I have spent hours googling forums to get this game to work properly-have solved one
"Game not working" glitch only to get another;
After finally getting to the illusive man and ready to go to investigate colony(at beginning
of game) I need to press "esc" key to access the menu. I was only able to get it once but now every time
I press "esc", the game crashes to desktop and says "Mass Effect 2 has stopped working"
The game plays fine except for this problem, which prevents being able to save as well as access
all other info.
Am playing on Dell XPS laptop, 8 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GT525M, 1GB graphics.(have adjusted settings to
use this for Mass Effect 2) Before I did this, the Intel integrated was causing game to crash even sooner.

If anyone has had this problem,and solved it, I would So love to hear from you! ? ?

Oh, dear! I have the game, but am playing on a GTX 660TI and it's working just fine. Sorry I can't help.

See if Dell has different video drivers for your video card.
As far as I can tell, the problem is related to Optimus.
You may have already seen this, but...
http://answers.ea.com/t5/Mass-Effect-2/M...ring/m-p/556768

Thanks Jenny-
I applyed the suggestion in the EA forum you found, so I'll see
if it works.
Meanwhile, what is Optimus?

"Optimus" is the name of the system a lot of laptops are using, where they use Intel graphics with an Nvidia chipset piggybacked on top of it. It's supposed to save power by detecting when you don't need Nvidia and automatically switching to the low-powered Intel graphics. They advertise the laptop as having Nvidia graphics, but it's not exactly the same as having 100% Nvidia graphics. Laptops that use Optimus need special drivers designed for "Optimus." Optimus has been known to cause problems in some games. Ideally they'd fix the drivers when there is a problem with a popular game.

Good luck.

Thanks again Jenny-
I've updated the Dell drivers and changed the setting on the Nvidia graphics
to "Mass Effect 2 Game.exe" as per instructions in the EA forum, but
the same problem exists. I guess I'll have to give up on this for the time
being. (BooHoo!-looks like a great game)

Thanks for explaining Optimus- guess its time for a real gaming computer.