Need help! Game won't launch after title screen

[djber00]

After buying and installing X-Wing Alliance (via the X-Wing combo pack) and then the XWA Upgrade, the small selection screen pops up, but when I try to actually play the game, the following errors are thrown every time:

DeviceResources::OnSizeChanged (error window title)
RenderTarget SwapChain
A resource is not available at the time of the call, but may become available later (error window text lines)

After clicking "ok" (the only option), the following error window pops up:
X-Wing Alliance (error window title)
DirectDraw Init FAILED at 2 (error window text)

These errors happen even when I directly open the alliance.exe or XwingAlliance.exe local files on my machine rather than using the Steam web link desktop shortcut, as a previous thread suggested. I also followed a previous thread and made sure that my Direct Play is turned on under Legacy Components in the "Turn Windows Features on or off" screen, so that's not the problem (or solution).

I'm running Windows 10 Home ver. 20H2, updated as of July 2021 on a Lenovo G700; 12GB RAM; 2.50GHz CPU.

What am I doing wrong, or not doing right? Am I missing something?

[lefty1117]

Don't know much about Lenovo laptops - do you know what video card or chipset it's running? RenderTarget in the error description makes me think device driver or perhaps other graphics card related missing feature.

[djber00]

Thanks lefty1117- I'm running an Intel Pentium 2030M @ 2.50GHz, with chipset driver version 10.0.19041.546. It also says "Intel 7 Series/C216 Chipset Family SATA AHCI Controller - 1E03" with driver version 9.3.0.1025 from 10/5/2012 (old, I know!). As far as I can tell, I'm simply running a standard graphics card (which came with the laptop): Intel HD Graphics, driver version 10.18.10.4358 from 12/21/2015. Not sure if this helps and forgive any ignorance on my part, but what can be done?

[Thereisnotri]

I've just installed the Tie Fighter Total Conversion and the advice in their video guide to installing was to copy your game folder from your steam library (ie the XWA folder) to your desktop. Then drop the XWAU upgrade and the patch into that folder and run them in sequence. Then do the same with the TFTC - there's no DRM, so you can run the game from the folder on your desktop. It also means that the version installed on steam is left alone, so you can always go back to the original version. The original game is about 800mb, XWAU about 2gb and the TFTC about 8gb, and the only thing you're doubling up on is the 800mb of the original game in two places, so it's not a massive hit to storage. Working beautifully.

I'd thought about it with XWAU, but as soon as I'd seen the TFTC, that sold me, so bought and installed/modded last night. I bought my first ever PC (an intel DX2 66) specifically to be able to play X Wing and Tie Fighter (3d models - no sprites!) was still the best space sim I've ever played.

[Katsu.I]

It needs Win10 Directplay.
Directplay crashes a lot of my other games when its installed.