Thief 1/Gold on Windows 10

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 8 or Windows 7 if you have the original CDs. Just follow the following guide!

Installing Thief 1/Gold from original CD

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When you try to install Thief 1/Gold from CD on Windows 7 or 8, 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 7?

  • 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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