Your problem points at poor, low quality hardware as the cause. The minuimum graphics is a real video card from a professional graphics company with a serious interest in game players' needs. Intel doesn't care at all what is required for games, and their foolish smoke and mirrors tricks simply don't work with ME-1, not at all.
If you do not have such a bad video solution, you could have corrupt game files, or the drivers / DirectX files are damaged, however, Intel's Tinker Toys are the most likely source of this.
Minimum System Requirements for Mass Effect on the PC
(Corrected from dumb, Pie in the Sky marketing exaggerations to the real thing)
Operating System:
Windows XP or Vista
Processor:
2.4+GHZ Intel or 2.0+GHZ AMD
Memory:
1 Gigabyte Ram (XP)
2 Gigabyte Ram (Vista)
Video Card:
NVIDIA GeForce 6 series (6800GT or better: 210, 310, 7100, 7200, 7300, 7400, 7500, 7600 GS, 8200, 8300, 8400 GS, 8500, 9200, & 9300 are below minimum system requirements)
ATI Radeon X1650 XT (X1300, X1300 Pro, X1550, HD 2400, HD 3100, HD 3200, HD 3450, HD 3470, HD 4200, HD 4350, HD 4550, and even HD 5450 are below minimum system requirements)
Hard Drive Space:
12 Gigabytes
Sound Card:
DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card and drivers
( Note that the unpatched game will *not* run in Windows 7. )
