9 times out of 10 i cant even get off the boat without it crashing and locking up. I then have to do a hard restart on my machine. I have the latest version of morrowind, latest video card drivers, latest mainboard drivers...

My machine is a p4 2.8C with 1 gb (2x512) duel channel Mushkin DDR 433 @ 2,2,2, An MSI Neo2-ls, an ATI radeon all in wonder 9800 Pro, and a 120GB SATA HD.

I have done everything in the pinned thread and have reset Smartgart as tech support suggested. Still its horrbile unstable. The furthest ive gotten is to the stat application menu and then it crashes. 9 times out of 10 it crashes getting off the b boat. Ive also tried with HT on and off.

Well you're certainly running PLENTY enough machine to handle the game smoothly, so I'm thinking you may have had a bad MW install. Before you "un-install/re-install" though, clean and defrag if you haven't recently, then try shutting down all you backround apps via MSCONFIG (startup tab, "Disable All") and reboot once they have been disabled.

Oh, and you DO have the latest patches for your version of MW, right?? Has to be asked...

If nothing else helps... I guess I'd say do a full un-install and re-install and hope for the best.

Good luck.