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Post by Sniffles on May 22, 2019 23:52:18 GMT
Got a problem. Some dungeons have missing txtures, replaced by the yellow glop thing. If I save a game in a cell with one of these the save will be corrupted, the computer may go BSOD or simply lock up and require a cold reboot. Any suggestion on finding and fixing these textures?
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Post by Sniffles on May 28, 2019 10:16:50 GMT
Could somebody help me find my missing texture? Furn_de_table_03.nif and how to install it?
Just encountered and recruited Constance. She's only been standing on that trail waiting for 4 years.
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Post by blockhead on May 28, 2019 12:18:42 GMT
Could somebody help me find my missing texture? Furn_de_table_03.nif and how to install it? Just encountered and recruited Constance. She's only been standing on that trail waiting for 4 years. Near as I can tell, it's in the stock Morrowind.esm: f\Furn_De_Table_03.NIF If that is missing, something is seriously wrong p.s. NIF is a mesh, a 3d model, not a texture, though it will in turn reference the actual textures. p.p.s. Poor Constance. Hopefully the privy was nearby.
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Post by Sniffles on May 28, 2019 19:19:03 GMT
Could somebody help me find my missing texture? Furn_de_table_03.nif and how to install it? Just encountered and recruited Constance. She's only been standing on that trail waiting for 4 years. Near as I can tell, it's in the stock Morrowind.esm: f\Furn_De_Table_03.NIF If that is missing, something is seriously wrong p.s. NIF is a mesh, a 3d model, not a texture, though it will in turn reference the actual textures. p.p.s. Poor Constance. Hopefully the privy was nearby. That missing thing appears to be part of what that horrible MGSO mod did. That table pops up all over the place as a yellow glop and a warning message. I just ignore it but it is certain doom to save a game in a cell with it. The save game will lock the computer up and cause a BSOD requiring the computer be rebooted.
Maybe Constance waiting patiently for years on that trail inspired Emma; Vilja's need to go behind a bush?
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Post by Sniffles on May 29, 2019 9:15:56 GMT
I just had to make things up to Constance for the delay. So I heard about this clothier in Tel Vos.450 rats, bats, dogs, frogs, wombats, draugrses, slitherfish, kagoutis, toyotas and some other critters later... Only problem now is neither of us can move under the weight of the new wardrobes.
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Post by jgf on May 29, 2019 16:48:33 GMT
You dodged a bullet with that HD. But FTR, you can often recover a dead HD for roughly $20 ...if you can wield a soldering iron ...and the drive motor and heads of your HD are good (99% of the time they are). Buy a used HD exactly like the one you have, open both, unsolder all leads on the PC boards in each (note where all wires go, lol), replace the board in your drive with the one from the "new" drive, solder all wires back, replace the cover and try it. I've successfully done this twice in the past, once on an IDE drive, once on a SATA; in fact I used the SATA drive for a couple of years afterwards. (FWIW, this is the first step that $8k recovery would have done; if successful, they would have copied everything to a new drive and sent it to you. If not successful, the next step is removing the actual disc, very carefully - the tiniest scratch means permanent data loss on the sectors affected - and placing it in another enclosure; this may or may not work, and may require specialized drive circuitry since the disc was not formatted/written in this enclosure so the heads may not perfectly track the sectors at first.)
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Post by jgf on May 29, 2019 16:59:08 GMT
... She's only been standing on that trail waiting for 4 years. Lol, it's been seven or eight years since I played Morrowind. Vixen, my Keynari mage, and Constance have been standing in the tavern in Balmora awaiting my return; having done everything but take out Dagoth Ur. That computer ate its mobo over a year ago and every time I see it sitting there on the shelf I think of the two of them in limbo on that HD and wonder if they will ever finish their adventures.
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Post by Sniffles on May 29, 2019 20:18:26 GMT
You dodged a bullet with that HD. But FTR, you can often recover a dead HD for roughly $20 ...if you can wield a soldering iron ...and the drive motor and heads of your HD are good (99% of the time they are). Buy a used HD exactly like the one you have, open both, unsolder all leads on the PC boards in each (note where all wires go, lol), replace the board in your drive with the one from the "new" drive, solder all wires back, replace the cover and try it. I've successfully done this twice in the past, once on an IDE drive, once on a SATA; in fact I used the SATA drive for a couple of years afterwards. (FWIW, this is the first step that $8k recovery would have done; if successful, they would have copied everything to a new drive and sent it to you. If not successful, the next step is removing the actual disc, very carefully - the tiniest scratch means permanent data loss on the sectors affected - and placing it in another enclosure; this may or may not work, and may require specialized drive circuitry since the disc was not formatted/written in this enclosure so the heads may not perfectly track the sectors at first.) I was told the BIOS microchip from the old dead drive had to be transferred to the new drive or board. That chip and only that chip knows where what is on the discs of the drive. In techy's words, "The bios is the instruction manual and roadmap. Without it would be like driving a car with entirely different controls in a foreign country where the rules of the road are entirely different." I don't understand this at all. I've been told I should never update the BIOS on the motherboard in the off chance it is incompatible and would require the old BIOS to recover the old settings if that happened. Sounds like do it yourself brain surgery.
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Post by Sniffles on Apr 25, 2020 0:41:58 GMT
Almost one year later. I made a mistake a day or two after my above post. Yup. Blew Morrowind all to hell. And that time, no back up. I just finished doing a complete new installation. New mods, new everything. Trying to get up the courage to make a new character. Need a pep talk. and my head examined.
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Post by graykin on Apr 25, 2020 1:15:22 GMT
Almost one year later. I made a mistake a day or two after my above post. Yup. Blew Morrowind all to hell. And that time, no back up. I just finished doing a complete new installation. New mods, new everything. Trying to get up the courage to make a new character. Need a pep talk. and my head examined. i can so totally relate regarding Morrowind meltdowns! Spent many an hour in frustration trying to figure out what had gone wrong! I still have the original disks but haven't tried to play again for years. I maybe would if I could reinstall it with no issues and play that excellent mod by Qual called the Underground! Good luck Sniffles!
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Post by blockhead on Apr 25, 2020 2:18:16 GMT
Almost one year later. I made a mistake a day or two after my above post. Yup. Blew Morrowind all to hell. Standard operating procedure. Make a test character. Run it for ten minutes or so to make sure it all works. Exit Morrowind. Do backups!Just think of all the neat places you get to explore. Morrowind is big enough that you may find something you missed the previous times around. p.s. Years ago I burned my data files directory to a DVD. Two copies. And it's also on multiple external hard drives.
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Post by Sniffles on Apr 25, 2020 10:55:06 GMT
Well in a nutshell I had bought a new 1TB WD Black drive just to use as a back up. <-VERY PARANOID. I then made a new installed of Morrowind on the old drive and tried to reclaim some of the graphics and nice stuff. I wasn't being particularly careful as I had that full back up. I made a horses rear end mess a couple of times and discovered my new version of Morrowind was a cracked partly disabled mess. Very few things were installing right. Turned out it was a mix of GOTY and vanilla with lots of incompatibilities. So I wrote it all off and dug out the back up drive which I kept unplugged and stashed in a drawer. Started up the computer and it wouldn't boot. That drive was dead. It also had all of our personal data and around 20 GB of our photos dating back to scans from 20+ years ago. And of course, the entirety of Squishy's college work including digital copies of her test results, certificates, diplomas and all of her CVs, records of her OTJ training, her 1 1/2 year job hunt and her accumulated references and accolades. Anyway, I made inquireys about data recovery. We had our antique Seagate drive, with most of our old data still sitting in our old dead computer. Like a lost 8-10 recent years but something. We priced data recovery, $5000 up. Probably $10000. I contacted WD and asked if they would be willing to attempt a repair. If unrepairable return the drive as it was sent in and we would go plan B. WD promptly sent us a replacement drive. WHERE IS OUR OLD DRIVE?? Gone. They didn't read our instructions. So we've been in a deep funk ever since. EFF YOU VERY MUCH, WESTERN DIGITAL. My techy had warned me repeatedly they were upgrading and would no longer be able to host our old data so no help there. We went through our old HDs and with a the help of a local computer tech we got our 320 GB up and running. Recovered some more of our old data. And to the present. We are running two 240 GB solid state drives. Boot and an abridged data drive. Our old 1TB drive has all the recovered data and our old programs, all 3 years or older stuff and it now sits in a drawer unused. Lots of stuff from Win XP 32 bit. And the two SSDs are back up on our new 1TB. And most recently, since our boot drive SSD has over 100 GB of room I started a new install of Morrowind on it. When we get some more money we will buy two more 240 GB SSDs and clone the boot and data to them, doing a rolling swap out every few months along with a full back up of both. I still can't believe our end all be all brand new WD back up only drive died after having been used maybe 20 hours and that royal shaft from WD.
PS Data and programs from Win XP, Win 7 32 bit and Win 7 64 bit do not play well together.
PPS And a bonus EFF YUU TOO. The sound system on our new motherboard was the cats meow. Digital or analogue, up to 6 channels surround sound plug and play. It screamed one day and died. We farted around with USB sound and various cheap sound cards, barely able to get stereo. So we bit the bullet and bought a quality Soundblaster card. It only took 3 weeks of trial and error to find and install the right drivers. And we have 4 channels, the back pair 1/4 volume of the front pair. And if you do ANY tweak to the sound system while ANY program is running that has sound, like Youtube, all sound goes to hell in a bucket. It appears our Soundblaster card was an experimental or factory reject. Safety tip 14298564968, don't but computer parts on line. Anyway, we priced getting our old motherboard repaired. Best, most trustworthy price, $150 plus $45 shipping. $195. Exactly what we paid for the motherboard new.
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Post by blockhead on Apr 25, 2020 12:17:00 GMT
Too late now, but for long-term archival data like Squishy's college work, consider m-disc DVDs. Most regular DVD-writers will write to m-disc. m-disc DVDs (and blu-rays) use the same data format as regular DVDs, the difference is rather in the physical disc: the chemicals in m-disc media (in theory) last longer. The wikipedia link explains it better than I do. p.s. My understanding is that if you have a DVD burner that is less than ten years old, it most likely has m-disc burning capability and even more likely has m-disc reading capability. p.p.s. You mention SSDs. They are nice, yes. Recently I had to put one in since the old HD died. An unexpected benefit on my particular machine is that the SSD makes the machine run cooler, which is something no one ever mentioned. There are now times when the fan actually turns off. Wow. Anyway, I digress, what I mean to say is: SSD's can and will fail, so trust them about as much as regular HDs. You still need to do backups and you still need to plan for failure.
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Post by blockhead on Apr 25, 2020 12:36:47 GMT
Re-reading your post some more...
As for motherboards and sound cards spontaneously dying ... how is the electricity where you are? spikes and dips in the power-level can play hell with electronics over time. Also, if you're running a desktop computer, consider a newer beefier power supply in your computer?
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Post by Sniffles on Apr 25, 2020 21:37:31 GMT
Too late now, but for long-term archival data like Squishy's college work, consider m-disc DVDs. Most regular DVD-writers will write to m-disc. m-disc DVDs (and blu-rays) use the same data format as regular DVDs, the difference is rather in the physical disc: the chemicals in m-disc media (in theory) last longer. The wikipedia link explains it better than I do. p.s. My understanding is that if you have a DVD burner that is less than ten years old, it most likely has m-disc burning capability and even more likely has m-disc reading capability. p.p.s. You mention SSDs. They are nice, yes. Recently I had to put one in since the old HD died. An unexpected benefit on my particular machine is that the SSD makes the machine run cooler, which is something no one ever mentioned. There are now times when the fan actually turns off. Wow. Anyway, I digress, what I mean to say is: SSD's can and will fail, so trust them about as much as regular HDs. You still need to do backups and you still need to plan for failure. Since 240 GB SSDs are cheap, about $30, I was planning on changing them on a regular basis. I'm not at all sure what regimen I should take though. Suggestions?
Reading up on M disks the commonest cause of DVD failure is mold attacking the organic surface. M disks aren't organic. And I'm staring at our new Asus DVD burner that has E-GREEN M-DISK on the front.
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