Lee Carre: start menu, settings, control panel
opened "sounds and audio devices"
went to the "hardware" tab and selected "audio codecs" (about half way down the list)
clicked "properties" at the bottom of the tab
on the "audio codecs properties" window, went to the "properties" tab
on the "properties" tab a list of codecs was displayed (i assume all the ones i have installed, i can list them here if requested)
i found one that looked most like an mp3 codec (it's called "Fraunhofer IIS MPEG Layer-3 Codec") and selected it (so it was highlighted)
i clicked the "properties" button at the bottom of the tab
in the window for the properties of the codec (hope you're following all these "properties" windows

- this one has options to use/not use the codec and to change the priority) i changed the priority to "1", then clicked "OK"
now, a strange thing windows seems to do, that i discovered from past experience, is when you change the priority of a codec, for some reason, it becomes disabled (the "don't use the audio codec" option is selected), so, make sure the "Fraunhofer IIS MPEG Layer-3 Codec" is selected, and click "properties" again to re-open the options box
in the codec properties box (again), leave the priority at "1" and select "use this audio codec"
click "OK" again
click "OK" for "audio codecs properties"
and "OK" for "sounds and audio devices
once that was done i didn't need to restart for morrowind to play music,, character voices, and sounds etc., however, the experience of other users may be different
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