I originally had this problem in Vista. I hoped it would go away on windows 7, but it seems I was wrong.

Setup:
Windows 7 professional x64
radeon 4870 512MB (CCC 9.10)
e8500 cpu

Morrowind GotY + Morrowind Patch v164 + Morrowind Code Patch 19510

The game runs great... until I enable both shadows (the slider in the video options) and any level of anti aliasing (from the catalyst control center).
The video frame freezes, the music keeps playing, keyboard stops reacting, and in a few moments I get the windows end now dialog.
The problem is that the Video Driver crashes. (in Vista I tried a lot of versions prior to 9.9 and all crashed as well)

Here's what the event viewer reports
http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii182/Transsive/tech/crash1.png
http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii182/Transsive/tech/crash2.png


I'm a little worried that the graphics card might have some problems.

So even if you don't know a solution to this, if you can, please try running Morrowind with both shadows and 2x or 4x AA (especially people that have a card in the HD4000 series with 64bit vista or 7) and let me know if you experience crashes.

Here's a save game you could use if you want. (I usually crash during the first few fights with the skeleton... fight, die, reload, fight, crash...)
Just enter the tomb and start swinging.
http://www.box.net/shared/fmvrvuci5g

Morrowind doesn't seem to like AA enabled from the Graphics Card controls. Try Morrowind Graphics Extender, MGE for short. you should easily find it in the mods section.

Thanks for the answer. Unfortunately I already tried running the game without AA from the Graphics controls and enabling it in MGE (the latests 118 svn).
I actually disabled everything from CCC and only modified the AA level from MGE. It crashed on the 5'th time I fought the skeleton.

I'm guessing it's either a Vista/7 64bit bug in the radeon 4800 drivers or something in my GPU is busted.

I'd try to install XP to test the game but I have raid0 and I would have to jump through a lot of hoops to make it work.

It's probably not a x64 bug as i can run the game with A.A. on Vista x64.
To verify if it is your G.P.U. you should attempt to run another program in which you can enable A.A.
I have no experience with Windows 7 so i cannot advise you here but have you tried running the game as administrator or installing it in another folder than "C:program files"(this assuming Windows 7 still utilizes the 'User account control')?
You could also try to upgrade your G.P.U. drivers.

I hope this helps

The Mage

Running latest video driver (CCC 9.10).
Morrowind is the only game that crashes when using AA. (I tried at least 10+ others)

I have UAC turned off, running from an administrator account and installed the game in D:\Games\


Like I said, it is tied to the shadows in Morrowind, as the game only crashes if shadows are enabled (slider not at minimum).
It's truly odd...

I know this isn't a fix, but most folks run MW with shadows off. They're pretty poorly implemented.

Yes, it does work just fine without shadows. But I guess it would look a little weird. Not sure which is worse... not shadows or no AA. Since I'm playing at 1920x1200 some people might say AA if not really needed...

I still have an old ata hard drive... I'll try to remove my raid and install windows XP on the old hdd to see if I get the same issues.
If I do, then I can be sure it's either a 4870 bug, driver bug or some faulty hardware.

I actually already had windows xp sp3 x86 on the old 80GB drive.

I installed CCC 8.7, one of the first drivers to support the 4800 radeon series from more than a year ago.

Needless to say, the game crashed again.

AA on shadows got the system to hang with a nasty looping noise. So unlike 7 or Vista in XP I had to reboot.

Now I finally know it has nothing to do with the operating system...

All there's left to find out if it's all the 4870 512MB cards or just mine.

I think a friend also has this card, I'll see if I can persuade him to test the game for me.


How ironic... I finally have the hardware to play the game but it does not work...

I'll play without shadows.

Distant Land taxes my framerate enough...

I am pretty much having the same problem, I have win 7 x64 with a 4870 GPU. I have not tried disabling the shadows. My system randomly hangs in after a few minutes with AA enabled. Without AA it just get the occasional crash.

It may be possible that DirectX is taking issue with the fact you're using AA and a particular depth buffer. Up until DX10 (which neither Morrowind nor MGE uses), you had to jump through a few hoops to get multi-sampling (AA) to work with shadows.
As far as I know, Morrowind ignores that and kinda rolls over the hoops like a tank over flaming paper rings (it was made without support with AA, after all). The only problem is, Windows doesn't like anybody rolling over it's flaming paper rings, and bam, crash.

I just installed Morrowind on another PC (HD 5770), same settings, MPP, MCP, MGE, steam. I played for about 30 minutes and it did not crash.
Most likely my 4870 is to blame, oh well, it can hardly manage MGE with distant land anyway (30fps), I'll play Morrowind when I get a new rig.

I have the same problem. Everytime I enable shadows, the game crashes after some time of playing. No shadows = almost no crashes.
My specs:

Intel E5300
HD 4850

I'm unsing MGE rev 178 and I have AAx2 enabled in CCC.