Windows 7: Issues with Mass Effect 1

About a year ago-ish, I recieved "Mass Effect 1" that my sister bought for me from eBay (much obliged, Sister-thing). However for the life of me I can't get the game to work and I was hoping if someone could help me with this problem.

Before someone asks, yes I have installed the recent patch for the game.

I started trying to get to game running again yesterday and one of the solutions I saw someone suggest was instead of choosing the default file locations (which was in Program Files (x86)), create a new folder in the C: section and put the game in there, so I tried that.

I have also tried setting it to the appropriate compatibility mode (I've tried several different compatibility modes), but that did work either.


I'll explain what's been happening:

So for my first try I right-clicked the desktop icon of the game and selected "Run as administrator". Then I selected the "Play" button when the box-thing showed up(I'm an idiot, forgive me). It began to load the game and then I was give a black screen where I waited for several minutes until I finally pressed the key at the bottom of my keyboard that has the white window on it (I forgot what that key is called), where I see I've recieved this message:

"General protection fault!

History: GMatrix2D::Swap() Address = 0x10bb5ed6 (filename not found) [in C:\Games\Mass Effect\Binaries\MassEffect.exe]
Address = 0x1c1f3ce4 (filename not found)"

The next thing I tried was going to the Binaries folder (C:/Games/Mass Effect/Binaries) and selected MassEffect.exe instead. So I right clicked it, selected "Run as administrator" and instead of taking me to the box where I click play before loading the game, it skipped it and went straight to loading the game. But then I recieved the same problem as I did with my 1st solution.

The next thing I noticed (it's not really important but I feel the need to mention it) is that when I go to My Documents, I find I have 2 Bioware folders for the game. The 1st one is the one that has "Mass Effect", "Dragon Age: Origins" and "Dragon Age 2", and the other one just has Mass Effect. I thought that was a little weird ....



I have a Windows 7 Home Premium x64 bit laptop developed by Toshiba.

this would not work for anyone but You because its not on internet its local file on your pc.

it would be nice to know not only your pc brand and os but other specs.. like video card etc.
maybe you just need some drivers or software intall/upgrade
because games ofter require for example Visual C++ runtimes, .net framework etc.

Ah. Thank you for informing me.

First off system specs would be immensely helpful here.
Tips on Troubleshooting Game Issues

Also do you have SP1 installed for Windows 7? If so, see this post - Games and Win 7 SP1 installed?