How to run TIE Fighter (Collectors CD Edition) on Windows XP

It's a great tragedy that the original DOS version of TIE Fighter and its expansions have been largely cut loose by LucasArts, despite the fact that they remain some of the best video game playing ever created. They did release an updated "X-wing Trilogy" edition that bumped up the graphics and the compatibility of the game (to Windows 95), and that version will still run on XP if you get the patch, but the game lost a little bit of its heart in the conversion, including the snappy midi-soundtrack that was so phenominal.

I've tried for ages to get TIE Fighter to run on my current computer - I've tried everything short of installing Windows 95, and everything, even boot disks, gave me problems. I'm happy to say, however, that I have finally found the answer.

The miracle answer to all of this is an OpenSource DOS emulation tool called The VDMSound Project. It works with Windows XP (SP2 - not sure about SP1), 2000, and NT, but not Windows 95. Unlike most DOS emulators, this one also includes a complete emulation package for sound so you don't have to mess with crazy extra configurations just to get some audio going.

Getting TIE Fighter to work with VDMSound was a pretty simple process -  we used the TIE Fighter Collector's CD-ROM edition, which is the basic game plus all the expansions, served in classic DOS style. The first thing you need to do is install TIE Fighter, which should go off without any problems even in XP. For us, the autoinstall ran as soon as we stuck the CD in, and we picked the "Maximum Install" (only 90megs) and let the program do it's work.

I did, however, skip the Sound Card configuration at this point.

After you've done that, go ahead and install VDMSound on your computer, then browse to the directory where you installed it. In the VDMSound folder, there should be a file called "autoexec.vdms" that you can open and edit in notepad.

Open the file in Notepad and delete the "REM" before the line about CD drivers, like we have here.

Now you need to go to your TIE Fighter install directory. The default is usually C:/tiecd/, but it really doesn't matter where you installed the game. Right-click the file called "Tie.exe" and select Properties from the drop-down menu that shows up.

Then select the "Compatibility" tab and click to enable the compatibility options.

Next, do the same for the file "tieauto.exe" in the same directory. After you've done that, right click on Tieauto.exe, and select "Run with VDMS." This should bring up a DOS window and load the TIE Fighter autolaunch program. Select "Install" from the prompt it gives you.

Now select "Set up sound card" from the install menu, and hit "C" for "Custom setup." In the fields available, select the following information:

      Sound Card: SoundBlaster Pro
      Port: 220
      IRQ: 7
      DMA Channel: 1
      Stereo Reverse: 0

Then use the "test" options to test both the Sound and the Music. They should work without any problems. Once they do, Quit and Save the configuration. Then quit the installer (not "Play TIE Fighter").

You can now run TIE Fighter from XP by right-clicking on TIE.exe and selecting "run with VDMS." The emulator should automatically recognize USB joysticks, and of course you can always use your mouse.

On some computers, flight will not display properly unless you have it set to 320x200 resolution, which you can do from in-game at any point by hitting escape, then selecting "320X200"under the "Flight Res" option. You may also have to play around with how many other applications are running to get good performance, but on our system it ran fine without really having to shut anything down.

For reference, I ran TIE Fighter on:

3Ghz Pentium 4
1GB of RAM

So dig out the old disks, dust 'em off, and get set up for some of the best Flight/Space Sim action ever made. And may the force be with you.