The new version that was just released should run a bit faster.

The new GOG version? I didn't realize they updated. I shall try it! Thanks!

I think he means OpenMW 0.38.0

Alright, thanks for clearing that up for me. I'll check it out.

Then you're probably out of luck for now.
Even the raspberry pi should get better performance (I think), so your hardware probably does not work well with either your drivers or with OpenMW.

I think that the CPU is the problem so turning the graphical quality down any more is probably not going to help.

Oh my Lord I can run Morrowind on a Raspberry Pi? Is this what you're telling me?

In other news, I was finally able to get Vista on my machine. I still can't play it because for whatever reason I can't install anything. Sometimes I think God doesn't want me to be able to play this game on anything other than a desktop.

I wouldn't count on it but I thought I read that OpenMW achieved 20 fps in 1080p on a Raspberry Pi. I don't know if that's running Morrowind or just some empty content file and it probably still has all sorts of bugs.

A couple of years ago, I was running Morrowind on an old XP laptop, 1.5 GHz, 1GB RAM, 32 MB graphics card (ATI 7500). Now I'm running it on another XP laptop, 2 GHz, 2 GB RAM, Intel965 graphics card (XP is still my preferred gaming environment for older games). So whatever prevents you from running Morrowind on your laptop is very unlikely to be the hardware, nor is it Morrowind itself.
By the way, I was also running Morrowind on a Vista desktop, and more recently on a Win10 desktop, and I never encountered any problems installing or playing it.

Regarding your new Vista installation:
- At which point in the installation process does your Morrowind installation fail, and are there any error messages?
- Have you tried to install other games on this PC under Vista? Successfully? Error messages?
- Are you sure that you have installed and configured Vista correctly?

I had to unblock the installation through properties. I don't remember ever having to do that before so I didn't even check there. I was able to install it after that. The FPS feels slightly faster than on Mint, but it still runs like crap. I have to turn all the settings all the way down and it's still headache inducing because the FPS jumps from the upper 20s to the teens all the time. I don't think it ever even hits 30 FPS.

Other games run like crap as well. Bloodrayne and Hitman Silent Assassin both run at low FPS. Games from the 90s seem to run okay though. I haven't had any problems with Thief yet.

I'm pretty sure Vista was installed correctly. I formatted the hard drive before the installation and it seemed to go very smooth. There were no error messages or anything during installation.
Darn. That was exciting for a second.

This looks like something fundamental, like a faulty hardware component (RAM? GPU? Cable?) or a multi-core system running on one processor only. Or a virus? Or do you have a virtual Vista installation? There are thousands of potential reasons for such a behaviour. But I'm not an expert in these things.
Do you know someone who could have a look at your PC?

I can't imagine I have a virus. My dad is really the only one I can think of that wouldn't charge. I can't afford to pay anyone to look at it. Do you know of any programs that might be able to check what the processor is doing during gaming?

Like I said, I'm not an expert. I have some mainly theoretical knowledge of how computers, operating systems etc. work, and I have some experience dealing with program issues, some of it personal, some of it from reading forum contributions. Unfortunately (or luckily :-)), I have never encountered problems similar to those you mention myself, so I'm not able to share personal experience with you in this respect. In particular, although I used Vista on multi-core CPU's for several years, I never had to deal with multi-core issues.
I think I remember having read articles mentioning the task manager and msconfig in the context of problems of this kind. Perhaps it helps to search the internet for topics like any combination of "multi core Vista task manager msconfig"? Or someone else on this forum can help you?
But be aware that there are really many potential problem causes, and using system-related utilities as a novice bears the risk of creating even more damage.
Perhaps you could consider a new installation for your whole PC? May be overkill, but preferable over not being able to use your PC in a decent way. And ask a local PC shop for the costs - perhaps it's not so expensive after all (where I live, it would be in the price range of a full price AAA game).
Or you ask them to have a quick look at your PC configuration. They can see a lot in a 10 or 15 minute session, and that's probably not very expensive (but there is no guarantee that they find anything wrong).

Don't get me wrong: I'm simply throwing ideas, which may or not may make sense. I can't give you any serious advice, I'm sorry.

I appreciate your input. I'll have to look around and see what I can figure out. Since I was having this same problem on Mint, and this is a fresh install of Vista, I'm really hoping that I don't have to reinstall Windows. I just hate that I can't play this super old game on what should be a decent laptop from around 06. It's like I'm going to have to buy a gaming laptop to be able to play decade old games. It's getting really frustrating.