I had to reinstall Windows. GRRR
where to I access my copy of CGS 2018?
That's the thing I really hate about download-only software. It's a good idea to back-up the original download installer file. Hindsight is 20/20 vision though. I can log into my Corel account and see several past registered versions of CorelDRAW along with their serial numbers. But Corel doesn't let you directly access the main installer file, just the patches. I seem to remember being able to download the main installer files from the downloads page in the past.I don't understand this policy. If you, the customer, bought a copy of CorelDRAW, registered and activated it then that should be enough to be granted access to download the main installer file (as well as the updates for that version). When you reinstall the software you have to sign into your Corel account, enter the serial number and activate it. This whole "we need a proof of purchase" email thing makes no sense.I just did an overhaul of an old personal notebook (new 1TB SSD and upgrade from 8 to 16GB of RAM). Put Win 10 Pro in it clean. I installed Adobe Creative Cloud on it (for now until I buy the new notebook I'm planning to buy). All I needed was my user name and password to get running. I installed personal copies of X8 and CDR 2020 on this old notebook; thankfully I had the ZIP installer files, patches, etc.
Great fear of piracy, weaponized against the actual customers.
I wasn't planning on this. I was supposed to be a 10 min job adding ram. I didn't know it would blow out into killing off and actually deleting my software, emails, passwords... Unbootable is unbootable... you would think after 30 year Microsoft would have managed a repair utility that worked. I think it has something to do with the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). I doubt if Windows can get inside that to fix anything. If it could that would potentially be a security risk.
I've downloaded 10 years of Paypal as CVS, found the Corel transaction, given it to them raw with the "", explained that it was an issue at the time as I was updating the post beta. Which didn't matter as I'd owned the copy before. Said it is urgent and screwing me over on a job, which it is. Told them to talk directly to Gérard Métrailler.
That was 10 hours ago. I'd say 24 hours was long enough for them to sort it out. That's about how long it will take me to get everything reloaded that I need for the job.
I'm very intolerant of people who say "that can't possibly be done". But I will try to just let this proceed without contacting support again. And I'll feedback what happens.
You are correct, you should be able to download the software at call. Things happen! Computers are stolen, HD go US, you buy a new computer... and you can do that. But if you have paid for something and you are not on Corel's DB then it isn't really your problem is it!
It "feels like" call centre bullshit from the telco. I had a classic this week. A customer with 4 emails that are jamming his email feed that I can't delete no matter what I do. I've had to wait 2 months while they developed the covid safe call centre.
Yani "Well if you can't do this by accessing his account and deleting the emails on the server then delete the whole account and recreate it."
Tech Support "Creating an email account is a sales job and it will take 2 days."
2 days for 1 minute of effort! Support can't even create an email account for an existing customer?
This is some bullshit attitude I've never been allowed. I'll bet ya most of us have done all nighters to meet a deadline, worked weekends without overtime, done our share of author's corrections and dared not complain. I thought that was called the "real world". Maybe I just got it all *** about face again. In the "real world" it takes 2 days to set up an email. Which is about the same amount of effort as to fix my license on the server.
Fortunately, I'm a day ahead of you, so I get extra time before the Corel weekend for them to fix this.
I'll start a spreadsheet and rate each of them. Maybe we should put Programs on a different drive that can be unpluged. Seems because Microsoft labelled the folder Program Files they seem to be of the belief that can rape it.
Honestly, I'm sorting out again what I already sorted out in 2016.
Lucky I'm kewl with it.
I never install to the program folder, every application is installed into its own folder which resides in the route of C.
I might have a worthy RAM bedtime story after this.
I've discovered there is a lot of rubbish written on the web. It's about as credible as the antivaxers!
I had to get super "clean" to be sure what I was looking at wasn't some other sort of bug.
Here's the quick version.
16GB == 8 usable + 8 hardware reserved32GB == 24 usable + 8 hardware reserved
So the sales pitch here is that when you update to 32GB from 16GB, you get the full 16GB as usable RAM.
The shared graphics RAM goes from 4GB to 12GB (on a 2GB card). (I have 2 of them and they both got the same added shared RAM.
If you are not seeing that number relationship you have a RAM issue. Likely fixed by slowing down the RAM. It's common for RAM to lose speed in my experience. Maybe 10% over 4 years.
Not getting the right numbers, slow the RAM down and the computer will actually run much faster.
Put that in the book for people with unstable systems. Goes well with the pencil rubber RAM repair.
I build a new system every 3 to 5 years so no biggie, second antivaxers have a point. It's just not a good point!
This has lasted 6 years, 8 core AMD. It's getting to that point where it needs a bit of help before death. UHD video edits are the target for improvement. I'm holding off for some of the AMD chips to come down in price. I'm building up to that one, I don't have spare arms and legs to sell.
I moved away from AMD years ago there is way too may issues with CorelDRAW performance and AMD and it's not worth tracking down because it seems it's AMD driver related.
My wife has an AMD system for web surfing it has never had any issues with CorelDRAW, many AMD users on this forum have issue. Same said foe Xeon systems it's a very hit or miss situation.
All the video editing guys that I know who have moved from Mac or PC Intel to Ryzen systems experienced driver issues for quite awhile until the got the combination just right. After that they get decent performance but all of them are serious computer heads. Some are still seeing issues with Ryzen and Davinci.
I just have the guys buy ASUS main boards, 64 GB of RAM, NVidia graphics cards (never a Nvidia chipset) , Samsung SSD's and i9 processors and build the damn thing. It's up and running in less than a day and it will run 3 to 5 years. The one I run now is a rocket and will work until it pisses me off and I wipe it and give it to one of my kids of grandkids.
Never see anything ever that related to a AMD processor issue.
Lots of Windows people using Davinci Resolve are jumping ship because it renders 15% faster on the same hardware when running Linux. They pick AMD graphics cards because AMD use "open source" drivers on Linux.
It's now Friday, no contact from Corel Support. My guess is that they are claiming I invented CVS data from Paypal and payment isn't proof of purchase. Feels like they don't even have a too hard basket, they just ignore what doesn't fit the flow chart of allowed responses.
The guys I watched were MAC guys moving to Ryzen due to costs. Each and every one of them had serious driver issues which took months to resolve.
All of them were serious tech people and 2 of them do tech videos on YouTube professionally. All of the regularly deal with crash issues with Davinci.
Of the several I watched none ever went back to MAC one did stay with Adobe, in fairness his operation was 10 times larger than anyone's else and their logic made sense due to volume.
Wow you are old and out of touch! I do not disagree I think Windows has become an entertainment system however MicroSoft has made Windows what people want.
I know! WTF!
However the regular people (non graphic people) I do tech support for love it. Their Windows system syncs with their car, phone, tablet, television, frigging water heater , coffee maker, security system at home and office, their kids and it let's them do everything they want.
They love it!
The graphic people I do support for in most cases are too effing stupid to run a computer. Sorry but it's more true than not.