speed.exe / speed2.exe has encountered a problem...

[armandoban]

Hello! This is me jumping in offering help to lurkers in need..

I have been Googling and forum diving for weeks to find an answer to this crash and finally figured it out via trial and error. I was going crazy, I even tried "less savory" methods on my legit games to get them to work again, no help from EA, no luck on the dark side either.. WEEKS I went without NFSMW..

So if anyone else comes up with the same issue here's what I discovered.

The "speed.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close" message nobody seems to have a solution for was IN MY CASE a "Power Mizer" power-saving feature related to my LCD (GeForce 7900 GTX 512 on an M1710). The screen refresh rate was forcibly reduced to 50Hz when I selected the eco-friendly mode. This causes NFSU1/U2/MW to crash before the load screens can start. It also causes you to pull out hair and scream (if you forget what you did).

Apparently energy-saving features override the card's ability to change refresh rates on the fly when the full-screen 3D app loads up. Unfortunately replacing graphics drivers saved my problem settings, and resetting to default didn't affect the power saving mode. HMMMMM.

Hope someone finds this and gets their game running again!

R3

[deadly_silent44]

Thanks very much. My friend had the same problem and I managed to fix it as well. He couldn't play for ages and was getting really annoyed. Then after I came back from his place, I saw this post... This is a very useful and I am most grateful for it... so the next timed it happens to someone, i shall just forward what you have written.
Thanks.

[Guest]

thanks fr whatever u tried to explain but plzzz in a bit more detailed way
i couldnt made the head or tail of it

[Streetman]

GOOglE is your friend

[yay!]

I had the same problem - and it also had to do with the refresh rate. My monitor wasn't recognized, so in ATI's Catalyst Control Center I had it set to 1680x1050 w/ Max Refresh rate of 60Hz. Changing that to 75Hz (opening up some possibilities) allowed NFS:U2 to run. I'm guessing NFS:MW as well, I haven't installed it yet.

[FreakyDonuts]

hey, i have a similar problem wif NFSMW wenever i try to free roam, get more bounty, or do a milestone challenge in career mode speed.exe quits. my graphics card only has one refresh rate... 60Hz. I can play quick races and even do the race events in career mode but just not the stuff i said b4. i'm on xp sp2. However, i do have a dual boot system with vista.

Surprisingly, NFSMW worked on the vista os but not the xp... Same graphics settings for both and i'm not on power saving mode.

I rly want this to work on my xp coz i'm prob gonna take out the vista partition n just use it for more memory soon. Plus i prefer xp in general...

Any ideas?? plz help me >.<