Thief 1/Gold on Windows

Thief: The Dark Project was a popular stealth game from a first person perspective, released in 1998. In this year, Windows 95 and 98 were mainstream operating systems. You can still play Thief on Windows 11 or Windows 10 if you have the original CDs. Just follow the following guide!

Installing Thief 1/Gold from original CD

When you try to install Thief 1/Gold from CD on Windows 11 or 10, you could get an error saying that the game cannot be installed due to DirectX 6.1 limitations. When you do find a way to install the game, you'll probably run into the game's limited resolution. And perhaps Thief will freeze when you start a new game. So, what to do to install and run the game flawlessly on Windows?

  • Make sure you have DirectX 9.0C installed
  • Copy the THIEF folder from the original Thief CD 1 as well as CD 2 to a folder of choice, for example d:\games; you'll end up with d:\games\THIEF. Allow to overwrite existing files and merge the THIEF folder. Do not copy the folder to the Program Files folder.
  • Download TFix 1.24c
  • Save the TFix file to a folder of choice and double click it to open
  • At Choose Install Loction, make sure that the destination folder is the THIEF folder you've copied to your hard disk, in this example d:\games\THIEF
  • Leave the default components of TFix checked and finish the installation

Please note that by default the TFix does not create Start menu items and it does not create a desktop shortcut to Thief. To start the game, open Windows Explorer, go to the installation folder of Thief, in this example d:\games\THIEF and double click on the thief.exe file to start the game. You also can create a shortcut on the desktop by right clicking on thief.exe and choose "Send to - Desktop (create shortcut)".

Other options: get a new copy on GoG.com

Thief Gold is available as a download through GoG.com, a website that distributes old games for new Windows systems. Buy your DRM-free copy there. You could still run into some problems, like videos not playing and limited resolution. You can apply the TFix patch described above to fix those issues.

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