I have literally tried everything, but DAO still won't work?

[Myuki]

I have gone through and tore my computer apart trying to get this darn game to work.
All my drivers are updated. I uninstalled and reinstalled PhysX. Went through, changed file names. Honestly, I've tried every single suggestion that I have been able to find online to fix this game.

The weird part about it is, about a week or two ago, the game was working just fine? No issues, running smoothly without crashing or having any difficulties at all. But now, suddenly, it just stopped working properly.
The game opens up to the launcher where I can choose to click play, or configure or support, whatever. If I click play, the launcher starts - the window with the Dragon Age logo and Morrigan's lovely face shows up, and then the screen will usually flash black, like the game is trying to launch, and then it crashes. Windows 8 so cordially pops up with an entirely unhelpful "Dragon Age Origins has stopped working, Windows is finding a solution to the problem!" followed with no solution or helpful information whatsoever (thanks Windows for wasting my time watching the green bar go back and forth).

I don't know what the issue is. I have literally tried everything I could find that was suggested, and I still can't get the game to work. PLEASE, if anyone has any suggestions or ideas that haven't already been popularized by the rest of the internet, I would love to hear it. I'm driving myself mad trying to get this to function properly.

[Bloodhawk]

Have you tried inputting your CD key(s) into Origin and trying the Origin version? I know Mass Effect 1 and 2 keys from Steam are redeemable on Origin. I don't see why DA:O keys wouldn't be. You could try and see if that version is more compatible.

[Myuki]

I was actually using the Origin version when this all started, and then switched to Steam when I couldn't get it to work (wondering if maybe using it through Steam would make a difference. it didn't.)
So I'm still just stuck. I can't help but wonder if PhysX updated maybe? and now it isn't compatible with the game anymore? DA:O works just fine on my friend's laptop, but she doesn't have an nVidia graphics card. If I can recall properly, I think it stopped working when I updated the driver for my graphics card. But I don't really know for sure. :\

[the Way]

Well based on what you said, I will presume you already did the set affinity change mentioned in the sticky thread of this forum... If by some chance not, then do. Other potential thing thats comes to mind is try to hard disable in the driver profile for the game, presuming you have an Nvidia card, some of the newer things that didnt exist then like hard set off threaded optimization and perhaps also try to hard set off shader cache... I am having intermittent crashes on my nvidia. I just did the affinity thing going to see how that shakes out, but if that doesnt work out my next plan is to start doing what I am suggesting to you here. Mind you my crashing is infrequent so im borderline meh about it... FYI im doing the affinity thing manually cause the shortcut didnt work for me.. it still would have affinity set to all cores and right now im not motivated enough by my problem level to sort it...

[Socket15]

I am having the same problem. I cannot even get past the starting screen. I click play, the game starts, black screens, then crashes. I cannot set the affinity either because by the time I hit ctrl alt del the game has crashed completely and it says it's unable to accomplish it. Very frustrating. I'm running a gtx 980, i5, 28g ram etc. I shouldn't have any problems at all.

[the Way]

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/40339-cpu-affinity-shortcut-program-create-windows.html

that webpage has a better and accurate method for creating a shortcut to set affinity at launch.

Maybe even better option...

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/83864-processor-affinity-add-set-affinity-context-menu.html

There are links for registry entries that will let you right click and launch an app with affinity.

There is also a program out there that will automatically make shortcuts for you but i cant find it at the moment...

[Rob]

have you tried turning it on and off again?

[Moffin Bovin]

run it as an administrator. Or dont run it as one, i cant remember. Whichever one you are doing now, try the opposite. I don't have windows 8 but i know on Windows 7 it would cause the game to not start. The launcher would start but clicking play wouldnt start the game.