Cannot start game or launcher after restoring backup mod files

[Zemecton]

Hi,

 

My computer suffered a random HDD failure several weeks ago so I've had to redownload everything I have on Steam and elsewhere, including the vanilla Morrowind game. That means I need to put in all of my mods again.

 

I have what I think is all of them in their installed and used form as backup but whenever I copy them into the Morrowind executable folder both the executable file and the launcher stop working - as in nothing happens at all when launched from Steam - and when I click on either of them in File Explorer I get an error message saying I am missing a file called "d3dx9_43.dll". I can launch Morrowind just fine before copying over any of my mods and even after copying everything from the Data Files folder I seem to be fine so it must have something to do with any one of the few core mods I was using.

 

I have MGE XE, MWSE, the Morrowind Code Patch, the Patch For Purists mod, and the unofficial Morrowind Official Plugins Patch (though I don't think the last one has any files outside of the Data Files folder) and maybe a few others I've forgotten about but I think that is all of them. I would re-download them again but I got most if not all of them on Discord. They were the newest versions at the time and I am not sure how up-to-date the versions on Nexus are (If I don't use the same versions or newer I will run into problems loading my saved games) so I would much rather use the mod files I currently have.

 

I only store my mod files because if you paste the entire game folder rather than installing it through Steam you tend to come up with other problems and if I paste the entire folder over itself I may just run into the same problem again. Either I am overwriting something I shouldn't be or I am missing some files that were installed outside of the main executable folder. Do any of those mods I mentioned store files in the AppData folder, by any chance?

 

Anyway, in hindsight I should probably be recording all of my Morrowind mods like I do for The Sims 3 and if I can't find out what is going wrong I will try to track down the newest version of everything. Which will be a pain in the butt to do, so any advice anyone on here can provide would be appreciated.

 

Thanks for reading.

[Oblivionaddicted]

Why don't you post your load order?

What do you use to set the load order?

Did you try downloading the missing dll?

[Dragon32]

Download this:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8109

 

Extract to a temporary directory and run dxsetup.exe

[Zemecton]

Hi guys, sorry I completely forgot about this thread.

 

It appears I've already solved the problem. Another game I have required Microsoft XNA Framework 3.5 (even though oddly enough I already had the XNA 4.0 Framework) in order to run and my PC gave me the option to download it so I did, and after that my Morrowind game started working. Go figure. I had no indication at all that this was what I needed or why I needed it and it made no sense since I already had a more recent build of my XNA Framework. I also verified my game cache on Steam and that seems to have fixed something, too..

 

My game may still fail on me, in which case I will post here again if I am permitted to do so, but in the meantime thanks to both of you for offering to help.

 

@Oblivionaddicted: I have no idea what my load order is. I can tell you in which order each of my ESM mods appear in the launcher but I can't remember in what order I installed them other than that I installed the official plugins patch first, then the unofficial code patch (Skunk Works version), then MGE XE, then MWSE, then the Patch For Purists, all in that order. There were other mods I installed prior to that and many I installed afterward but I forget which of them and when at the moment.

 

Cheers and thanks for reading!