Can't get past loading screen after upgrading to Windows 10

[NickGlowsinDark]

And yes, I've made sure my graphics drivers are up to date.

Here's the full timeline:

1) Upgraded computer hardware so that DA:I is playable with ultra settings

2) Played up until the boss fight at the Winter Palace questline.  After defeating her, the gates wouldn't open, and combat wouldn't end, even though there were no more enemies to fight (read about other people having this problem, something related to autosaving while in combat).

3) Started a new game- after the intro, I started in some glitched-out version of the Fade (where the cinematic bit with the spiders takes place).  Read about other people having this problem, decided to wait for a patch (since it happened with every new game I started).

4) Saw people say that DA:I runs better in Windows 10, decided to wait for upgrade before playing again

5) Upgraded to Windows 10, got an error message when trying to start the game about dbdata.dll being "not designed for Windows."

6) Uninstalled, redownloaded, reinstalled game.

7) Now, the game starts, but never gets past the initial black loading screen.  Mouse moves, and the little inquisition symbol in the lower-right pulses like it's supposed to, but after waiting fifteen-twenty minutes, nothing happens.

I checked all my drivers, made sure I'm running the most recent version of DirectX, disabled antivirus, tried running it from the .exe instead of through the Origin launcher, and made sure there were no funky command line parameters entered.  It ran fine (more or less) before; the only thing that's changed is the upgrade to Windows 10.  Can't seem to find anyone else having this problem (in fact, everyone is pretty adamant that Windows 10 and DA:I get along beautifully together), and I'm out of ideas.

[Fred_vdp]

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1) Upgraded computer hardware so that DA:I is playable with ultra settings

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What are your hardware specs and video driver version?

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3) Started a new game- after the intro, I started in some glitched-out version of the Fade (where the cinematic bit with the spiders takes place).  Read about other people having this problem, decided to wait for a patch (since it happened with every new game I started).

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Did you modify the game's shortcut to unlock the framerate in cutscenes?

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4) Saw people say that DA:I runs better in Windows 10, decided to wait for upgrade before playing again

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Not sure about the game's performance, but my load times were reduced drastically when using DirectX as the API. Mantle load times are now insanely long.

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I checked all my drivers, made sure I'm running the most recent version of DirectX, disabled antivirus, tried running it from the .exe instead of through the Origin launcher, and made sure there were no funky command line parameters entered.  It ran fine (more or less) before; the only thing that's changed is the upgrade to Windows 10.  Can't seem to find anyone else having this problem (in fact, everyone is pretty adamant that Windows 10 and DA:I get along beautifully together), and I'm out of ideas.

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When you upgraded to Windows 10, did you completely remove all graphics drivers from your previous version of Windows? If you install new drivers on top of the old ones, traces will remain, which can result in serious issues.

[NickGlowsinDark]

8-core processor,4.3GHz

Windows 10 (64bit)

32GB RAM

NVidia GeForce GTX 970, with the Windows 10 GeForce Driver version 353.62

Windows is installed on its own SSD with about 40Gb free space, Dragon Age is running off a different SSD with 270Gb free space left.

I don't think I had anything changed with the framerate before, but that was also about five months ago- I'm not too concerned about the new-game thing right now; I can't even get to that point currently.

I didn't initially uninstall my drivers, but after coming to the forums and seeing the thread about Windows 10 and graphics drivers, I uninstalled everything that mentioned nVidia, and then reinstalled it all afterwards.  Dragon Age still operates exactly the same- as soon as you click "Play" (or run the .exe), the screen goes to the black-with-the-inquisition-symbol loading screen, and never goes away.  I don't get any sort of "Windows thinks this program has stopped responding" messages or anything, and it consistently pulls about 7-10% CPU resources when it's like that, like it's actually trying to do something.  But after twenty minutes, I figure there's definitely something wrong.  Before upgrading Windows, I don't think I even saw that screen for more than a second- it pretty much loaded directly onto the main menu.

[Fred_vdp]

Could you try resetting your graphics settings by deleting the two ProfileOptions files in Documents - Bioware - Dragon Age Inquisition - Save, and then try to load the game?

[NickGlowsinDark]

No dice.  Deleted them, clicked "Play" from the Origin launcher, got some sort of "Hey, your save files aren't synced" message and chose "use local files," which I figured would generate new profile files.

Same loading screen as before.

Did it again, but just from running the .exe - same thing.

[Fred_vdp]

Are your save files corrupt perhaps? Does the same issue occur when loading a different file or starting a new game?

[NickGlowsinDark]

I can't even get to the screen where I would try that- literally as soon as I run the program, it just sticks at a loading screen.  I never even get the chance to see the menu.  Besides, I've deleted all my previous saves by this point, looking for anything that might be the source.\

I just finished uninstalling it and now I'm redownloading-and-installing it again, just in case there was something corrupted with the installation file (network blip or something) that the installer didn't catch for some reason.  Can't think of anything else to try.  By this point, it will be as if I had just purchased the game and am trying to run it on a new computer.  Starting to fee like I wasted $60 here.

[Fred_vdp]

You said you uninstalled your Nvidia drivers before updating to the newest driver, but did you use software like ccleaner to make sure all traces of your old driver version are gone?

https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

[MOJayhawker]

I saw in another post that someone had a crashing error using a new install of Windows 10. Forgive me but I've lost the post link.

In that post, someone suggested that if you still can't get the game to work after all drivers are uninstalled and reinstalled, try using compatibility mode and backing up to the last Windows version where the game did work. The next step was to also run the game as an administrator as well as using compatibility mode. 

I'm doing research on this before I upgrade Windows so I can be prepared. Hope this helps!