Dragon Age 2 - Beta Patch 1.01 released

Chris Priestly made a thread about the released 1.01 beta patch for DA2 on the Bioware tech forums. Link to the patch by following the link to the Bioware forums as this beta patch is a manual download.
Full qoute from Priestly:

What platforms is this for?
• PC only. This patch does not address issues impacting Mac, Xbox360 or PS3.

Where’s the actual patch file?
• The beta patch can be manually downloaded HERE

What are the patch notes?
GENERAL
Fixed save game issues on single core machines
Fixed game asking for non-existent drives
Fixed release control issues where some players were unable to unlock correctly
Fixed a Steam-specific issue related to VO not playing after switching languages**
What does BETA mean?
BETA means:
Users apply this patch at their own risk. In general, we recommend you only download and apply it if you are affected by the specific issues listed in the patch notes.
**Steam does not support BETA patches. Steam users will have to wait for the final non-BETA patch before they can take advantage of these fixes. We're working on it but, unfortunately, this will not occur in time for the weekend.

More information.

That was fast !

Fixed save game issues on single core machines
Fixed game asking for non-existent drives

*wonders*

According to some posters in the DA2 tech forums, the game actually asks to out the the disc in - wait for it - drive A. [Drive A hasn't existed in games for many many years]

Nathan Frederick explained in a thread that the game saves asynchrounously e.g. use core 1 to save the first the, then core 2 to save the second time. Single core machines (like mine) aren't able to do this for obvious reasons.

Fernanda Melo also said (in the now locked thread about v_ware's ban) that people not being to play offline with their dlc actually is a very elusive bug. But this should not happen with da2 since the system now functions in another way.

Ah, thanks for the explanation.

Drive A ? That's curious …

I was hit by the A: bug. Funny thing is that I don't even have a floppy but Windows 7 actually lists a floppy in device manager and with A assigned as the drive letter. I just disabled the floppy device to fix it.

I knew there was a reason I still install 3 1/2" drives in my computers! …I'm screwed if I need a 5 1/4" though.

The surprise for me is that there are still single processor machines out there that meet the specifications for playing DA2. Also surprised that this was not caught in testing but then again they also probably did not expect that either. Most games don't take advantage of it but my 8 year old P4 laptop has 2 processors but I would be surprised if it could run DA2.

Originally Posted by Drithius
I knew there was a reason I still install 3 1/2" drives in my computers! …I'm screwed if I need a 5 1/4" though.

I haven't had floppy drive in my last 4 rigs. Probably been at least 7-8 years since I've used one.

I've had the game freeze on me twice video freezes , sound keeps playing. anyone else having this issue?

found long thread on bioware site please disregard. Thank you..

I'm not sure about the part of Steam not allowing beta patches. I'm quite sure that Company of Heroes has a beta patch available on Steam.

Edit: oh well, it says supports beta patching, so I guess it is just a matter of playing it safe.

Originally Posted by sakichop
I've had the game freeze on me twice video freezes , sound keeps playing. anyone else having this issue?

found long thread on bioware site please disregard. Thank you..

Yeah it's actually not a complete freeze but an incredibly severe video slowdown - if it happens you can usually ctrl+alt+delete to bring up task manager then just re-fullscreen the game. And yes, bringing up task manager will take a while - if it seems like it isn't responding hold down ctrl-alt-delete for about 2 seconds or so before releasing. It seems the slowdown is so abnoxious it interferes with keystroke recognition by the OS.

Of course this will only work if the game does not tend to crash when alt-tabbing or minimizing anyways. for some people it does not. Additionally it is possible you are getting video lock ups, but most people I've talked to are having the same issue I am where the video slows down to frames per minute instead of frames per second and this would fix that. It will happen again after a while of playing, and you just repeat this.

As nice as this patch is fix the dx10 and 11 versions of the game please. Regardless of the hi-res patch its still broken and wasn't fixed for release.