I just though I would share this with the community for those of you that are in the same boat I was in. On the PC version of Mass Effect 2 I was having problems with it taking anywhere from 60-120 seconds to load whenever I would transfer from deck to deck of the Normandy. Now I thought this was just how the game worked, but after searching around I found this fix, and my loads went form taking two minutes to less then 3 seconds. To say the least my mind was blown. I wish I knew about this before I spent about 30 hours putting up with these nightmarishly long load times.

Anyway, the reason you're here. The problem is with a bug in the unreal engine for those of you using dual core processors. The bug essentially multiples the load times by upwards of 10 times what it's supposed to be. To fix this simply do the following:

1. Once you start the game alt tab back to the desktop.
2. Go to your task manager ( ctrl +alt+ delete)
3. Find "masseffect2.exe" in the processes list, then right click it and go to "Set Affinity...".
4. Change it to one core, then click ok.
5. Re-open it again and set it back to two.
6. Congratulations, you just cut your load times to nothing! Sadly you will need to do this every time you start the game.

Hope this helps someone. I know my enjoyment of the game went through the roof after doing this fix.

I remember KaosAngel mentioning this a while ago actually. What about quad cores?

Quads are fine, my i7 920 has been loading normally.  Shame that the fix for dual cores is the set the affinity to a single thread, that pretty much eliminates the multicore performance advantage (and unreal engine 3 laps up multi core systems).

" Quads are fine, my i7 920 has been loading normally.  Shame that the fix for dual cores is the set the affinity to a single thread, that pretty much eliminates the multicore performance advantage (and unreal engine 3 laps up multi core systems). "

Weird bug, my loading times have always been superfast, going up to the capn's cabin barely has time to show the loading screen before I'm there.

My load times take 1-10 seconds. 15 for major areas.

Seems to only affect certain people, regardless of dual core or not. Hopefully they patch whatever it is. I played half of my first playthrough with terrible load times until I found this fix via google.
 
And before everyone complains about disabling a core, you don't actually disable it permanently. You just flip it off, then back on for the process.

Maybe someone here can answer this... 
 
I noticed that when you boot up the game in WIn XP, it loads up much faster than it does in Windows 7.  Does anyone know why that is?  It's not a major problem or anything, but it's something I noticed between the two OS's.

I run it through Steam on Vista, so I can't really comment.  It's not super-fast to boot but not slow either.

I like   tasketaske signed up for this website just to say thank you crusader8463.  I love you man.  I can't believe I played through the game once already without knowing how to reduce the load times.  I wish I had read this so much ealier.  My game literally loads 1000% faster.  Thank you.

Its so easy to get multithreading right, or rather, its so easy to not get it wrong. How does a game released in 2010 (the fucking future) have problems with NT thread handling?
 
For anyone else out there, anything running WOW (thats windows-on-windows, a 16bit/pre NT (dos) emulator, not World of warcraft) like for example old pre win2000 games, if your having difficulty running the game, setting the affinity to core 0 alone will often help resolve problems. This is true for dues Ex and System Shock 2.

Chalk another person who signed up simply to thank you.  I was about ready to chuck the game out the window, my mouse and keyboard with it, the load times were so frustrating.  Thanks!!!

omg omg omg dude thank you for making this post. it worked and now i wont have to break my computer

Well I had this problem also when my proccesor was a core2 duo, then I switched to a quad and the loading times were faster, never though the bad handling of affinity was the problem, but if you want to make the process automated there is a nice utility called MassAffinity or something, It set the affinity for you and then launch Mass Effect 2 replacing the necessity to alt tab and change the things for yourself. And I highly doubt this will be patched, It was reported on the official Mass Effect 2 Bioware forum before even the patch 1.02 came and it wasnt fixed.

My load times for ME2 were always super quick, like 5-10 seconds max.
 
I  noticed it most in the normandy going floor to floor was insanely quick.

As everyone said this bug only affected people who had dual core processors, quad owners never had this issue, and even if you had a very fast processor you are still restricted in load times cause the way the engine handles biks for loading. Lets say your processor is faster enough to stream the data like in 2 secs BUT the cinematic cant be skipped until they finish, this mean you had to wait like 10 secs more for the bik to end or 20 secs if you are unlucky if your processor stream the data in more than the default lenght of the movie, I think you get the idea. The workaround to this problem was to replace all the loading biks in the movie folders to a very short or custom bik with at least 3 secs of duration BOOM your load times are cut to the minimum if you have a very fast processor. You only need to keep the default load_f13m.bik or else your game will hang up when Joker takes control of the Normandy.

Hi. I came across this solution of yours and tried to implement it myself. The only problem is that when I right-click on the process, unlike everybody else I do not see the "Set Affinity" option. I use Windows XP and have Intel Core 2 Duo E7500.

Your help would be REALLY appreciated! Thanks!