I am a heavy Morrowind player, and I enjoy using a variety of mods. I have a general installation setup I try to use every single time I play the game. I am going to give you a very detailed run down of the entire structure that I use. I am going to assume you have the game of the year edition. I am going to walk you through installation, morrowind code patch usage, no-cd crack (legal purposes only), and finally setting up the editor and doing installing some of the "Must Have" mods. This is going to be the first, of potentially a series of Morrowind blog posts. I intend to go into some detail about a variety of the mods that I use, in several posts. This one will just cover the basic Morrowind setup that I walk through every single time I play this game. Generally when I walk away from the game awhile, and come back I follow these same steps for my installation every single time.

I have a variety of things I want to share. First off, I want to focus on just the basics. This Blog Post is going to cover basic installation, and all of the setup for the utilities that I generally use for everything. This covers pretty much the entire setup that
I make sure I have every single time I play Morrowind.

Step One Game Installation

Install Morrowind, Tribunal, and then Bloodmoon in that order. If you DO NOT have the Game Of The Year Edition, then go to http://www.theelderscrolls.com and download the latest patch. If you do have the Game Of The Year Edition, then do not download it (it can corrupt your game). The GOTY Edition comes with that patch already included. Here is how you can test this out. Open the launcher, and click Data Files. Make sure all files are checked, and then go back and click "Play". Then let it load to the title screen. This verifies 2 things. First off, if it throws any errors at this point, then something is wrong with your game. Perform the re-installation from scratch. If you get to the title screen with no errors, make sure it says version 1.6 something at the bottom left hand corner of the screen. If you get to the title screen and see that version number, and did not get any errors then to this point, you have a good solid install.

Note: Through a lot of trial and error, and a lot of community feedback, I have learned a valuable lesson. Always install morrowind outside of it's standard install directory. Normally it installs into C:/Program Files/Bethesda/Morrowind or something similar. First off if you have double hard drive (two of them) then you want to install in a different directory besides the C:/ drive entirely. So install them into your other drive. However, if you only have one hard drive then just install it directly to the root directory. So instead you would
install Morrowind here: "C:/Morrowind". This is not going to seem like a big deal, but you are going to find that it will save you a lot of stress and heart ache down the road...especially if you find yourself using a lot of mods, third party utilities, and other stuff. Not to mention it can help to prevent/eliminate some of the causes for Crashes To Desktop (CTD) as well as crash on exit errors, among a variety of other things. It's highly recommended.

Also if you install into that directory, it'll automatically install the Construction Set into the same folder. SO you do not have to worry about that. I know the path will say it's going into the original folder that it would have installed into, but in actuality it's going right inside the Morrowind folder(regardless of where it is on your system), since it uses the Registry to detect your install location.

Step Two: Vanilla Backup

This is very important. As of right now, your Morrowind folder is in it's base unmodified state. You have not Modified any
files, you have not done any patching to the EXE file, you have not installed any programs. This is your base virgin install for Morrowind.
At this point you need to take the entire Morrowind folder and back it up somewhere. If you ever need to restore, or do a "Fresh" install, then all you have to do is delete your Morrowind folder and restore your backup save. This is a technique I have just recently learned (thanks to someone from the Bethesda official forums) but it is a good technique, and one that I intend to use regularly. Also, if you get to a "Milestone" with mods eventually and want to make a backup (for example if you have downloaded a lot, debugged a lot, learned a lot, fixed load order issues, put in patches, and just literally spent 20-30 hours perfecting your install) then you can do the same type of backup. From that back up moment the game will be saved. A great technique for preventing yourself great deals of stress later on down the road.

Step Three: EXE Patching

I apply two types of patches to my core Morrowind.exe file. I apply a code patch, as well as a No-CD Patch. Technically the No-CD Patch is not illegal if you own the game. Before you complete this step MAKE SURE you have purchased a physical copy of the game. If you do not have a physical copy of this, and decide to use a No-CD Patch on a pirated version, I am not responsible for whatever might happen. This guide is ONLY meant to serve you if you have the original CD. The reason I use this patch is I play a couple of core PC games, and do modding for all of them. So during testing I don't want to have to jump around between different installation CD's, especially back and forth between Morrowind and Oblivion.

OK, so here we go. First off go here: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=19510 Do whatever you need, and download the file. Read through whatever you want, read comments or whatever. End result, we need to download the file. Once the file is downloaded, unzip it somewhere. Somewhere in an empty folder or something. Once unzipped, delete the original zip file. Then delete the Data Files folder, you really don't need that for anything, it just takes up unnecessary space.

Once your done with that, copy/paste everything that is left into your Morrowind root installation folder. Then double click on "Morrowind Code Patch.exe". At this point a screen will come up asking you what patches you want to apply. There are a lot here. If you want some outside of what I recommend be my guest, but do so at your own risk. In my base setup I use the following:

* Rain/Snow Collision - Once you select this, before you apply anything, open the Morrowind .ini file in a text editor. Edit the values
in this file, that are described within the description of this patch).
* Improved Animation Support
* Toggle Sneak
* On-Use Ring Smart Equip
* Spellmaking Max, Magnitude Increase
* Spellmaker/Enchant Multiple Effects
* Map Expansion (For Tamriel Rebuilt - This is just a map fixer. They have a mod out that is gigantic, and this patch helps making playing with that mod a little easier. I will explain about this, and other mods in a future blog posts).
* Display More Accurate Item Weight
* Everything under the "Bug Fixes" at the bottom.

Now that all of that is out of the way click "Apply Chosen Patches". Once it's done, close it down. Now go here: http://www.gameburnworld.com/dl/dl.php?file=MorrowindGameOfTheYearv1.6.1...

One step I forgot to mention. This is another reason why I am telling you to not do this unless you OWN A COPY OF THE GAME. Your game
will have issues/errors anyway. So insert the original Morrowind CD. Open the file structure to view what is on the CD. Copy the video
file into your root Morrowind install folder. This entire video folder needs to be moved, so that it can be accessed by the newly modified Morrowind.exe file. So again, MAKE SURE YOU OWN A COPY OF THE GAME. You are breaking the law if you do not own a physical copy, as well
as taking money away from Bethesday that they could use to pour into the newest Bethesda game.

This is verified to have no viruses, as of the last time I downloaded it to test (2/26/2011). If someone ever needs the crack, message me
through the site and I can provide where to get it. As it might not be accessible online forever. This is the only patch I have
found that really works, and still allows the above listed patch modifications. Download the file, unzip it somewhere as before. Remove all BLK files and you should be only left with the application file, and the readme. Move them both into the Morrowind folder, and run the application file. The Morrowind.exe should now be patched (both with the Morrowind Code Patch changes, and the NoCD Crack. Now take out the CD. Try a test run in the game. If you get to the title screen with no errors, and it shows MCP 1.9 at the bottom left hand corner, then your installation to this point, is solid and error free..

If you get errors at this stage, uninstall the entire game, remove the entire Morrowind folder, run a register cleaner and start all the
way over from step one. That is going to be the only way to resolve the issue, because chances are something along the line messed up. A fresh restart is the only way to guarantee first it was not human error.

Step four: Last minute details, and some last minute utilities

Now it's time for a few general utilities. The first one is Wrye Mash. You can install it here: http://wryemusings.com/Wrye%20Mash.html
It's very simple. Installed Python and Python WX. You can find the download links on the Wrye Mash website. After those are installed just copy the entire MOPY folder (only) into your Morrowind installing directory. That's it, it's installed. All mods that you are going
to want to install, go into the "Morrowind/Installers" folder. There are a few bugs associated with Wrye Mash when it comes to installers.
If you do not want to have to mess with Python you can find the standalone installation of Wrye Mash here:
http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1106095-wrye-mash-stand-alone/

There are a few errors with installing Mods in Wrye Mash. There are two types of packages. One is the archives (zip/rar) and the other is folder format (project). If the mods are in a archive there are three issues where Wrye Mash cannot read it. If the file is read only, if the file has special characters, and if the file has an upper case .ESP instead of a lower case .esp. There are ways around all of these. If it's special characters that you encounter, just install it as a project. If it's a read only file, then extract the mod, change the property of the specific file to not read only, and then repackage/reinstall. If it's an esp issue, then either rename it to lower case or just install it as a project. There are a few mods that I know currently have these issues. I will post a lot of information about this in future blog posts. Right now I just want to stick to a base Morrowind Installation. I am only touching on this issue briefly. There are a lot more things involving installing/configuring mods. I will give a much more detailed account of these things in a future blog post.

The next utility you want is "Mlox". You can download it from here: http://code.google.com/p/mlox/wiki/Mlox
The easiest way is download the stand alone version, and then the txt file (which is the newest updated sorting text). Place
the text file into the mlox folder, and move the mlox folder into your base morrowind installation. That's it, it's installed. This
is simply ran as an EXE and it's used to sort your mods. I will explain how to use this thoroughly in another blog post. This one is just
about installing/configuring Morrowind and I want to try to stick to that.

TesTool is the next utility you want to install. It's critical for modding. It's used for some of the merging functionality. I will explain this in a future blog post. However, right now let me just tell you how to install it. Go here: http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=utilities.detail&id=34
Download/Install everything. Final result should be one folder "testtool" with the files inside of it, inside the morrowind root install folder. That's it. Your done with this utility.

Next, BSA Reg. Your going to need this if you are going to download mods. So just get it. Very simple download/install.
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Utilities.Detail&id=29 Download it, put the bsa exe file into your root morrowind folder and done. I will explain how to use this thoroughly as well in a future blog post.

The next and final utility that I always use is the Morrowind Script Extender. As of this writing the current version is 0.9.4a. It took me forever to hunt down the real version. The main links on Google bring you to the standard 0.9.4. However when you download it you want to make sure the zip is called 0.9.4a because that is the newest release and has a very critical bug fix.
You can get the correct version here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mwse/files/Morrowind%20Script%20Extender...
Just download it and put it into the root install folder, and run the exe. Now send the NEW launcher MWSE to your desktop, and replace the original morrowind launcher here with this one. Now every time you go to start morrowind it'll prompt to turn on the script extender first, and then the standard morrowind launcher.

That's it, those are the standard utilities.

Step Five: Final Backup

This is the most important step. Right now, at this stage you have successfully gotten together everything you "need" to play morrowind. Do a complete, and total backup of your entire morrowind folder. If you ever have to revert to your basic (no mod) version, you can just delete the Morrowind folder and paste in your backup. This is the most recommended step. It will save you hundreds of hours when you get deep into Morrowind modding and gameplay.

Continuing

I have a lot more to say about morrowind. As time progresses I am going to write another large blog post covering the detailed aspects of modding. Will go into detail first about all of these utilities I have presented here, and finally a few more. Once that is covered, then there will be another blog post that starts going into great detail about the mods that I use, mods that I have heard things about and a lot of recommendations/feedback in general.