Im completely stumped here. Just got a new laptop with Windows 8, installed Morrowind, Tribunal, and Bloodmoon, and the Morrowind Overhaul. Had no problems except for some issue with saving over games in the usual directory, but saving and overwriting saves into a virtual directory in My Documents was fine. It would not however, overwrite the autosave save file in the Morrowind directory, which prevented my from leveling up because i would get an error after resting. I thought a simple reinstall might fix the problem.

Now when i install Morrowind, with or without expansions doesnt matter, I get an error "File "" cannot be found" when its loading to the main menu. I never touched the .ini file. And i install from mounted iso copies of the physical disks, which have never had corrupted install problems before. When starting a new game it'll sometimes CTD, sometimes run normally, i've reinstalled it about 10 times now and its varied whether it crashed or not each time. Installing or running as administrator has no effect. I cleaned out the registry for anything relating to Morrowind or its expansions, and still no change.

Also, occasionally nothing will happen the first time running the launcher after an install, which brings up an error when uninstalling because there is a second process going in the background that I have to end manually. And the last couple times i've done an uninstall, everything in the Morrowind folder has been able to be deleted, but it wont let me delete the morrowind folder itself, because it apparently being used, even though there are no processes or programs running that would be using it. Not sure if this issue is related or not.

Im at my wits end. what the [censored] is going on?

Morrowind can not be installed in Program Files or Program Files (X86). There are ways to get around this, but it is much better to have the game installed in another directory that is not controlled by the UAC. For example, C:\Games\Morrowind

Now, the cool thing is, you can just move the entire Morrowind install directory to the newly created folder, make a shortcut to the launcher in the new location and run that. Note, I have not actually done this on W7/8, just XP, but it should not be any issue.

If you installed the game through Steam, then you can move the Steam Directory to C:\Games. This is almost as easy as moving Morrowind, but there are a few steps involved. Search at the Steam for "Moving Steam to another drive" (it's the same process to move to a new folder on the same drive as to move to a new drive)

I know having it in the program files directory can cause some issues, but I've never seen this problem as one of them. And it worked 100% fine after the first install, which was in the Program Files (x86) folder, aside from it not being able to write over the autosave file. Ill install to a different directory though just to check, but im guessing thats not the root of the problem.