Hey all! I sure hope this is the right place to ask this... It's not really an "issue", per se, that I need help with, but the resolution of one. Allow me to elaborate...

I got up this morning, and my trusty ol' laptop, instead of the normal HAL9000 screens, greeted me with an ugly black screen with the words "Hard drive initialization error" printed on it. It rebooted, ran CHDSK, fixed a few errors, and has been fine since, but I'm pretty sure I'm on borrowed time now. Things like this are rarely flukes, at least, not in my experience!

So, I think I might need a new machine, but I am on an extremely limited budget. With some help, we might be able to swing $700 - $750, but that's the absolute top end.

I am currently running Morrowind with no graphics enhancers/upgrades and no script extenders. My current machine has a 1.6 GHz Core i7 and 8 GB of RAM. But it has crappy Quadro FX 880M graphics, and that has been the problem with my Morrowind builds to date. (I even had to replace the Propylon Index graphics... the vanilla ones literally crashed my computer!) Morrowind just can't seem to take advantage of newer processors and lots o' RAM... it only seems to respond to more graphics card power!

So anyway, it would be great to be able to upgrade a little on the graphics, but at the very least I want to have something that plays Morrowind as well as this machine does now. One more thing I should note: I am not one of these folks who is happy playing my games at 20 FPS. I'm OK with it dipping that low on rare occasions, but I like things to be in the 40 - 60 range most of the time. My current set up hangs in the mid 30s and 40s when I'm cruising around in Balmora with occasional dips into the mid 20s, if that's helpful as a "benchmark". I know a lot of people regularly play with lower FPS than that, and that's cool... it's just not my preference.

So, I guess what I'm looking for is this: Does anyone have any recommendations on what I should be sure a new machine has, or doesn't have? I'm pretty sure I can go all the way down to a Core i3 if I need to, and 4 GB of RAM should be more than enough, I think. But I'm not sure about graphics cards, or what specs they should have to really benefit from running MGE (or some form of it).

I appreciate any advice you folks might have. And please let me know if this isn't really the right place for a question like this. Thanks in advance!

Let me tell you why this happened so you don't do it to your next laptop. If you carry or even move the laptop while it is running, then you can knock the read-write heads into the disk platter. Since they are less than a human hairs distance above the platter, this does not take much of a shock. If you need to move or carry your laptop then at least put it to sleep (setting it so closing the lid puts it to sleep is the easiest way to do this), once it is asleep, then move it or carry it across the room, then open the lid or wake the machine up.

Which also means that you may not need a whole new machine just a new HDD, or better an SSD and then you don't have to worry about the Read/Write heads and the platter.

I'm now utterly terrified of moving my laptop in any way shape or form while it is running. I do this all the time.

I appreciate the advice. However, this laptop almost never moves. The last time it did was a few months ago, and it was definitely off. Hard drives fail for other reasons than being moved. This one is several years old and has been used heavily, often running VMs, so I'm not surprised it is finally failing.

Also, this was originally a work machine. I did not purchase it, so I can't get Windows discs from the manufacturer. I probably should have stated that in the first place, but if this hard drive goes, there goes my Windows installation as well. So I'd need not only a new drive, but a new Windows purchase, too. A new machine makes a lot more sense than buying those items individually, I think.

It is good advice not to move a laptop while it's running (despite manufacturer's assurances that it's not a problem), but in this case I think it's just a matter of wear and tear.

I'll agree that an SSD is best if you're getting a laptop. I don't ususally recommend SSDs since they actually don't improve game performance much (just improve load time and boot times), but for safety in a laptop, they are best (that said I don't recommend laptops either).

For your desired framerate using MGE and your budget, I'd say it's not possible. At least not new, and I DEFINITELY don't recommend used laptops. That's just asking for trouble.

If you can swing for a desktop, your budget is possible.

SSD is definitely out of my budget. I agree that they are awesome, but I simply can't afford one. And I think it's totally possible to get what I have now, in terms of Morrowind's performance, in my price range. I've been looking at a number of machines between $600 and $750 that have better graphics capabilities than what I have now. I'm just wondering if there are any specific specs I should look for, or any I should avoid. I haven't paid attention to hardware in so long I'm really out of touch. And since we're talking about a 12 year old game it doesn't seem like it would be too hard to get a machine that can run it really, really well. MGE would be great, but it's a wish list item, not a must-have. Over on the Morrowind forums, people often claim to get great performance out of cheap hardware... I don't even consider $750 to be that cheap, myself, but it's a subjective thing, to be sure!