CTD when entering third person

[bluegenre]

First off, this is a two part question, (hope thats ok)

The trouble started when I decided to try and re-create the 'Dust adept helm'

from morrowind. At first, i just stuck the mesh in Maya and converted it to oblivion's format,

and it worked, but when i re-made the texture, and put a normal map on it, it stoped working altogether.

my game would run fine untill i entered third person or the main inventory menu, but i could drop it and look at the ground mesh with out a problem (and they use the same texture)

so what exactly am i doing wrong?

and the second half of this question is, is it possible to turn a ground mesh into a normal mesh?

as in, when i use the _gnd mesh for the helm in the cs, its side-ways when i put it on, and i cant figure out how to fix it

thanks for any help or advice you can give

 

-blue