Mass Effect 2-PC Keeps Crashing on Illium

[ewak89]

Mass Effect 2-PC keeps crashing on Illium when I try to take the cab to the area with the Justicar. It was previously crashing in the more common place under Liara's office but I was able to get past there after changing all my graphics settings to low/off and switching to borderless windowed mode. I have tried it with graphics settings both on/off and in windowed/fullscreen modes. I also left and returned to illium with different squadmates to see if that would solve my problem. Finally I tried a reinstall but that hasn't worked either. If anyone has any other suggestions they would be greatly appreciated. I am trying to play back through before starting 3. 

My PC specs are

OS: Windows 8

RAM: 16GB

SSD: 128GB

HDD: 2TB (has Origin install and game files)

GPU: GTX 680

CPU: i5-3570k

[Bakgrind · Accepted solution]

On the Steam platform I had to disable   dynamic shadows and  light shadows and I also had to play in  window mode just to be able to do the quests on Illium.

[Gorath_the_Elder]

I remember that some folks had trouble there, but not what it was.  What did you learn using Google / Yahoo to search? 

[ewak89]

I didn't find any official answers and almost everyone was able to get past it by changing to borderless or altering some other graphical settings. I tried all of those suggestions and more and it still just crashes.

[Aerothorn]

For the record, this is the main topic dealing with this subject:

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/106/index/4763858/1

It's a bug with Lair of the Shadow Broker, possibly on 64-bit Windows Vista/7 machines. Bioware/EA has not acknowledged it and clearly has no plans to fix it, which is pretty disgusting, if you ask me.

[ThandalNLyman]

Same kind of thing happening to me, but it occurs during combat.  I know you tried adjusting your graphics detail and full-screen/windowed settings, but have you tried using a lower resolution?  I ask because that's the next thing I'm going to try...

I'm so tired of fighting the same battles over-and-over-and-over not because I can't win them, but because I get the "Mass Effect 2 has stopped working" crash message right in the middle.

[ThandalNLyman]

Thx, areothorn!  I read through the BSN topic you provided, and it seems that this is a sound/graphics interaction problem. 

Doing certain things (like moving across a specific point) which trigger certain other things (like playing a particular sound clip) with certain configurations of graphics HW and settings causes the crash.  Tweaking any/all of them in different combinations overcomes the problem for (almost) everyone.

As with many other CtD events, audio drivers appear to be the real culprit even though everyone pays more attention to the video ones...

[ewak89]

That's one of the threads I've been looking at, thanks for posting it areothorn. I'm going to try a reinstall without shadow broker and see if I can get that to work. I agree, bugs came up they didn't expect but they could at least have acknowledged it and tried to help people find a solution.

Also, yes thandalnlyman I have tried at lower resolutions without success unfortunately. Thank you for the suggestion though!

[Donenzonen]

The solution is to turn your soundsettings to 44000hz or lower.

[jumperblock]

I had the same error to but when i finished tlotsb because i have origin i just went to settings and clicked repair and the played in windowed mode and it worked.

[Bakgrind · Accepted solution]

On the Steam platform I had to disable   dynamic shadows and  light shadows and I also had to play in  window mode just to be able to do the quests on Illium.