I used to fool around with the GECK in Fallout 3, never did anything productive but I played around. Now I want to do something productive with New Vegas. So I go and download the NV GECK and jam it up and into my NV directory and try and load the FalloutNV.esm file and nothing happens.

To explain more thoroughly. I start up the GECK, go to the File Menu, then select Data. I then double click the little square next to FalloutNV.esm so there is an X in it and click OK. I'm fairly certain this is supposed to cause my system to lag and files to load like crazy. Instead, nothing happens and nothing new appears in the GECKs windows. I must be missing something here. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Are you absolutely certain you're using the latest version of the GECK? Reason for making sure is the error you're describing is the exact one you get when you're using an outdated version with the latest updated FalloutNV.esm. Bethesda still had the wrong one linked on their GECK download page last time I checked, so you need to make sure you have the latest one.

Open the GECK, go to Help -> About, and check what the version number is. The correct one to have isVersion 1.4.0.518, if you do not have this latest version it can be found here:

>> http://download.zenimax.com/fallout/nv/geck/GECK_NVE_v1.4.zip <<