How to Fix Dragon Age: Origins Freezings

Dragon Age: Origins has just been released and I noticed that BioWare did a really great job with the game, at least regarding bugs, freezes and crashes. However, there are a number of people who are having problems with the game which freezes at key points, like cutscenes, when trying to take screenshots or immediately after loading a game. So… let’s try to find out how to correct Dragon Age: Origins freezings!

The most important thing is to make sure that your system meets the minimum system requirements for playing DA:O (click this link to see the minimum system requirements).

If your system is powerful enough to run the game, but the game still freezes, try one of the following possible solutions:

– make sure that all your drivers are up to date
– lower the video settings
– disable the sound and see if that fixes the problem
– try cutting down on the cores or disabling some (some users are reporting on the official forums that this helps them keep the game running)
– if Dragon Age: Origins freezes while trying to take automatic screenshots, you can disable them by going to the Options menu in the launcher and under the “Online” section ticking off the appropriate instruction.

Do you have or did you have any problems running Dragon Age: Origins? If so, did you manage to fix them? Help our readers fix their DA:O freezings by sharing your experience in the comment section below!

9 comments

Kurt November 11, 2009 6:32 am

I installed DA:O on my 3 mhz Dell XPS (with 512 geforce invidia card) and the cut scenes/ mini movies are so choppy (both the image and the sounds) as to be unviewable. And the game runs kinda slowly. I’ve tried to turn down the settings to minimize system requirements, but it doesn’t help. Worse yet, there is no help on the official DA:O website. The game is certainly too messed up to work on a 3 ghz machine.

AlexD November 23, 2009 10:34 pm

I have discovered the real problem with this game and that is it’s sound. After reading up on many forums and other sites about ways to fix my Dragon Age, i stumbled upon this solution by accident. It seems Bioware did something wrong with the sounds and i suspect people with onboard sound cards are having the same issues as i do: the game runs on any possible combination of video settings slowly and it lags. While tinkering with my notebook, i figured i’d try and stop using all the other programs in Windows, including Explorer and that made my sound driver disabled. When i got back to my game i realized that i didn’t have anymore sound, but that the game ran as smoothly as it could on any possible video setting. So i guess that’s it > somehow, the sound system of the game is busted.

Terry Hazelwood January 2, 2010 9:15 am

I am running XP (sp3) I have an intel quad core 2.66GHz and a NVidia 8800GTS (with only 320Mb Ram) and I have 2GB of RAM onboard.
I too was having constant freezing whilst playing my game. I tried lowering graphics etc but to no avail. Then I read the above note re disabling the cores. I tried with 2 cores but that was also unstable, so I tried running it with 1 core only…. Magic, I have had only 1 crash since, and that was after about 2 hours, apart from that it’s fine.
To disable the cores, simply start the game (but don’t play) then get task manager running, select it, in the applications, then select ‘go to process’, this will take you to the dragons age launcher, select this then go to ‘set affinity’ this will open up the box with your processor cores. Simply disable 1 or 3 cores (depending on if you are duo core or quad). Sounds tricky, but it’s easy. Hopefully this will fix your problem!

Kindergraff January 16, 2010 4:32 pm

yo, just a quick question will DA work on the following specs?
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8600 @2.40 GHz 2.40 GHz
Ram Installed: 4.00 GB
Windows Version: Windows 7 Ultimate
System type 64-bit Operating System
Video Card ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470
– Aprox. Total Memory 2026 MB
-256 MB dedicated

Thanks in advance !

zjs January 22, 2010 12:00 am

If anybody of you have problem with freezing game, propably it´s same problem as mine. Try this: game had problem to work on dual core, so in task manager just turn off one from two procesors which are used by game. Game can without problem runs only on one procesor. This fully solved my probelm with freezing.

tha_Grasshopper April 4, 2010 6:09 pm

i am running on m2n-sli with 2.4ghz 4600+ dualcore 3 gigs ram and a asus engt240 512 ddr5
and did everything possible and still the game freezes in a cutscene.
so i think the problem is in the cutscene-movies,
because when i set my cpu to 1 core the game runs fine, until i get to the cutscenes like the landsmeet in denerim.
and i only had freezes during these cutscenes .
also i read on other forums that it is a memoryleak so my gues is the cutscenes use up al the memory resulting in a cpu overload causing the game to crash .
i will try the audio solution mentioned above and let you know if it worked

tha_Grasshopper April 4, 2010 6:11 pm

by the way i forgot to mention that im running on windows 7 ultimate 64

dragondeathlord April 23, 2010 8:24 pm

Windows 7 64 bit 2
sli Geforce 9800 gt
6 gigs of ram
CPU quad Q9400 2.66 GHz

Here my stat sorry I forgot. When the game crashes it’s a total Freeze and Not even Ctr alt del works.(I need to Turn the power off to get out the freeze.

All drivers are current and Game dose run as Admin and phyx is updated to current as is my Direct X.

The game used to run smooth as silk with all the graphic set to max now after patch 1.03 the game slows down and freezes after 2 minutes of combat.Other wise it will run fine till combat then Freezes up.

ps not steem real cd install.

NovicUser December 31, 2010 5:14 pm

I installed Dragon Age Ultimate edition on my HP pavillion y6510p system that has a quad core processor and 4GB or RAM. I used the keybindings cheats I.G. making the shortcut properties modifications (-enabledeveloperconsole) and now after using the cheats the game locks up or even freezes. anyone have any useful info on this subject???