

With ME1 on same location, Texmod, tpf fles I didn’t have any problem.

Video and Audio Drivers are the latest release.

I don’t know if to have the game on Micro SD card and Bioware folder on SSD disk C: could be a reason…

I followed some suggestions found on the web: repairing and/or reinstalling games files, installing smaller .bik files, setting video option to lowest and then to highest, writing “-nomovies” in command section, but no one worked, so I went back to original.

ME2 doesn’t freeze on loading movie (just one time…), but when it switch from movie to Squad Selection screen…

Ctrl+Alt+Del let me play at the end, but it is very annoying to do for each mission… Furthermore I am obliged to make a lot of save files, to avoid whatever additional problem…

Can someone help me?

Thanks a lot for help

[holger1405]

@teoderico

The game on one drive and the Bioware folder on another is normally not an issue.

The game on a MicroSD with additional files loaded whit Texmod could be one.

How high is the transfer-speed of that MicroSD card?

Did you tested without loading additional files with Texmod?

You might like to check out ME3 explorer (works for ME2 as well.)

[teoderico]

Hi Holger1405, and thanks for reply.

The MicroSD card is a SDXC card by Sundisk, with 18MB/sec transfer rate (average).

I used ME3 explorer with ME3 only, but previous releases than the actual one (3.0 on Nexus), due to old mod that I installed. Anyway I will check out with ME2 and looks what happens.

I played without TPF loaded, but nothing changed.

I played with TPF files modified by me. I extracted graphic files, added one/two tatoos, then rebuild the tpf giving a different file name (just to avoid confusion).

So I loaded the original TPF, but nothing changed.

I played with original Coalesced and modded Coalesced (no starting movies, more probes and fuel capacity)

But I have the same issues.

For almost all missions the screen become black between the loading screen and the squad selection screen. “Almost” because with Jack, Zaeed and Jacob loyalty missions it didn’t happen.

Furthermore I am not able to proceed with Overlord missions now… after Prometheus Station I leave with Hammerhead, loading screen, and the screen become black. With others mission restarting ME2 and then Resume button the Squad Selection screen appears, here I am back before leaving with Hammerhead.

So if ending ME2, restarting and resuming allow me to go on playing, the Overlord stop is more worrying.

With ME1 any problem, with ME2 black screen problem… I am afraid what could happens with ME3…

Anyway I don’t give up, because if  played one time the trilogy, there must be the solution to play it again.

[holger1405]

@teoderico

If you not applied any mods with ME3 Explore into the game files try to repair the game. (in Origin > Game Library > right click ME2 > Repair)

Than test the game.

I would suggest not to use any mods until the black screen problem is gone.