Hi,
My family and I bought a sign business in Vermont about six months back. The previous owner had some beef with apple and adobe and so set up the business' computer system on a lenovo running win10, and a far older dell running xp (old enough that it has a floppy drive). The win10 machine is running coreldraw x8, and the xp machine is running coreldraw 9. We have added a few other machines running various other programs, and networked all but the ancient dell. I am well aware of the fact that we are running too many different machines, from too many different manufactures, and from too many different generations for everything to work correctly all the time. That being said, we are having a recurring issue on the lenovo with coreldraw x8 that seems to be unrelated to the network, or any of the other machines connected.
Basically, what happens is that randomly coreldraw refuses to allow a file to be saved, or exported in an easily editable format. The file can't be saved to the local disk, or to a flashdrive (or other external non-networked drive), or the network drive, or to any of the other machines connected to the network. A basic save command causes the "disk cannot be accessed" error message to display. Attempting a "save as" command sometimes succeeds, but usually results in the same error (and even when it does succeed, opening the new file and then attempting a basic save results in the same disk cannot be accessed error). Copying the entire set of information in one file in coreldraw, pasting it into a blank coreldraw file, and then saving the new file works about 75% of the time.
When attempting to export there is intermittent "success": on rare occasions exporting the file as a pdf to any location on the local disk will successfully complete, sometimes it seems to freeze in the export** (more detail below), but usually an error message stating that the task can't be completed either because there is insufficient space on the disk or because the file doesn't have permission to be exported to that file type displays. The local disk is slightly under 50% filled, and given that the files in affected have all originated from CD on this machine I find it highly unlikely that I do not have permission to be changing the file type.
This problem is specific to coreldraw on this machine and cannot be replicated with any other applications. At any given time in the day 2-5 CD files will be open on this machine depending on the kinds of jobs currently working through the sign shop; this problem can appear across all currently open CD files (which is rare), or it can seem to be specific to one or two (usually the case). There doesn't appear to be a common causal factor between the files that are affected; they are all different ages, all different sizes, all opened from the local disk, none appear to be corrupted, and typically can be opened in coreldraw and saved successfully after the problem disappears. Restarting the program does not resolve the issue, restarting the machine does not resolve the issue, disconnecting from the network and restarting everything also does not resolve the issue.
The most maddening symptom of this problem is that it randomly occurs, persists for differing lengths of time, then suddenly disappears. I have not found a way to reliably induce the problem, although sometimes opening up a file that has previously had the issue can trigger it (but only about 50% of the time). This has been happening since before the purchase of the business; before networking the machine (the previous owner's solution was to take the rest of the day off and wait for the issue to self-correct). I believe he uninstalled and reinstalled CD the first time this happened, but that did not resolved the issue.
**The export file will appear to be created in the specified directory. However, it can't be copied to any location an error message stating that the file is in use by coreldraw displays even if coreldraw has been closed, and the machine has been restarted), and the file appears to not contain anything when opening it in coreldraw (the workspace opens, but there is no artboard, and no graphic information anywhere in the file). In corel (prior to force quitting, and computer restart) the background task icon continues to display in the lower right hand corner of the file's workspace, and the export status bar within the background task submenu reads as complete; normally that icon would disappear once the background task in-question has finished. Cancelling the export from that submenu turns the green export status bar to yellow, but doesn't seem to actually cancel the process as the background task icon continues to display. Sometimes CD will then crash, but usually it just remains stuck until the file is forced closed.
This is not a crippling issue by any means as I have found several different workarounds, but it is extremely frustrating because when it does occur I can count on losing at least half a day to working around the problem. In an ideal world I would scrap all the PCs, buy 4 imacs, and outfit them all with adobe cc, but I don't have the cash flow to solve the problem that way. I have browsed the forum and found the vaguely similar issue with CD x5 and references to a hotfix for that version. Does anyone know if something similar has been created for CD x8? Has anyone else ever experienced this issue/symptom set before?
Thanks
NESignGuy