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I haven't been able to play Morrowind with mods in a long time - just vanilla. Revisited the game after a while and ran into the gamma issue. Tried ALT + TAB and forgot Windows + D before tabbing back in. It crashed and now won't start. I hear the music, but all I get is a flicker of the screen, then it minimizes. I've tried running it as admin for Win 7, XP 2 pack and XP 3 pack. I uninstalled, deleted the whole file and reinstalled. I've been searching and troubleshooting for hours. It's my favorite game of all time and I so miss it. Any help is appreciated.

What mods? Is OpenMW an option?

No mods. Only download was MCP, but I suppose that wasn't necessary since I'm running through Steam. I managed to get the game running again. Just kept trying fixes. Must have tried a half dozen. Still having the gamma problem. It's almost black in caves and ruins. Running into walls and getting stuck. Night eye and torches don't help. Tried Alt + tab, Windows + D, then alt + tab again, but it crashes. Tried to change my resolution. Just crashes. Also pretty dark in buildings like mages and fighters guilds. And it makes me sad I can't mod at all. I'd like better bodies, all boats port and all silt striders at least. But any mod at all and it just won't start.
Game's allowed by antivirus and firewall. I'm running an MSI stealth pro that I let a friend's son work on a couple years ago and it and before then I did not have these issues. What had happened is that I had run out of room on my C drive and a windows 10 update broke it. I let him work on it to try and save my data. Lost a lot of money getting my laptop working again and still lost the data.
Oh well. I'm still getting a slight Morrowind fix just running around in the dark. I should be able after all these years! Still my favorite game of all time, even since Skyrim.

I play Morrowind in Steam and it's pretty dark-- always has been, if I remember correctly from the old non-Steam version I used to play years ago. I play all of my TES games plain vanilla by choice, so I can't offer any suggestions about why you're unable to run with mods. But as far as the darkness, did you try adjusting your monitor's settings? You said you Alt-Tabbed out of the game, so I'm guessing you've tried adjusting your Windows desktop settings, but I'm talking about the controls on the monitor itself. I remember I used to do that sort of thing years ago so I could see properly. Nowadays I just get used to it as much as possible, use torches when I can, and I'm currently using a spear (Illkurok) which gives me Night Eye, so that helps a bit. But, yes, it's always so DARK!

I would suggest checking out OpenMW if you can't get the original game running to your satisfaction.

One trick I seem to remember from years and years ago is activating a torch, then dropping it on the ground in a dark place. IIRC, the torch will keep burning indefinitely, unless I'm thinking of another TES game. Dropping a few lit torches, lanterns, etc. at various places in a dark place might help you see better.