If for whatever reason you’re installation of Tiberian Sun was incomplete or you have a copy of the game that’s missing a few files you’ll likely run into this startup error:

"Failed to initialize. Please reinstall."

If you encountered this error while installing from disk it’s possible your disk is damaged and you won’t be able to install from it. If you got the game from a torrent (cough pirated) it’s possible the uploader did a poor job pirating the game and some files may be missing. Whatever the case, the game is freeware now so you can download the full working client legally from here. Make sure you read through the setup instructions and possible errors on that post before continuing.

Read more ›

Tiberian Sun .MIX files are propietary storage files used for Tiberian Sun as well as a few other Westwood Studios games. There are several good tools out there that you can use to extract these files:

• XCC Mix Editor (visual) – Download
• TSunmix (command line) – Download
• TSmix (command line) – Download
• SunTweak (visual) – Download

XCC is a visual editing tool that allows for easy extraction and manipulation of .MIX files and is what we’ll be using for this tutorial. The current version on the XCC Website, 1.47 didn’t work for me, so the link I’ve provided is to an older version of the program (1.21).

To start download XCC Mix Editor from the link above. Once you’ve extracted the mixer you’ll notice several executables. The following two are all that you should need to edit .MIX files:

• XCC Mixer.exe – Main utility for viewing and extracting components of the mix files.
• XCC MIX Editor.exe – Tool for inserting/deleting elements of a mix file.

In this tutorial we’ll be tweaking the in-game menu to show you the basics of editing the .MIX files and what you can do with them. To start, boot up the XCC Mixer and open gmenu.mix file located in your SUN directory. Make sure you have a backup of this file just in case. In the left most column what you’ll see now is the contents of this .MIX file:

There are several different file types that we see here:
Read more ›

Tiberian Sun is a strategy game set in the near future on an earth rapidly being transformed by a strange crystal life-form called Tiberium. The game continues the story line from the original Command & Conquer with Kane resurfacing after being presumed dead to try and wipe out the GDI once and for all. Play as one of two major world factions: GDI or NOD and for control of the planet.

Tiberian Sun has been released as freeware and has a great single player as well as an enjoyable mutliplayer with several different possible configurations. You can download the game from one of the following links:
+ Download link 1 <– Fileplanet
+ Download link 2 <– Cnc-comm
+ Download link 3 <– Gamershell

The game is old so it’s only natural that is has some known issues, especially on newer machines and operating systems. Before you try to play Tiberian Sun make sure you read through the relevant articles:
Windows 7 – Tiberian Sun on Windows 7
Windows 8 – Tiberian Sun on Windows 8

There are a few other issues you may run into when installing/playing the game. See these posts on the respective issues for solutions to some of the common problems you may encounter:

• One or more DLL files were missing or damaged. Please reinstall. This issue is related to improper installation of Tiberian Sun. See the Tiberian Sun DLL files missing or damaged post for details on how to fix your installation.
• Failed to initialize. Please reinstall. This issue is related to compatibility issues with newer operating systems. See the Tiberian Sun Failed to initialize post for details on how to resolve these compatibility issues.
• Westwood online support library is missing or invalid. This error is caused by issues with your Westwood internet components installation or registeration. See the Westwood online support library is missing or invalid post for details on how to fix your internet components installation.

Read more ›

On certain version and distributions of Tiberian Sun you might encounter the following error:

Westwood online support library is missing or invalid

This error is caused by issues with your Westwood internet components installation or registration. Follow these steps to fix this error:

1. Make sure you have the TFD freeware version installed. The freeware First Decade version of Tiberian Sun comes fully patched and includes both Tiberian Sun and Firestorm. It is also bundled with a few patch files that set you up for online play so there’s no reason you shouldn’t be using it at your main installation of the game. You can get the First Decade version from one of the links here.
2. Make sure the game is installed in the right directory. The First Decade version of Tiberian Sun expects to be downloaded in C:\Program Files\. Your full game path should be as follows:
   C:\Program Files\EA Games\Command & Conquer The First Decade\Command & Conquer(tm) Tiberian Sun(tm)\SUN
If you don’t have the game installed in this directory the included shortcuts and registry patch will not work. You can simply move your extracted EA Games folder to C:\Program Files\ if it isn’t there already.
3. Run registerWOL.bat. Navigate to your C:\Program Files\EA Games\Command & Conquer The First Decade\Internet directory and double click registerWOL.bat. You should get two messages that the installation succeeded. Now when you start the game you should be able to go online.

There is a chance that this won’t work. Specifically, after running registerWOL.bat you may get the following message:

The module "WOLAPI.dll" was loaded but the call to DllRegisterServer failed with error code 0x80020009

This means that the script failed to run. In this case you’ll probably have to register these DLL files manually instead via the following command prompt commands:

cd "C:\Program Files\EA Games\Command & Conquer The First Decade\Internet"
regsvr32 WOLAPI.dll
regsvr32 WOLBrowser.dll

If you’ve followed the above steps and are still experiencing the Westwood online support library is missing or invalid error, please post in the comments below. To increase your chances of a solution being found include as much detail as possible (which version of the game you’re running, what operating system you have, what video card you have and steps to reproduce the issue). Screenshots are also very useful!

Sources: link 1, link 2, link 3