I have been experiencing a repeating bug in both CorelDRAW and Corel Photopaint. The bug works as follows:
If the program has been running more than a few minutes, it will crash without any notification or error message when accessing the color selector dialog boxes. This happens in both Draw and in Photopaint. The app does not issue any form of warning (aside from freezing momentarily) and just exits, resulting in the loss of all work that has been done since your last save. I have tracked the problem down to a couple of DLL files which throw a .Net exception code. The same errors happen regardless of whether you are using CorelDRAW or Photopaint. The offending DLL's are CrlClr.dll (part of the color subsystem for the Corel suite) mfc140u.dll (part of .Net). The error code is almost always the same, regardless of the offending DLL: "0x c0000005" My primary system is a dual Xeon CPU (twin E5-2670's) with 128GB of ECC RAM, an SSD main drive and dual Quadro 2000's, running Windows 10 Pro (64bit, all updates current). The same problem happens on other machines I have tried the app on (several different machines from Core i7's to i5's with RAM ranging from 8GB up to 16GB, all running Win10 pro), so this is not an issue isolated to my personal hardware. The same exact silent crash happens on all of them, and the same DLL files and error codes are reported in Windows' logs.
This is a show-stopping error that has cost me hours of work and lost money as a result. The problem is repeatable and from what I have seen, it is common with other users in these forums.I contacted Corel tech support by their support chat and the person on the other end had the nerve to tell me that CorelDRAW 2019 is not compatible with Windows 10 Pro, even though it states quite plainly on their website that it is compatible and the fact that literally no professional or business machines run Win10 "home" edition. It was easy to tell that the person honestly had no idea what the problem actually could be and was simply trying to get rid of me. I then tried to talk to tech support on the phone. I was barely through my explanation (see above) before the lady told me that the problem needed to be elevated and that her supervisor would call me back shortly.
THAT WAS A WEEK AGO. I have yet to hear back from Corel on the matter.I have been using CorelDRAW since version 3. Literally for DECADES. I have NEVER seen such a bug that was so easily repeatable and show-stopping. This problem has persisted through THREE updates now. It seems like a relatively easy problem to track down and fix, and given the number of people it effects, I find it mind boggling that Corel has not done something about it yet.What is going on? Why can't you fix this major problem with your software, Corel? You are losing customers over this. You need to make it a priority over adding features or even smaller non-critical bug fixes.
I MIGHT, *MIGHT* have found a solution...I figured that maybe it was an issue with video card drivers (perhaps tied to how corel is using them to render colors and text), so I updated from the standard baked in OEM drivers for Win10 to the latest greatest Nvidia drivers for my Quadros. So far, I have not been able to recreate the blind crash. It's still early in my tests, but Corel seems snappier in general, especially when working with text.Wish me luck.
Please keep us posted.
Sharon
Update: I have been running CorelDRAW all day without any issues so far. Coincidentally, I also have *not* run Photopaint concurrent with CorelDRAW. I am beginning to wonder if the problems I am encountering are somehow tied to running both programs at once. If they share certain DLL files (which they do) then they may be trying to access the same memory address simultaneously which could be the source of the conflict. Error c0000005 (the recurring error) is an access violation error, so the theory would seem to be plausible.That being said, this is not an acceptable solution to the problem. One of the primary advantages of Corel over Adobe is the integration between the different apps in the suite. Without that interoperability, Corel loses it's main selling point for me.
Wouldn't hold your breath. I never use photo-paint (use Photoshop) and still crashes.
Let us know how long this lasts crash free etc.
I dropped Photoshop years ago. I do a significant amount of high end architectural imaging in standard print and up to grand format. For 25 years I used Photo-PAINT and the last several years Photo-PAINT augmented with PaintShop Pro and AfterShot Pro.