Borrowing it off my brother, because I'd like to play through it even though I have 2 and 3 on PS3 and won't be getting either of those for PC.

But the darn thing always crashes as soon as I hit "Play" in the menu screen. I just get a "Mass Effect has stopped working" dialogue box with a "do you want to go online to search for a solution" option, which is useless because no solutions are ever found. First time is updated the game to 1.02, but all that did was stop the game from crashing before I could do the initial configuration. Now I can do the initial configuration with 1.02, but that's as far as I can go.

I don't have the flashest of gaming set ups on my PC, but surely even a relatively basic 1GB graphics card on a mid level 2011 PC has the grunt to play Mass Effect. This PC plays Dragon Age 2 on moderate settings without any problem.

This isn't a Windows 7 compatibility problem is it?

Any advice greatly appreciated.

so by borrowed I assume a retail disc? could be a DRM issue

A friend of mine has this same problem. I'm pretty sure it's because of DRM - one install per disc.

It should be cheap to buy new, so you might want to look into that.

Set it to run as administrator or try the xp compatibility mode

and if that doesn't work try temporarily disabling your antivirus software, and as always make sure you graphics drivers are up to date

Can't be one install per disc (unless they're lying - that would never happen right?). Because I uninstalled the game thinking it could have been an install fault, and a message popped up after the uninsall saying the game is completely uninstalled and it can now be installed (and played one assumes) on another PC. After reading that I got my brother to uninstall Mass Effect on his PC thinking that because you need an active internet connection to play ME the EA/Bioware server checks that any given disc is only installed on one PC at a time. After he uninstalled off his PC the game still wouldn't work. Though he did tick the "keep data files" option during uninstall, so maybe that's still blocking my playing of the game. He did mention that the "you can now install Mass Effect on another PC" message did not come up for him. I wonder, if it is a one PC at a time DRM if we're now screwed because my brother kept the data files and if he wipes them the Bioware servers won't recognise this as a total uninstall.

Did your friend end up getting the game new and it worked fro him? I'm worried if I buy the game I might get the same problem because there's some other issue not related to DRM. Damn I wish if DRM is blocking a game from being played that the shut down message would actually say that.

Online Pass certainly beats game crashes without proper explanation. I'd be happy to pay $10 for online pass to be able to play a borrowed Mass Effect, but online pass isn't in effect for Mass Effect.

I did wonder about graphics driver so I did an update.

How does one temporarily disable anti-virus software. I have McAfee Security Centre (the free one that comes with the new PC which expires end of this year).

Dunno how to do either of those things.

Double-click the taskbar icon to open the Security Center

Click Advanced Menu (lower left)

Click Configure (left)

Click Computer & Files (upper left)

VirusScan can be disabled on the right. 

from a quick google search, may be out of date 

Find the Mass Effect.exe on your PC harddrive. Right click on it and click on properties. Then go to the compatability tab.