So, a while ago, I bought Morrowind from GOG and immediately decided to get the Overhaul mod from Ornithopter, but it seems incompatible with either Windows 8.1 or the GOG version of the game. For example, it requires you to install Visual c++ 2008, but I can't install any version of this at all. It is included in the Steam version, but no such luck here. Furthermore, the options crash every time I try to change the settings, and the game runs at an infrequent MAXIMUM of 20 frames per second on the LOWEST graphics options. My computer is more than double the required specifications for "very high performance PC" (as it apparently doesn't take much).

I desperately want to play this incredible game, but simply cannot. PLEASE HELP.

New Problem:
The Overhaul installer won't start-- something about variables. I tried deleting all the files to restart the whole thing from scratch, but the "Unhandled Exceptions.exe" can't be deleted. I installed the overhaul again, hoping it would just overwrite it, but I'm still getting the message "Error: Array variable has incorrect number of subscripts or subscript dimensions range exceeded."

Please, I'm not a tech savvy person. I just want to play my game.

In that case, How would I go about completely removing it? As I said before, there's a .exe that refuses to leave.

Also, what are these other mods you speak of and what do they do?

MCP: http://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/19510/?

MGE XE: http://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/19510/?

Better bodies: http://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/3880/?

Westly's: http://download.fliggerty.com/download-127-874

Some of these mods are part of the overhaul ( some in newer versions) and provide a lot of what's important. As far as removing MSGO, you might be better off just reinstalling from scratch.

First of all, I have never used this Overhaul mod and don't know how to remove it if there is no uninstall procedure. I just thought about what I would do if I were in your situation.

Method 1: Simply leave the Overhaul mod in place, but de-activate it. To do this, launch Morrowind and click on "Data Files". On the left hand side, you will see a column labelled "TES3 Files". Somewhere in that column you will find an entry "Morrowind Overhaul" or similar with a check box ticked. Untick that checkbox, click OK and you're done.
This is a simple, but not nice method, because you still have the Overhaul files on your hard disk (as garbage), but at least, the files won't do any harm.

Method 2
If I wanted to get rid of the Overhaul mod and get my clean system back, I guess I would look for an Overhaul entry in the program list. If there is none, you can delete the mod files safely (a mod folder and an .ESP file, I guess). Otherwise I would double-click that entry and run the uninstall procedure.
If you don't know exactly what to delete or if Windows doesn't let you delete everything (I guess because you installed the game in a standard program files folder), then uninstall the whole game, either from the program list or using the GOG uninstall procedure in the game folder. If you choose to delete everything (the uninstall procedure offers you that option), then the Morrowind folder should disappear when the procedure is complete.
If there is still something left, which you can't delete, then I would simply leave it. It's garbage, but what choice do you have?
Then re-install the game, but do yourself the favour not to install it to a program files folder in C:, but to a different drive, or to a folder like C:\Games or similar.

In both cases you will have a Morrowind installation without any mods. As a person who has played Morrowind from the beginning, when it was released, and has spent 100's of hours with this game and knows probably every game issue you may run into during your first steps, I'm strongly recommending not to use ANY mods in the beginning. The game is perfectly playable and fun without. After you've played several hours and if you feel your game experience should be improved, go through the mod threads on this forum, and choose one or several mods deliberately and only those which you think could solve the shortcoming you perceive. And before you do this, familiarize yourself with the methods to install AND uninstall those mods - otherwise you're likely to end up in the siuation you're in today. Don't install a mod just because others tell you you MUST have it and can't play Morrowind without. It's not true: You don't need any mods to play Morrowind.
But, yes, some mods may help you to enjoy the game even better. Only, to find the ones which do that for YOU, is probably quite difficult, due to the high number (and varying quality!) of those mods. And how do you know what is likely to improve your gaming experience as long as you are not at least somewhat familiar with the game?

Finally: Morrowind has a number of bugs and shortcomings indeed, and the Community Patch does solve many of them, but not one of them is a real game or fun killer - you're unlikely to notice the difference between Morrowind with or without that patch before you have some experience with the game. I advise strongly to keep things as simple as possible.

Have fun!

It's not at all obvious from the question and my answer but this overhaul isn't a regular mod; it's a collection of dozens of mods held together by an automated installer. The end result is lots of separate esps, overwritten textures, etc. It's really hard to root out. Best to re-install the game and start fresh.

Thanks for all the help, everybody.

I never did get rid of that last bit of the Overhaul mod, but I installed the most important mods that were in it.

Anybody know a good texture replacer for terrain? I don't want too much clutter, just some higher res textures. So far, I got the better bodies (and beast bodies), better armor, MGE, and the code patch.

I've used "Landscape Retexture" and liked it. Don't know what you mean by clutter.
http://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/42575/

You could also use the on the rocks mod, so that the rocks look as good as the ground. You don't have to use the meshes of that mod if you don't want to.

How would I go about that? I heard that mod causes a lot of places to be completely unreachable or creates gaps in the landscape. Other than that, the mod was really segmented, so installing all the pieces was really tedious.

I eventually got the .exe removed after my computer had gone through a few more cycles. I guess there was some stuff in there preventing it from being deleted.

I disagree that Morrowind doesn't need any mods at all. For one, the original game was very buggy. I had the GotY edition for the original Xbox (which actually solved most of the problems) and still managed to come across game-breaking glitches every playthrough. Secondly, the level that the game is outdated is astounding. Even looking at the graphics, a sea of blended colors and sameness in low resolution, is enough to turn most people away. As a console player, I'm generally very lenient towards traditionally "bad" graphics, but Morrowind is so old that the graphics cause actual eye strain and headaches. Third, a number of things in the original game flat-out didn't work.

I wasn't some guy that jumped on Morrowind after only having played Skyrim. I simply didn't have a computer until now. I was not only familiar with the game and its mechanics, they were actually my favorite parts about it over the newer additions to the franchise.

Some mods to boost the fps to 30+, some slightly higher resolution textures, and a patch to fix the bugs. It's not going to ruin the atmosphere or kill the fun.

Do you mean On the Rocks? I think I installed the individual parts but deleted the Meshes folder from every one. I haven't heard of the "gaps" problem but found that deleting the Meshes fixed a visual problem I had when using it in conjunction with OpenMW.

I agree with you on this, that's why I made this far too long stickied post here. I think it's really annoying if some people are such purists that they don't even recommend you to fix some glaring issues. Yes, I've played the vanilla game first –so I obviously didn't "need" mods to enjoy the game– however, I wouldn't play it again without what I consider to be fixes.
I don't completely agree. In my opinion, graphic-wise all that is really needed is something like the FPS-optimizer. It doesn't really change the graphics apart from the resolution and the view distance which it increases by just the right amount – aspects that are nothing more than engine limitations and no design choices. Recently, I've played some minutes of the game with only the FPS optimizer accounting for the visual changes and I think the game looks extremely good with it.

So without the meshes, (and remember I'm new to modding) the rocks all have the original shape? In essence, On The Rocks only updates the textures if that's all you include?

Like I said, in it's heyday, that graphics were amazing, but now it makes it hard to distinguish objects from the environment and causes eye problems when you need to focus so hard to find them. That's why I was looking for new textures rather than new assets. Maybe I'm just weird, but the old graphics were actually giving me headaches. Hell, even the original Dungeon Keeper will f*** you up nowadays, but it used to be a revolutionary step in "HD" graphics. I can't even run it without the KeeperFX custom resolution parameter mow though.

Normally, I'm against modding completely. I'm kind of a purist myself. However, simple mods that make now very old games bearable are my exceptions. Morrowind is almost 15 years old. Most PC gamers complain that 5 year old games have bad graphics.

Anyway, so On The Rocks has been successful for you? It doesn't change it too much, does it?

If you only copy/install the textures folder, then you get only the new textures and the old shapes are unaltered. I haven't tested it that thoroughly but it seemed to work fine and looked good.

Alrighty, thanks for the help everybody. All my issues were solved.

On a side note, I don't know how to close threads on this forum...