Performance fixes, error fixes, crash remedies and more.

After all this waiting, Dragon Age II is finally out! And what amazing graphics is has… And it has… Dragons! And.. well it has crashes and errors too.

Dragon Age II Doesn’t Load, Has a Black Screen, Performs Poor

First solution

Step 1. Update your video card drivers. Both AMD and NVIDIA go out of their way to develop game-specific fixes and performance enhancements.
You can find the latest NVidia Drivers here. You can find the latest ATI/AMD Drivers here.

Second Solution
Step 1. Increase your fan RPM for your GPU. Many video cards have auto detection levels for the fans, but they do a very poor job. High temperatures can black our your screen and give poor performance.

Third Solution
Try these one step at a time, to see if you can isolate the issue. If not, perform them all then try the game. This is a temporary workaround till patches are released.
Step 1. Disable Vertical Sync
Step 2. Lower your graphics detail
Step 3. Disable Anti Aliasing

If all else fails
Step 4. Disable Full Screen mode

Dragon Age 2 Cannot Autosave / Save

This issue is still up in the air and is being investigated. It is rumored to be a quad-core related problem with Intel.
Try setting your affinity to 1 core, or 2 cores. You can do this by hitting control+alt+delete and choosing a process and hitting “set affinity” after right clicking.

Dragon Age 2 Missing physxcooking.dll

This is because you are missing a file.
Step 1. You can download Physxcooking.dll here.
Step 2. Paste this file into your system32 and system folder. Also put it in your syswow
Step 3. Navigate to your System32(32Bit OS) or SyWOW64(64Bit OS) Folder.
Note: The location of System32 or SyWOW64 is

C:\Windows\\System32 (If you are using 32Bit Windows)
C:\\Windows\\SysWOW64 (if you are using 64Bit Windows)

Step 4. Paste the physxcooking.dll into this folder.
Step 5. Run the game. It might work now.

Dragon Age II Crashes to Desktop (C2D CTD)

Solution 1.
Step 1. Check your computer’s temperatures. This includes the video card, and the CPU. You might be overheating.
Step 2. Press control+alt+delete and make sure you don’t have any processes that are overloading your PC.
Yes I know I just said this earlier. But this appears to work for a lot of things.

Try these one step at a time, to see if you can isolate the issue. If not, perform them all then try the game.
Step 1. Disable Vertical Sync
Step 2. Lower your graphics detail
Step 3. Disable Anti Aliasing

If all else fails
Step 4. Disable Full Screen mode

EADM Does Not Run on Windows 7

Step 1. Update to the latest version of EADM. This new version has full Windows 7 Compatability.

“Error: Could not connect to EA Core” Message in Dragon Age 2

Step 1. Disable your firewall. Make sure you check both your Windows Firewall, and for any additional you may have
Step 2. Disable your anti-virus (at your own risk! Enable it again if this does not work.)
Step 3. Disable any firewall you may have on your router, and enable game mode if applicable.
Step 4. Try reinstalling EA Downloader.
Step 5. Use router port forwarding to forward to a new port.

Dragon Age II has video / graphical artifacts and glitches

Step 1. Check your computer temperatures. This is usually the problem. Increase your videocard’s fan RPM.
Step 2. Update your video card drivers to the latest verson.
Step 3. Turn off any overclocking you might have done.
Step 4. Lower your game settings.
Step 5. Press alt+tab, and/or windows+m to minimize the game. Click on the game again in the taskbar and bring it back up. This can solve the problem a lot as well.

Dragon Age 2 “failed to initialize Physx”

Step 1. Install the latest version of Physx.
Note: Even if you don’t have an NVidia Card or a Physx card you might get this error. Just do step 1 if you get it.

Dragon Age 2 Black Texture Glitch

This error should only effect Nvidia Video Cards
Step 1. The kind folks at Nvidia released a beta driver to fix this. Go to their site and update to the latest driver. This has been a confirmed fix.

Dragon Age 2 Freezes

This can be due to a couple different issues.
Step 1. Update to the latest drivers.
Step 2. Perform a RAM test to make sure you RAM is good. Just because other games work for you, doesn’t mean that your RAM is good.
Step 3. Check to make sure your computer temperatures are in good range.
Step 4. Verify you meet the game requirements below.
Step 5. Verify your computer power supply can handle your computer running on full load.

High Resolution Texture Pack for the PC version of Dragon Age II

If you have a videocard with more than 1GB of memory,
Step 1. you can download the High Resolution Texture Pack for the PC version of Dragon Age II

Game Requirements for Dragon Age 2

Minimum Settings of Dragon Age 2:

OS: Windows XP with SP3, Windows Vista with SP2, or Windows 7
Intel CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo (or equivalent) running at 1.8 GHz or greater
AMD CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 (or equivalent) running at 1.8 GHz or greater
Memory/RAM: 1 GB if on Windows XP, 1.5 GB for Vista and Windows 7)
AMD/ATI Videocard: Radeon HD 2600 Pro 256 MB
NVIDIA Videocard: NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS 256 MB cards
Hard Drive: 7 GB
Sound: Direct X 9.0c Compatible Sound Card
DirectX: 9 or newer

Recommended Settings of Dragon Age 2:

OS: Windows XP with SP3, Windows Vista with SP2, or Windows 7
Intel CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4 GHz Processor or equivalent
AMD CPU: AMD Phenom II X3 Triple core 2.8 GHz or equivalent
Memory/RAM: 2GB (4 GB Vista and Windows 7)
AMD/ATI Video: ATI 3850 512 MB or greater
NVIDIA Video: NVIDIA 8800GTS 512 MB or greater
Hard Drive: 7 GB
Sound: Direct x 9.0c Compatible or greater
Directx: DirectX 10 or 11 Preferred