I'm getting really frustrated with X6 - again.
Files that used to print almost instantly with X5, X3 and earlier versions of DRAW now take anywhere from a minute to 10 minutes before my large format Epson inkjet begins printing. I can see my hard drive is working really hard to spool documents from X6 and it slows down any other programs I try to use while waiting for a job to print. Anyone have any ideas as to how to resolve this issue? It's really messing up my workflow. I suppose I could just go back to using X5 - But then: What the heck was the point in upgrading?
Another cause of the print slowdown, especially if this also occurs with other programs, is the many, many unused files and directories in the system's Temp directory.
To clean the Temp directory of all unused, leftover temporary files and sub-directories, open your Windows Explorer and in the address bar, enter, '%temp%' (without the quotes). Select all the files and directories and delete them. Windows will not allow you to delete any file that is currently in use, but will let you delete all others that are not being used.
Then empty the Trash Can.
Thanks Harry & Hugh. I guess my point is this: CorelDRAW X5 spooled my files almost effortlessly and sent them to the printer very fast. X6 takes significantly more time to do the exact same task and even with an empty Temp folder, slows my system down.
OK:
Running on XP with all service packs installedI'm guessing single core CPU? Pentium 4 for sure, 32-bit4 gig of ramlots of working space on C DriveNo other apps running when I print (really inconvenient)
Is your printer driver/spooler set to start printing as soon as it receives data or to wait until the entire file is spooled for printing? If it is the latter and it is a big file (in WinXP printer terms), it can take awhile to complete spool the entire print image to the hard drive.
Spooling is set to start printing as soon as it receives data - Same settings I had for X5 and previous versions.
As far as you have single-core CPU : Go to Tools->Options->Global, uncheck "Enable background tasks" box. This might help. The background printing added in X6 can be much slower than single-thread printing on some machines with slow hard drives. Background tasks do not add significant benefits for single-core CPUs anyway.
Success!
Thank you Gennady: Your suggestion to uncheck "Enable background tasks" resolved my issue. Printing from CorelDRAW is as it was before - I just tested a file that took almost 7 minutes to spool and print this morning - it printed immediately just now.