[Error/Bug] Morrowind says it's running, but it's not. Can't get it to not run.

[greenserpent25]

So I have a strange problem that only recently came out, in the last few days. Whenever I try and turn on Morrowind, it says it's running but it's not. And I can't access it. I tried pressing ctrl, shift, esc to open the task manager and manually turn it off, but that only works once and then it's not even on the thing anymore, despite Steam saying it's running. It only stops running once I turn my entire computer off and on again. So what usually happens is whenever I want to play, I restart my computer, I press morrowind, it says it's running when it's not, I manually turn it off via task manager, and then once I stop playing it still says it's turning and I can't use task manager again. And so I have to turn off my entire PC if I want to play again. This has never happened before and I didn't do anything to my game. Anyone know what's going on? I can still play on a technical level, but it's really annoying to restart my PC to play, and have steam say morrowind is always on.

[meheezen]

i dont have this issue, just checked.
what i did notice is that for some reason the game is unable to save settings, which did not occur before (at least for me)
the fix is adding the launcher and main executable to the anti-virus/malware exclusion list (i use standard Windows Defender)
or the workaround is launching the game as Administrator

give it a try and report back

Edit: i also have Steam executable on the exclusion list, but that was added long ago, give this one a try aswell

[Azaïs]

I had the same problem, but I just buy the game. When I launch the game, even as Administrator, nothing append. Then I just turn off my computer, log out , log in. And no more problems

[greenserpent25]

I tried running it as an administrator, but it still couldn't run, since steam was saying it's already running.

So how would I put it into the anti-virus exclusion list then?

Edit: So I added both Morrowind and the launcher to anti-virus list and what I believe the steam executable to be. Nothing happened yet so I'm going to restart my pc and hopefully see if something changes with that.

Edit 2: Nope, tired what you said, it still doesn't work.

[Azaïs]

Good luck dude =S

[meheezen]

Originally posted by greenserpent25:

I tried running it as an administrator, but it still couldn't run, since steam was saying it's already running.

So how would I put it into the anti-virus exclusion list then?

Edit: So I added both Morrowind and the launcher to anti-virus list and what I believe the steam executable to be. Nothing happened yet so I'm going to restart my pc and hopefully see if something changes with that.

Edit 2: Nope, tired what you said, it still doesn't work.

thats weird, i keep seeing this issue pop up in the forums but there is little information about it.
i havent experienced this issue, so i'm not sure whats going on

if i could replicate the issue, i could watch system calls and see whats going wrong, might simply be Steam is "forgetting" to close file handles, which happens in a lot of software



did you guy try going to the game files and setting the executables to run under WIndows XP compatibility mode?

[Azaïs]

Did you try to launch it, not by the steam way, but with the file steam/steamapps/commons/morrowind_launcher?

[greenserpent25]

Alright so I managed to have a more concrete idea of what's happening. Here's the usual set up. I turn on my PC, like power it up, then I press morrowind. It says it's running but it's not, so I manually turn off morrowind launcher. Then I press it again and it works as normal. And then when I turn it off, it seems normal and all good, until I close my laptop. Then Steam says it's running when it's not, and I can't turn it off from the task manger this time because it's not showing up. And I've tried to get around this multiple ways, like pressing the file directly or turning it off via terminating it via task manager. But nothing seems to be working. Once I'm done playing, I have to turn off my computer if I don't want it to run and stack up hours when I'm not actually playing

[meheezen]

^something is failing to unload the steam dll, the question is: what? and how can it be fixed.

I cant recommend anything else than checking the integrity of game files at this point, but i suppose you already tried that, so this leads more or less to a dead end

[greenserpent25]

Yeah I tried it before. I tried it once more and it said 2 files were ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and will be requiered, but I doubt that's gonna help

[MollyMillions]

I have the same problem since about the 11 June 2019. Have tried unistalling and reinstalling the game but it makes no difference. Have been battling with this, trying to find a way to get the game to run for the last week - very annoying.

[greenserpent25]

Yeah I feel you man. Right now I'm sorta just living with it. It sucks but I guess I just have to restart my computer every time I want to turn it off. I've had the problem for roughly the same amount of time as you, I think a few days longer.

[Fenn]

Same issue here, haven't had this happen before at all. Very rarely the launcher would not open but forcing it closed in task and rerunning would always work. However it never did this new problem of not closing properly afterwards.

Dargon's suggestion does work at least, but it's still very annoying to have to do this every time I want to open the game. Not sure what recent change is responsible for it, but hopefully it's fixed soon.

[meheezen]

^add Steam and the game folder to your anti-malware safe list. We figured it out a few weeks after.

The issue is that the anti-malware will prevent Steam from attaching some DLL properly with rundll32, so when you close the game Steam is not notified and keeps believing the game is still open, since the corresponding DLL is still loaded