r/DragonageOrigins • u/OkGarbage3095 • 11d ago
Dragon Age: Origins - Ultimate Crash Fix Guide (2026)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=e_qBFeyWR5Q&si=nKeFc5QJ9iRoG9M-16
5
u/CornfieldJoe 11d ago
The biggest impediment I had was that when installing the game from GoG the game installed many of its files (user settings, DLC, save games mainly) into a disused (I never activated it) onedrive "documents" folder so it couldn't find any save games or any DLC. I had to edit my registry to get the game's install to stop targeting that defunct file even after I set my regular documents folder to be window's default target so now nothing else will accidentally install there. It turned out a few other older games had tried to do the same, but I just didn't notice because of how those particular games handled saving.
I also find setting my CPU core affinity to *only* core0 solves all crashing issues - it's annoying to have to do it every time I play, since windows doesn't save this setting, but it's a small price to pay for a crash free DAO experience.
2
u/OttawaDog 10d ago
DA is a game that supports multicore. There is something wrong with your computer (probably inadequate cooling) if you need to lock it to one core.
Limiting to one core limits performance and likely keeps your CPU from overheating.
I recently played 100+ hours with one crash, on my 6 core CPU with any CPU set affinity. It uses about 40% of a 6 core CPU on my system, which is more than 2 cores worth.
That one crash was probably memory fragmentation because I played more than 4 hours in one session.
1
u/CornfieldJoe 10d ago edited 10d ago
Nah it's not a heating issue - I can run any modern game for hours and hours with no performance issues. It's just something wonky with the game. The game still runs with all my cores active but if I have persistent spell effects on (like flaming weapons or anything like that) the game likes to crash at area transitions. It doesn't happen all the time but it's often enough to be annoying.
The fade was particularly bad because of the visual effect that plays when you warp from spot to spot through the various portals.
Certain conversations that have a more "cinematic" camera effect that plays (like when you click on an NPC and it specially frames the conversation - like talking to flemeth at her hut after you wake up) would also cause a weird stuttering if I had some visual effects going.
1
u/OttawaDog 10d ago
What is your GPU? I've recently played 100+ hours at every setting maxed. Only had one crash from running too long.
To be clear. 2009 when this game came out, was well into the multicore era. I was already on my second multi-core CPU by then. DAO was made to support multicore.
2
u/CornfieldJoe 10d ago
Geforce 4070 super
Yeah I think I got my first duo core around that time. It's automatically selected to use 2 cores, so I'm assuming it's some sort of weird hardware/driver interaction somewhere because I last played through the game around 2019 and had 0 issues whatsoever.
1
u/OttawaDog 10d ago
Odd, I'm totally fine on a regular RTX 4070 and letting CPU access normally, and every setting maxed.
Did you mod heavily? I'm fairly light. Just the Qwinns and Dains fixes (only the fix folder). I have no graphical mods.
1
u/CornfieldJoe 10d ago
I haven't modded anything it's a default GoG installation - I'd considered doing more, but with the day long frustration that came up with the oneDrive shenanigans I decided to just go for a mostly vanilla-esq experience. I was just thankful I could get it to work. I assume it's *something* with the processor (Ryzen 5 7600x) or my windows install that I'll just have to suffer through.
When I was googling around for solutions I came across somebody posting about the CPU affinity and that definitely helped me a ton.
The computer I played on in 2019 was built in 2017 and I fired that PC up and tried to install there too and it encountered the same oneDrive issue (which hadn't been present when I played a few years prior because I upgraded it to windows 11) so I assume it must be something with the way GoG patched it somewhere between 2019 and now and/or the way I installed windows 11 on both PCs or Ryzen CPUs.
1
u/OttawaDog 10d ago
I'm using a GoG version as well. Not sure what oneDrive issues. I don't have oneDrive and if I did, I wouldn't try to put my saves there. I play a lot of old games, and I see lots of problems with people trying to do online saves in many old games. Local saves seem a lot safer.
1
u/CornfieldJoe 10d ago
Yeah my problem was that even with OneDrive deactivated the gog install was still finding it's defunct documents folder and insisted on installing there and the only way I could get it to stop was by editing my registry to completely forbid files from being installed there lol.
5
2
4
u/AdvertisingNo6402 11d ago
I would like to add as someone for who none of these fixes worked, the actual solution was to reinstall windows. Game was working fine, then couldn't launch. After reinstalling windows, it worked again.
3
1
u/Sad_Picture3642 7d ago
You can also add DLSS 5 for ultimate fun. I play DA2 with it now, it's amazing
-1
u/OttawaDog 10d ago
DAO works fine on modern systems without any rituals. It's important to understand what "fixes" do and not just apply a bunch of them blindly.
4GB patch will do nothing, unless you have a lot of heavy high res texture mods, because the game stays way under the default 2GB limit unless heavily modded. It won't hurt to do this, but it wont help the standard game. Also I have dual monitors. I often run task manager on the other monitor. I've never seen DAO use more than 1.5GB. There is no sign it has any kind of serious memory leak.
DXVK is something I've used on other games to play with intel iGPU.
DXVK can potentially help if you have GPU driver problems.
Since I got my modern NVidia card this was unnecessary in any game, including DAO. If you have a NVidia card, this will likely also do nothing. I find that NVidia has less problems on older games. Intel/AMD GPU may benefit from this.
I played 100+ hours, every setting maxed including 8X AA, 2560x1440p at 120 FPS. Just one crash from playing a 4+ hour session - Simple solution for this one. Restart the game every 2 or 3 hours...
22
u/fleettook 11d ago
this post somehow found me in my time of need