Still stuck? A common fix for startup errors from https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Mirror's_Edge go fetch https://www.moddb.com/games/mirrors-edge/addons/persistent-fov Mirrors Edge Tweaks. The main thing here is use it to set the resolution to your monitor so if you have a 1080p monitor set it to start at 1080p. You can also use it to disable Physx if you don't have an Nvidia Gpu .
You may find you get frame rate drops at 1080p with Physx enabled even if you have an older Nvidia Gpu. You might hit 9 or 10 fps. The reason for this according to some info buried in the Physx section of Mirror's edge PcGaming Wiki is that it uses an ancient 32bit single threaded implementation of Physx from the stone age (2009 release) when multi threaded desktops were only just emerging at the higher end of the market. So if you regardez these two youtubes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tki0cI1W-EQ <- 14900ks cpu + Radeon Rx 7900 framerate is crushed with cpu Physx because all those cores no matter how great the cpu cannot match the parallelism of Nvidia's Cuda cores (shaders) which is their specific job parallel processing. So the Mirror's edge version of Physx (which is a relic of history) will basically use one core of any advanced modern cpu and simply overwhelm it with endless calculations. Also take note of the power consumption at 4k - 400w gpu at times 100w cpu most of the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CDfCUYS0rM <- Now in an alternate reality with an Nvidia RTX 4090 and a 13900ks cpu. Woohoo! The 4090's cuda cores crush it at 4k with 200-400fps even with Physx enabled. Ok if you got a coupla grand for minor visual effects on a 16 year old game.
The Compromise: I found that the geforce gtx 1060 with my zen 2 renoir and 3600mhz ddr 4 memory can run dsr 4k with physx off and go at 60fps using about 85-90w gpu power and 15w cpu power - half or quarter the power of those monsters. That guy really should cap his frame rate blighters. However1080p is just the resolution where Physx starts to crush the framerate so you have to either choose to play with Physx off or.. lower the resolution.
So after a fair bit of messin around with settings I found that at 1600x1024p the system automatically 'pillarboxes' the image if you have a 1080p monitor so you get a bit of a black border around the edge of the screen but the fidelity of the image is really nearly as good as 4k it doesn't try to 'upsample' and stretch it to fit the 16:9 aspect ratio so it's kinda 'supersampled' and you don't get any jaggies or tearing and the anti aliasing is fairly perfect - and you also get nice shiny glossy textures and you can play the game from start to finish in hi fidelity delishousness. Depending on your system you might wanna cap the framerate at 60fps. Not quite as buttery as 144hz or what but playable without framerate drops.
Without spending £1200 on a 16gb 4060ti to maintain forwards and backwards compatibility for older direct x 9 titles. The 5000 series lineup of gpu's will also be crushed by Mirror's Edge single core 32bit Physx since that no longer has 32bit cuda shader Physx support as Nvidia moves away from 'legacy support'. It does 64bit physx but Mirrror's edge software simply can't talk 64bit so all that fancy hardware might as well be a brick far as it's concerned. It seems improbable that there are any realistic 'remastering' options for the original game. History could probably also record various thoughts concerning where that might be crammed.
So the short version is for some weird reason is that Mirror's edge tweaks can launch the game where the EA App does not but subsequently after the first launch with ME Tweaks, the EA App can launch it. But Mirror's Edge Tweaks sets the tdengine.ini file in documents/ea games/mirror's edge/config to read only to prevent the game writing to it going hooey and changing settings. So subsequently you might just find it easier to continue using Mirror's Edge Tweaks to change any settings you want. There's a dizzying array of options but if you just wanna get it started in the first place keep it simple.
The next most particular useful tweak that might also resolve startup problems is to install DxVK from here: https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/releases just drop the d3d9.dll and dxgi.dll into the mirror's edge/binaries folder and it will automatically switch to Vulkan which fixes a particular problem for mirror's edge which doesn't minimize properly when alt+tabbed - on dx9 it just crashes the video subsystem and windows desktop and you have to ctrl+alt+delete and sign out and in to refresh the windows desktop. Vulkan fixes that where the other 'windowed' tweaks in pcgaming wiki did not work for me. Anyway you can just treat the game normally and change settings as though it was on DX Vulkan doesn't make it misbehave anyway. There is also a version of dxvk gplasync 2.7 which is another kettle of fish to come to grips with. You have to patch it by magic since the download for it assumes prior knowledge and does not include instructions. Whatever it's out there look it up if you're interested. And there's also the dxvk.conf file you can write to also place in the /binaries folder to regulate it which is also another kettle of fish.
There is another possibility that could be hindering your startup sequence 'maybe' the drm has used up all your license allowance. Depends how many iterations of PC you've played it on. I have 3 licenses left out of 5 I discovered from the license revocation tool probably because I had 2 previous iterations of pc since I purchased the game so I started with a win 7 machine, upgraded it to win 10, switched out the cpu mobo and ram, and then recently switched out the cpu mobo and ram again for incarnation III on win11 .
See the section on License revocation tool in the pc gaming wiki. Download and run it. What it lets you do is revoke one license of your current pc and then you can reload your game and it should start. I'm not totally sure how it works Id'a thought you'd have to run it on the old pc to revoke one old license to free it up for your new pc. Don't ask me why they think it works or something. It says you can ask EA for another if you've run out. That's up to you to test the hypothesis. I still had 3 left so mine worked. Hope it helps! Good luck.
Oh yes and the final note I found running at 1600x1024 really slashed the power consumption a lot to 35w gpu 15w cpu so that's a pretty good reason to compromise with the slight 'pillarboxing' effect on the screen border. But the visual fidelity is as good as it'll ever get on an older gpu like the 1060 and you can play with Physx enabled so you get showers of glass and bullet effects and puffs of debris when they hit a wall. All that for a bit of tinkly glass. It's a baffling anomalolly of historic interest. Considering I first played Mirror's Edge on a core i3 with a r7 380 with 2gb of ram on a 720p monitor and thought it was ok. I don't remember having any of these struggles with Origin but of course win 10 & 11 rewrote a lot of things and hardware has moved on and Physx is also pursuing it's current alternate 64bit reality.
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