Annoying Morrowind Hang-ups

[Gravedeath]

Having played Morrowind many times on xbox, I decided to give it a whirl on the pc. I have a year-old Fujitsu Lifebook T731 with Intel HD 3000 graphics. In other words, far more than enough to run Morrowind. 90% of the time, the game runs fine with great fps, but several times a minute the screen will freeze. The music keeps playing and I think the game is still running because once it unfreezes I have skipped forward a few seconds (Like if I turn while it's frozen then when it unfreezes I'll be facing where I turned). While this happens when I'm just walking or moving around, there is a much greater frequency when I'm clicking or pressing buttons, such as bringing up menus, switching perspective, and especially in combat, where it almost becomes unplayable. Playing without any mods does not help at all and neither does playing with a different resolution, in window mode, or in safe mode (I'm using Windows 8 btw). If anyone has any suggestions as to how to fix this problem, they would be much appreciated.

 

PS: This lagging also happens in the opening screens for Bethesda and the text for Zenimax.

[RitualBlack]

I would try either verifying integrity of game cache files through steam or (if you have the CD) do a clean install. Just make sure to back up your save. If the problem continues I would look around to see if other are having Windows 8 problems with Morrowind.

[Gravedeath]

The problem was present from the moment I installed it (from the CD). I'm fairly confident it is a hardware issue because I had the same problem on Starcraft 2 a few months ago before I did a clean install of Windows 8 (and I've checked if 8 is the problem, and I don't think it is). My primary suspect right now is my Hard Disk overheating. Could my HDD being between 45 and 50 degrees Celsius cause this much of a performance issue?

[RitualBlack]

That isn't hot for a laptop and definitely isn't overheating. The intel hd 3000 is not really meant for playing games though it shouldn't struggle with morrowind. Have you checked to make sure your laptop isn't in power saver mode?

[Gravedeath]

No it's nothing like that. BTW I'm not positive about my laptop temp. I've downloaded several programs to tell me my SMART data but none of them are telling me the temperature (which might not be supported by my harddrive). Another note: My Harddrive writing light is on 24:7 and in task manager it is at 100% all the time on the Active Time graph.