Iv been a Corel user since 1994 and the last version I bought was 11 and have used it happily. I moved to X5 for the new features and multi core support. Iv had to redo so much work as a result of using Corel Draw X5. To clarify, I do have the boxed retail edition of X5 and never had the demo running the aft mentioned machine.
I would say I have a fast and capable enough machine to run X5. I have a Corei7 920 running at 4.3Ghz , 6Gb's of RAM, a ATI HD5770 and im running Win 7 64bit. Its a fresh install. The overclock is solid and have torture tested running two instances of Prime95 pushing all cores, 8 threads to 100% for 25 hours with no errors. Memory tested with Memtest 15 hours with no errors. Windows 7 is fully updated, No Anti Virus installed, and the only other Applications installed are After Effects CS4 and Cinema4D Studio R11.5. I had many of the same issues in the Corel X5 trial on my WindowsXP SP3 machine.
Yes i have had the same results not overclocked. After Effects and C4D have been Solid.
Uninstall and reinstall shows no improvement in the issues faced. Safe mode=no change, F8 on PP startup= no change.
LIke some of the other Corel versions I had, i had to wait for service packs and patches to have a solid running copy of Corel. But in a professional setting, using software that has this many issues seriously hurts productivity and is a time and money waister. Iv read numerous posts here and in other forums of people having issues like mine or worse with X5.
I will take you all on a trip down memory lane ( pardon the pun). I started with Corel version 5 in the 90's. It was a stable rock solid performer under Win 3.1 Windows 98 saw me on version 7 and still all good. Forward to 2003, XP and version 11. Now you guys say there is problems with X4 and X5 and 11 was a little beauty. Well I am the exact opposite. Version 11 was the version from hell. It brought down my brand new PC at the time- totally. I won't bore you with a long winded discussion on why but it was the culprit in the end. It finally decided to behave after much tweaking and patching but my love affair with Draw took severe damage for a long time after. I have tried to install 11 on several other pc's since that original installation as I have upgraded but it refused to run. Funny thing was that RAVE the animation app that came with it runs flawlessly and had many of the same tools as Draw but draw itself would fail to run on these newer machines. Forward to late 2009. I thought new machine so forgive Corel and give X4 a go. This is where the story ends. It runs perfectly and I am very happy with it. So we each have our own experiences with Corel products. The point is we should all have the same experience. And that would be a happy and stable one. I must say. Corel --get your act together. You could have had it all. Now Adobe owns the world. You know it. I know it. Change that. Draw is the best--we all know it. It deserves better.