Mass Effect: Andromeda known issues and troubleshooting tips for black screen, Origin and connection problems

By Sherif Saed

If you’re having problems with Mass Effect: Andromeda on PC, hopefully some of these tips will fix them.

Now that the Origin Access trial of Mass Effect: Andromeda is live and on people’s hard drives, we’re starting to see a number of issues reported by players.

The most common is a black screen on game start-up. EA posted a workaround for this as well as a number of other known issues it’s currently aware of. Find all the details below:

Black screen on start-up or when alt-tabbing away and back

• Check to see if you have the Corsair Utility Engine installed on your system.
• If you do, try uninstalling it and then relaunching the game.

Alternatively, you can try pressing alt-enter to switch to windowed mode. Running the game in windowed mode or in borderless windowed mode makes alt-tabbing easier.

The game doesn’t launch, but it triggers a process in Task Manager

• Your firewall or antivirus may be blocking ActivationUI.exe which is needed to start the game for the first time.
• Add it (default location C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\Mass Effect Andromeda\core\ActivationUI.exe) to your firewall or antivirus whitelist and try launching the game again.

The game won’t launch at all

• Make sure the download is at least 42% complete, which is when you’ll see the ‘Ready to Play’ notification.

Ryder is stuck in an animation and won’t respond to commands

• Try switching between combat and exploration mode.
• Try jumping.
• Try opening and closing your scanner.
• If none of these work, try saving and restarting the game.

Ryder is stuck somewhere in the game and can’t get out

• Use fast travel to extract Ryder.

I turned on HDR and changed my display mode and now graphics look weird (for Radeon GPUs)

• Try alt-tabbing away from the game and back again.
• In your Radeon settings, try turning HDR off and back on again.

When it comes to connection issues, you need to remember the game uses peer-to-peer matchmaking. Multiplayer games are hosted on the machine and connection of one of the players in the lobby. Because of this, your connection to the host will matter.

If you’re having connection issues, or seeing any of these error codes: 10044, 5800, 5801, 5802, 5803, 9001 – try these general fixes:

• Restart your router to refresh your connection.
• Make sure you have an active PlayStation Plus or Xbox Live Gold subscription.
• Make sure you have an open NAT.
• VPNs and proxies on PC may cause issues, turn them off.

If you’re still having connection problems, make sure the following ports are open (forwarded) on your router. These apply to all platforms.

• TCP: 443, 17503, 17504, 10000-19999, 42210, 42130, 42230.
• UDP: 3659, 10000-19999.

Until patches are released, these fixes will also work the game everyone will be getting on March 21 and March 23, so bookmark the page in case you run into any of them.