So I have a Compaq 6510 laptop with Vista(not a gaming system I realize) and I decided to install Morrowind on it. I was shocked to see it was running at 5-8 FPS, even at the lowest res settings. I had an older laptop with specs nowhere near as good as this one that ran Morrowind really well. What really fries me is I've installed Fallout3 and Oblivion and they run at 6-10 FPS, Morrowind sure as hell should be able to run at 20 or better. I've played with a few tweaks but nothing seems to increase the FPS. I've read about Morrowind not liking Directx 10 or 11 but I can't get 9c to install (it just says a better one is already installed and ends the install). I'm guessing its a Vista issue but can't seem to beat it, I've done the disables under Compatibiltiy Mode, I've run it in compatiblity mode, moved the folder to C:/Bethesda ... I just don't know what to do. Any ideas? I'll try anything at this point.


Specs-
32bit Vista Basic
Intel Celeron 540@1.8g
2gig ram
Intel 965

I would expect 15 or a little better from that system. Have you tried running a http://support.microsoft.com/kb/331796#top yet? If not, give it a shot.

I'll give the clean boot thing a try, thx.
The 2 things that really bug me about this are:
1: I used to run Morrowind on a XP machine with 760mb ram and the Intel 8xx series video card and it ran better than it runs on this system.
2: I see no FPS difference between everything set to minimum and everything set to maximum(just noticed a few mins ago)

You could try this tweak to help increase performance.
Open your Morrowind ini file and change this line: Max FPS=240 to Max FPS=60
This often improves the frame rate flow, and improves the functioning of some menu buttons.

Worth a try, it won't do any harm. Although it seems like there's something bigger at work here.