From time to time when saving a file the file gets corrupted. When trying to open the file, only a blank page is visible. Trying to open the file as zip says "error in packed file..." This happens several times a day (we are 5 users and this happens to everyone).
The out of memory issue is also a huge problem for us. This happens several times a day, often during printing.
I have tried all suggestions I have found in the forum to no help. Even complete reinstall doesn't help.
We are pretty close to abandon Corel for good - we loose a lot of money on these issues every day.
Are Corel taking these issues seriously or don't you care about professional users which are dependent on reliable tools?
3 users at Win7-64, 2 at XP-32. All computers are top notch with all patches/updates installed.
Joan,
Some use Microsoft Security Essentials and some Avast. All run as administrators, the programs used are Outlook, Draw, Firefox and Total Commander. All have the same fonts, which are checked with FontExpert and found OK. Regarding zip files, if turning off scanning of zip files and we receive a zip file containing a virus, what then? If Corel suggest this as a solution they don't take security seriously!
Corrupt fonts: Draw should not crash if a font is corrupt, period. A proper warning would be fine though.
From time to time I have installed X5 on a new computer totally patched and with no other program than X5 installed. Problem is the same.
Ariel,
I have checked color styles and views, not the problem. We have appr. 1000 corel template files we use and all are checked for these issues. I have not seen any Corel employees answering any of these questions, sorry to say, but my feeling is that users with similar problems are not getting any attention from Corel.
Some other information. This happens mostly when X5 uses a lot of RAM. I have tried opening large files to force X5 to use more than appr 1 -2GB of RAM (I have 8GB) but crashes or stops responding before 2GB. Tried to reduce the number of nodes in a vector drawing.
Some examples:
Opens a file which is 4MB and contains 14181 simple vector objects. After opening the file, Draw uses 113MB RAM, select all objects and weld, out of memory at 1302MB.... happens on all computers/installations I have tested with.
Tried opening and converting some raw files from a Canon EOS5 camera the other day, 3 or maybe 4 files opens and converts with no problem, if trying to open 5, poof and Drow disappears..... (using appr. 1GB of RAM, tested on 3 different computers).
What made me post this initially was a school yearbook I have been working on for several days. 28 A4 pages, 300 images, 2 different fonts and some simple vector illustrations, 230MB filesize. Made som corrections to 10-15 names, adjusted some images and moved some objects around, saved the file.... corrupt. Reopening backup file and trying the same again, corrupt again. Reopen, one change at a time, save to new filename, after 4 hours I managed to finish the changes, which should have take 15 minutes.
We do a lot of print merges and if you try to edit the merged texts Draw crashes 1 out of 4-5 times. Draw also crashes often when a lot of files are opened and printed. I really can't see any problem with our computers/hardware/software. We mainly uses Dell or HP workstations. Files are stored to a fileserver, been tested with saving to local disk with no improvement.
What I want to know is if Corel Corp. acknowledges these issues as a Corel problem or not, and if we can expect a fix.
Vidar
Foster,
Scanning: I have scanning of cdr files turned off, but this makes no difference.
14181 vector objects: I know I am pushing the limits but have seen other users claiming to succesfully have worked with 250000 in one drawing. I have worked with developing software for 10 years (medical systems) and I know there is no reason for Draw to crash if there are to many nodes to be weld, should simply pop a message and abort the weld if the precalcultated number of nodes exceed the limit. It reqiuires less than 10 lines of additional code....
I will NEVER use Draw for raw conversion again. My point was; why add a feature that doesn't work? Or is it perhaps not a feature problem but a memory handling issue?
I have noticed you are telling not to use CD to make books (I want to hear it from Corel). We design appr. 1500 calendars each year with 13 or 26 pages with large images, normal filesize 150MB - 300MB. I can't remember one of them crashing during design/save. Some more pages in the 28 page school book but I find it very hard to accept that this is a official limitation with Draw, I have never seen anything in the documentation about it. We always produce a pdf file for proof and have never experienced a corrupt pdf file, why can't Draw save the same data as cdr file without corruption?
Since the limits aren't specified by Corel it's hard to figure out where it is. Our merge files may contain as much as 500-600 pages, both with images and text. Others are only 10 pages with a name and adress on each. The small files crash as often as the large ones..... If number of pages are the issue, Draw should have a limitation to the number of pages. During print of merge files we have less crash when skipping the print dialog window and go directly to print preview. My feeling is that there are bugs with the multitread part of the application, some of our users works faster than others and they have more often problems. Memory handling is another issue I believe. Reproducing these problems step by step is often difficult and takes a lot of time. I have saved som problem files and will try to assemble a package to send next week.
I have noticed Corel employees answering from time to time, and others say they follows what's posted here. I don't know what to expect but I have experience with other forums, EFI for instance, where employees are very active, supplying information and getting valuable input from the users of their rip solutions.
What this boils down to for me and my company is the fact that we loose to much money on these problems and want to or will have to find another solution. Our emplyees are frustrated with loosing time and their work. We have produced 18535 cdr files (377GB) the last 12 months, most of them without any problem at all.
FosterCoburn said: Vidar, You don't turn off scanning of zip files, you turn off scanning of cdr files. The AV programs realize a CDR is a zip and scan it. Telling it to ignore CDR (not zip) will get them to leave the CDR files alone. . . .
Vidar Strand said:I can't remember one of them crashing during design/save.
My recommendations:
Turn off Corel's auto-backup feature, found in Options under Save.
Vidar Strand said:Since the limits aren't specified by Corel it's hard to figure out where it is. Our merge files may contain as much as 500-600 pages, both with images and text. Others are only 10 pages with a name and address on each. The small files crash as often as the large ones..
If using Monstermerge, consider the auto-downsampling option. This helps keep your CDR files a reasonable size.
Before merges, end any unneeded programs so DRAW has maximum RAM.
Vidar Strand said:What this boils down to for me and my company is the fact that we lose too much money on these problems and want to or will have to find another solution. Our employees are frustrated with losing time and their work. We have produced 18535 cdr files (377GB) the last 12 months, most of them without any problem at all.
One idea: if X4 was more reliable than X5 for you, consider going back. You already have X4 licenses, so no cost. Also, new training not needed for staff. But you'd maybe need to batch down-save your files if you have been saving as X5.
Jeff,
Auto save is one of the first things I turn off when installing/configuring Draw. What I ment to say is that when publish to pdf for proof, the pdf files are never corrupt.
All PC's have between 4 and 12 GByte RAM. When crashing I have never seen Draw use more than just above 1GByte of RAM so it's not the available amount of RAM that's the problem I think.
When creating a design we always crop and downsample images to 300dpi prior to save/print
I have considered going back to X4, but X4 has a lot of problems with handling grayscale and monocrome images.
Vidar Strand said:All PC's have between 4 and 12 GByte RAM. When crashing I have never seen Draw use more than just above 1GByte of RAM so it's not the available amount of RAM that's the problem I think.
I agree.
Vidar Strand said:I have considered going back to X4, but X4 has a lot of problems with handling grayscale and monocrome images.
Oh? I have not seen these problems here with X4.
Jeff Harrison said:but X4 has a lot of problems with handling grayscale and monocrome images
I can understand the grayscale issues but what do you see as the monochrome issues?
The greyscale issue is: add a greyscale image to a Draw document and save the file; often when opening the file again the image has been "rearranged", almost like it's split into blocks and moved around. The same happens with B/W images. If you open one document which contains a corrupt image, other open files are often "contaminated" with the problem or Draw simply crashes.
The problem can be avoided by imediately after inserting the grayscale image to convert the image to a RGB image. This adds some other problems when printing, it's hard to maintain neutral greyscale representation.
David Milisock said: but X4 has a lot of problems with handling grayscale and monocrome images I can understand the grayscale issues but what do you see as the monochrome issues? [/quote]
but X4 has a lot of problems with handling grayscale and monocrome images
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