Morrowind Keeps Crashing...

amora_pwns · Post by **amora_pwns** » Sun Aug 13, 2006 10:44 am

About every half hour, my game crashes. The rendering will get all messed up, or the menus will pop up and I wond be able to get out of them. Sometimes it just freezes and I have to restart my coumputer, sometimes there's a "Program Not Responding" message, sometimes it just crashes to the desktop without warning.

I'm running Morrowind and both expansions on a Radeon 9200SE, which should run it fine... I also have a few mods running, which are:

Abot Water Life
Wolf Manor-Bloodmoon Exp.
Better Bodies [Nude]
Ultimate Galleon (never use it though)
Bob's Armory 2
Pegas Horse Ranch

There are a few other mods installed but not active. I install every mod manually.

I'm currently playing on the island of Solsthiem, and I'm on one of the Skaal quests. The game has done this before, and I got a new graphics card, the radeon. I can't remember what I upgraded from, and while Radeon isnt the best, its what I can afford....

So I'm wondering, has anyone ever had that problem? Do you think its the mods? When I first got TES III, it happened periodically, usually every hour. Is there a mod-cleanup tool I can DL somewhere?

Oh, I also have patches for MW and Tribunal. I have one for Bloodmoon but I havent installed it yet. My computer that I game on is upstars with no internet connection, so its not like I have instant messenger running or a bunch of programs in the background. Usually Morrowind is the ONLY thing running.

Help!
-Amora-

fable · Post by **fable** » Sun Aug 13, 2006 11:56 am

Every half an hour or so? Do you have anything running in the background could be triggering this crash? Any anti-virus software or anti-spyware, or contact manager? Disable it all before playing, and see if that helps.

amora_pwns · Post by **amora_pwns** » Sun Aug 13, 2006 12:13 pm

I used to run McAfee in the background, but I shut it off to try to prevent it from crashing. I just ran upstairs and checked my startup tray... and nothing else is running either.

Also, sometimes Morrowind wont even start. It gives me a window that say somethineg about the rendering buffer is screwed up.

dj_venom · Post by **dj_venom** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 12:27 am

I've encountered something similar... to an extent.

Not as often as half an hour, but sometimes it happens when it gets a Windows System error and goes to destop...

HOWEVER, I did kinda damage my video card (well, I slammed a wooden thing into the side of my computer by mistake), and for awhile I couldn't play MW. Now, it seems to be fixed, though some times it'll refuse to work, which'll suck since it's rare that I get around to playing it.

fable · Post by **fable** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 7:18 am

Have you ever removed a mod? And if so, did you just go right on playing, or did you do a "clean save?"

mr_sir · Post by **mr_sir** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 7:24 am

Morrowind regularly crashes to the desktop for me - I've always just put it down to my useless integrated graphics chip and I've got used to it now. Does it crash when people cast spells at you? I find that sometimes, usually after I've been playing for a while, it will crash if lots of people cast spells at the same time and the whole thing just freezes up. This is the only time I find I need to restart my PC.

amora_pwns · Post by **amora_pwns** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 1:09 pm

Well, yes, actually I have removed mods in the past, ones that were glitched or ones that clashed with the other mods I have running. For the record, (and I'm going to sound stupid asking this) what is a "clean save?"

I'm also wondering... since its been so long since I originally put Morrowind on my computer, and so many mods have been added and removed, would I be better off backing up my save games, uninstalling EVERYTHING, and reinstalling MW, the two expansions, and all the mods and then put my save games back in and do this "clean save" thing? Maybe if I cleaned it up, it would work better...

Opinions?

Thanks for all the help,
Amora

fable · Post by **fable** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 3:37 pm

If you remove a mod, the least you should do is move to a new cell after your next load, save the game, then reload it and continue playing from there. Though personally, I go now with the recommendation of a longtime modder: not only move to a new cell, but remove your entire inventory, then save, then reload and continue to play. That way, your character is far "cleaner" when you reload. This really can make a difference, from my personal experience.

amora_pwns · Post by **amora_pwns** » Wed Aug 16, 2006 8:28 am

I'll have to remember to do that in the future. Do you need to do a "clean save" when you add a mod as well?

By the way: I completely uninstalled everything except a backup of my games and I'm re-doing the mods. Another question: Can I unzip the mods right into MW's Data files folder? Because doing 6 or 7 mods at once is gonna be kind of tiring. Not to mention boring. Or have I just been doing it the hard way all along and thats how youre supposed to do it?

Yeah.. sorry about all the questions, I'm sick of trying to learn all this on my own...

Thanks for all the help so far.

-Amora-

fable · Post by **fable** » Wed Aug 16, 2006 8:46 am

amora_pwns wrote:I'll have to remember to do that in the future. Do you need to do a "clean save" when you add a mod as well?

Not in my experience, no. When you get a message after choosing a saved game that the data files (mod files) now in use do not match up to those found in the saved game, and you are asked if you want to continue loading that save--that's when you need to do a clean save.

By the way: I completely uninstalled everything except a backup of my games and I'm re-doing the mods. Another question: Can I unzip the mods right into MW's Data files folder? Because doing 6 or 7 mods at once is gonna be kind of tiring. Not to mention boring. Or have I just been doing it the hard way all along and thats how youre supposed to do it?

Too may modders archive files in different locations: under Morrowind, under Data Files, under the mod name. So I install all my mods into a temp folder on my desktop. That way, I can move over all the directories, and control the process personally. It takes a bit longer, but not by much. I simply drag all ESP, texture, mesh, icon, etc, mod directories over my data files directory, and they're all in place. Any doc and txt files go to a special subdirectory of readmes.

Yeah.. sorry about all the questions, I'm sick of trying to learn all this on my own...

Not a problem. That''s what we're here for.

amora_pwns · Post by **amora_pwns** » Wed Aug 16, 2006 10:17 am

Thats what I've been doing; unzipping all the mods into temporary folders. I think it was best to re-install MW because when I first started using mods I had NO idea what I was doing whatsoever... just a silly girl with a computer game. Now that I understand it more, I think I'll have better luck getting everything in the right spot

And as I was installing Tribunal and Bloodmoon, I actually read the thing that comes up before it, and mixed in with all the bug fix reports were some suggestions on how to make the game run smoother. I might try some of those.

Plus I think I need to update my drivers... its been awhile. Oh yes. :laugh:

Thank you so much for the help.

-Amora-