Crashing upon launching Morrowind

[Alixen]

Hey GHF

I hate to make my first post as a request for help, but I really need help with this.

I used MGE (not XE) fine between 2010 and 2012, with all the distant beauty and all. Max settings, as my PC is pretty powerful, built to be fast a few years ago, with a nVidia 560 Ti, and 7gb of Ram. Then, I came back to play Morrowind a couple of months ago, and found that upon launching, the Bethesda logo screen started to love at 1fps or even slower, and the sound was equally slow and jerky. Running without MGE I found the game played as smooth as ever.

I completely reinstalled Morrowind after tinkering around and finding myself unable to fix it, installed the expansions, and downloaded the final patch the GOTY requires. I then installed the Overhaull pack, which in turn installed the new MGEXE. This version doesn't even give me the unplayabe '30 minutes to load all files and plugins' state. It just maxes out to full screen, stays black for a split seconds, and then crashes with the fails to respond message. I have found reverting to an older version can return me to the old issue, but at the moment I find myself stuck playing with the 'disable MGE' tickbox, and its just not the same. Without MGE and MCA I forgot just how barren Vvardenfell feels.

Has anyone experienced my problem? And can anyone offer assistance? It has really stumped me, because it used to work, so all the correct software is installed. And I tried reinstalling/repairing a lot of it anyway, just incase. Have the latest nVidia graphics drivers rendered MGE broken? Could it be upgrading my card to 560 from my 460? Because i'm not sure if I did that since I last played.

If worst comes to worst, i'm stuck playing with morrowindfpsoptimizer to make the fog just a little further away, but its still just not the same. (Having to roleplay that Vvardenfell is constantly in the midst of a sea-fret is boring.)

If I can't get it working, is anyone aware of any alternatives? MGE made the distant land, so I assume it is still there beyonf the mist, so getting rid of the fog might be good enough.

[Elaura]

Actually, your issue is usually related to not having Direct X 9c, or the correct .Net version installed.  The latest and greatest versions of those are not backwards compatible, so if you skipped those steps during the installation of MGSO, I recommend going back and installing them.

In addition, MGE XE doesn't like to play without distant land.  It will work if you haven't generated it yet, but it will give you an error.

What version of Windows are you running and what installation path is your Morrowind in?

[Leonardo]

Welcome to GHF Alixen!  

I completely reinstalled Morrowind after tinkering around and finding myself unable to fix it, installed the expansions, and downloaded the final patch the GOTY requires.

What do you mean by the *final* patch?

If you mean the latest official patch then it isn't necessary to install it, because the GotY version already have the latest patch included unless you're using Steam then you need to turn off Steam overlay.

Also read Pluto's excellent Mod recommendations for new players (scroll down a little to the Steam section and read it about MGE).

It could be related to what Elaura mention, so I suggest that you try this tutorial I posted a while back of how to make MGE working in Morrowind.

Everything you need to know is included in that tutorial and I've done that many times over the years and never failed me except when I forgot to do something that's necessary to do otherwise it should work.

[Alixen]

Sorry for not getting back sooner, but the help is appreciated. I never got things fixed and in the end just settled for the FPS tool that makes the fog further away. Its easy to lore/roleplay away as the island being very wet and steamy.

I think it might be a general issue with my PC. I later had some games stop working full stop, had to start disabling the Steam Overlay in many games when I never had to before, and some select programs run a lot slower than they should.

Really I should reformat; but the thought of backing up everything, and re-installing the mods for Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout, NV, and so forth is somewhat soul destroying. Mod manager helps, being able to save load orders, but i've had it glitch too oftent or rely on it. And a lot of the folders are too deep for direct backign up of the folders, and I end up losing branches of textures never to be seen again. One day maybe...

[Spirithawke]

What you could attempt to do is just make an archive out of your entire MW directory, then save it to an external drive...unzip it when done with the reformat and continue playing (might have to re-install direct X though separately, depends on your windows version). I keep archives around of a fresh GOTY install, and an MGSO install for ease of starting over, or to make a new test install.