How to add a Registry Entry for MELE to fix the game not launching

This guide is designed to help users add a registry entry for Mass Effect Legendary Edition to their Windows 10 and 11 machines if one is not created when they install the game. Without a proper registry entry, the game will not launch.

Foreword

Many users have had an issue with Mass Effect Legendary Edition refusing to launch, no matter what steps they've tried to take to fix it. After trying to help someone and failing, the thought occured to me that perhaps it was a Registry issue. So, I detailed how to add a new entry to that person and they reported that it did work. There is no guarantee this will work for you but I hope it does.

Whenever I tell you to type something in quotation marks, DO NOT type the quotation marks!

How to open the Registry Editor in Windows 10 and 11 + Create a system restore point before doing anything

CREATE A SYSTEM RESTORE POINT BEFORE MAKING CHANGES!!!

To open the Registry Editor, I will give you three options to choose from.

• Click the Start icon and type in "Registry". The Registry Editor Utility should appear immediately.
  
• Press Win+R to open the Run Utility. Type "regedit" and press enter to launch the utility.
  
• Click the Start icon and type in "Run". The Run Utility should appear. Follow the above.

Locating the directory of your BioWare games' registry entries

Now that the Registry Editor is open, in the lefthand pane, navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Bioware

Inside that should be a Mass Effect Legendary Edition subfolder. If not, you will have to add it yourself. If you don't have a BioWare folder, we'll need to create that too. So, you will need to follow the next steps carefully.

If you DO NOT have a BioWare key/folder

Right click the SOFTWARE folder in the left pane and select "New" then "Key". A new subfolder will appear.

Name the new subfolder "BioWare"

Adding the MELE key/folder

Right click the BioWare folder in the lefthand pane and select "New" then "Key". A new subfolder will appear.

Name that subfolder "Mass Effectâ„¢ Legendary Edition"

Adding the keys to the MELE key/folder

Now, in the righthand pane, you should see one entry named "(Default)" and nothing else. Double click it and then click "OK" in the window that pops up to remove the "Value Not Set" message.

Right click anywhere in the right pane and select "New" then "String Value". Do this four times so you have a total of five entries.



Doubleclick the second entry.

In the window that pops up, enter "displayname" in the Value name field and "Mass Effect™ Legendary Edition" in the Value data field. Click OK to save it.



Doubleclick the third entry.

In the window that pops up, enter "install dir" in the Value name field and "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Mass Effect Legendary Edition\" in the Value data field.

If this is not the directory of your MELE install, change it to the correct one,

Click OK to save it.



Doubleclick the fourth entry.

In the window that pops up, enter "locale" in the Value name field and "en_US" in the Value data field.

If that's not your region, use this list to find yours. https://stackoverflow.com/a/28357857

Examples are en_GB for English-Great Britain or fr_FR for French-France.

Click OK to save it.



Doubleclick the fifth entry.

In the window that pops up, enter "product guid" in the Value name field and "{068668C4-0B89-4431-A749-1829F845DB87}" in the Value data field.

Click OK to save it.

Congrats, you have a registry entry!

You now have a valid Registry entry for the game. Assuming that is all that was missing, this could fix your issue completely.

Your Registry Entry should look like this for comparison.


If this helped you, please give a rating and/or leave a comment to let others know.

[Jonathan J. O'Neill]

I'm sorry this didn't work for you. It's only one of several reasons that may cause the game to not launch.

[zxcc24]

This didn't do shit.

[Jonathan J. O'Neill]

Happy this helped you.

[MitchMeister-]

This worked, really appreciate it.

[NEXOR11]

I have a different problem the game in x part just froze and kick me out and don't let me do anything it happen to someone?

[Jonathan J. O'Neill]

I couldn't say. I've never owned ME:A.

[Charlemagne-X]

Would this work for ME:A?

[Hipster Doofus]

This didn't work for me, but what did work was to run the launcher as admin:

1. Navigate to the Mass Effect Legendary Edition Launcher folder: steamapps\common\Mass Effect Legendary Edition\Launcher
2. Right-Click MassEffectLauncher.exe and open Properties
3. Open the Compatibility tab and tick "Run this program as an administrator"
4. Click on Apply, OK, then run the game via Steam

[Coeal]

no dice for me.
oddly, i have both Mass Effectâ„¢ Legendary Edition and Mass Effect Legendary Edition folders under bioware. both are filled by the same entries, and are correct.

[ferdster]

On my system the MELE folder and keys were already there in the registry, but the location and directory were wrong, but every time I change them and relaunch the game it automatically reverts my changes back to the incorrect things... Any idea on how to fix that?