Recently, I purchased a new copy of the Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, to replace my old copy which had been irreversibly damaged due to mishandling of the disk. Upon installation, I found the game ran at an incredibly choppy frame-rate, and I could barely control the mouse well enough to even exit the game. The cutscenes ran fine, and the title screen seemed normal, but upon entering the game, it was near impossible to play.

In the past, I was able to run the game quite normally, with little lag issues on maximum performance, but now it simply won't run. despite various google searches, and patching the game to the most recent version, I still cannot fix the frame rate.

Here are my computer specs:

HP Pavilion
AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4600+
2.41 GHz, 2.00 GB of RAM
Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition
NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS

Even after a complete Clean up and Defragmentation of my Hard Drive(which coincidentally improved my computers performance greatly), it had no effect on the frame rates of my game, rendering me unable to play the game I had purchased for a second time.

If someone could offer me information as how to optimize my games performance, I would be very grateful.

I'll assume you're not using any mods or MGE, since you never mentioned them.

A few tips...

Make sure all other programs are closed, and play in Full-screen mode, not Windowed.

In your ini file, change this line: Max FPS=240 to Max FPS=60

If you lowered the music volume in the in-game options, make sure you turn it up one notch to the right. Having it fully muted (all the way to left) causes problems.

You can also try the http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=utilities.detail&id=22. It has options to help stabilize your FPS. (you don't need to launch MW from it, as long as it's open it will do its job)

Where do I find the ini file, and is there a place where I can download the FPS optimizer for free?

Edit: Found the file.

The ini file is in your main Morrowind folder.
That link is free. You just have to register, and that is free.

Okay, well I've tried both things, but the game is still lagging.

It sounds to me that you might have an internal conflict with your hardware. :brokencomputer:
Are you sure that you have the correct software drivers installed?

If not you can always try this http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/winxp_163.75_uk.html and let Windows handle the mouse driver, but also install http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1135315-morrowind-graphics-extender-mge/ as well. :user: