My I inquire as to what operating system you're using? I see that you've posted XP 32 and 64 bit but is it XP or Vista? 32 or 64 bit?
If you have this problem on fresh OS installs then we need to look at hardware configurations. What are the hardware specs, specifically the main board, RAM and video card?
Also try and run something more modern then V12 we are at version 14.
ignis: this sytem actually has two Nvidia FX-1700 cards. I've tried using just one card. swapping, rebooting, and using the other card. It's possible that both are defective, but I was assuming the card wasn't the problem since I did try more than one. It has crashed with every set of drivers I've used from the current version back in June of last year to the most recent ones released by Nvidia in February of 2009.
David: This system is the only one crashing Photopaint, and it also happens to be the only one in our environment with 64-bit hardware. It is a Dell T7400.
Processor: Intel Quadcore Xeon, MB: Dell based on Intel 5400 chipset, RAM: 4GB (passed memtest overnight), 2 Nvidia FX1700 graphics cards, PSU: 980W.
As for the version, we have used the trial version of X4 and photo paint worked fine. In v12, all other programs other than photo paint work fine. We can consider upgrading, but I would like to try to solve this first.
Thanks again for all the help. Jim
also, the OS is XP.
The problem is really puzzling. Perhaps X4 addresses memory differently than V12 does. In combination with the fact that the specs of a particular type of DELL may seem similar, the internals of the machine may be quite different. I suspect though it has something to do with RAM or chipset. I hope you will be able to sort this out. I am now curious to what actually caused it.
ignis said:In combination with the fact that the specs of a particular type of DELL may seem similar, the internals of the machine may be quite different.
I quit selling Dell systems exactly be cause of this. We build our advanced graphic work ststions
Well I haven't gotten it sorted out yet, but I did make some interesting progress that I thought I'd share.
Essentially, Corel Photo Paint crashes in the following scenarios: Fresh 32-bit and 64-bit installs of XP SP2 all patched up. Even if it's the first program I install after doing this.
It WORKS when I install it under XP 64-bit virtualized (using Sun's Virtualbox) under a 32-bit XP host OS. This is SP2 fully patched.
I'm back to thinking this is a hardware configuration problem. I'm leaning at this point to the fact that virtual environments handle the hardware abstraction somewhat differently. This difference prevents the crash that happens using native 32-bit and 64-bit XP installs.
I might just try and turn this Dell back in for something with just 32-bit hardware. My user isn't comfortable running the virtual environment so I'll probably just abandon this, but thought I'd share that interesting tidbit.
Jim
A memory issue.
I wrote a post on it here today.
See it that rings any bells.
Very interesting. It seems you had the memory issue even though you passed stress tests? I've stress tested this overnight on multiple occassions using memtest and the Dell memory diagnostic tool. Nothing was every found, but I guess that doesn't rule it out then. I'll look in to what you said about XP loading itself in memory in the same place every time. Does it also load programs in the same space in memory? That seems inefficient and would lead to a lot of page thrashing without using the full amount of RAM available. I just found it strange that it crashes on load in the exact same spot with an "access denied" accessing the heap in two different OSs. I was under the impression that due to the 64-bit nature of XP x64 that the memory structure was different as well. Are you saying maybe it's not? But it is in the virtual environment?
I'm going to start swapping RAM around or slow it down and see what happens.