Need help very badly. Am very, well... poor. I absolutely cannot afford to upgrade. I have been using CorelDRAW 8 for years and I absolutely LOVE the program. I am an artist, however unsuccessful, but I love what I do. My computer died a while ago, and I didn't have money for another. I went without for months, and then an acquaintance gave me a computer. It was an old one of his, although it was newer than mine had been. He put together a very nice system for me with Windows XP, and I am eternally grateful. However, for whatever reason, my old and always reliable CorelDRAW 8 suite won't work on this new computer. It installs, and it doesn't say there are any issues, but when I try to open a document in Corel DRAW, or when I try to Save As in Corel PhotoPaint... they freeze, and then shut down. At first I thought it was because I had both programs open at the same time, so I tried to just work with one at a time, but they still freeze and close without saving. The thing is... my old computer had Windows XP on it too. So, why wouldn't it work now? I've uninstalled and reinstalled the program 3 times, all to no avail. We thought that perhaps the problem was that my old computer had Windows XP Home on it, and this one had XP Pro, so we downgraded to XP Home, but that didn't work either.
I know everyone hates sob stories, but I am literally in tears over this. I suffer from Panic Disorder and as a result, am confined to my home most of the time. My computer and my art work are all that I have - my only true happiness, and CorelDRAW is SO important to me. Does anyone have ANY ideas on how to remedy my problem? Remember - I have zero dollars. And unfortunately, I finally have a store interested in carrying a line of my greeting cards. I have designed the greeting cards in CorelDRAW 8, but they are not complete, and this store is waiting for me to finish them. I have a flexible deadline, but a deadline nonetheless! I also have a commitment to a local charity, the completion of which also depends on Corel DRAW. Help!!! Somebody! Anybody!!! Please!
Hello, Adrianna.
Perhaps changing the compatibility mode of CorelDRAW and PhotoPaint to Windows 2000 or even Windows 98, may help. Have you tried this?
Um... no, I haven't tried that. How do I do it? (I'm not exactly a computer whiz, lol.) Brenda
If I recall correctly, you can right click on the program (installer/setup, in this case) and click on Properties. This should bring up a dialog box, where you would choose Compatibility tag. Put a check mark in the "Run the program in compatibility mode for:" and then in the drop-down box, right below that, choose Windows 98 or one of the other modes.
Oh my gosh! It worked! At least it seems to have... I can Save and Save As without it freezing on me. Now I just have to see how well it handles bigger files, with graphics etc. Thank you so much!
Be very careful creating large files. You should have at least 2GB of RAM before you get too rambunctious with file sizes. And keep lots of free disk space available for Windows and CD. A good rule of thumb is at least twice the amount of disk space as the size of your file is required for automatically generated as you work temporary files
Look at System in Control Panel to see what you have... or ask your friend to help you with this.
the 'dd'
ps: on important files make incremental backups. eg: <filename>; then <same filename-A>;... etc.
And SAVE and/or Save As often... how often? As often as you would never want to repeat the work you've just done.
DO NOT WAIT FOR A POWER GLITCH, or some such, to learn this lesson.
I am glad that you have it working on your system.
Fantastic suggestion. I also had the same problem but your suggestion solved it.
Similar problem here. I love Photopaint v8 beyond all reason; it's my one killer app that ANY system has to run or I'm both heartbroken and unable to work. I've used various later versions but always wind up going back to v8.
Anyway, v8 has always been well-behaved on a variety of systems and setups (and runs rings around every other editor, even on ancient hardware) ... until I upgraded the old workhorse XP box from 1GB RAM to 2GB RAM. And then Photopaint got all upset and unstable and stops responding for any or no reason (tho the two worst culprits are masks, and the Save As dialog).
I tried limiting its memory use in Options, but no joy. Hadn't occurred to me to try XP's compatibility mode, but giving that a whirl... wouldn't run at all under either Win9x mode, but so far *seems* to be running all right under Win2K mode. Keeping fingers, toes, eyes, and wires crossed...
A bit later: Nope, doesn't fix it. :( Any other ideas? Can't downgrade the RAM in this box (cuz it's also the internet box and 1GB was driving me mad, browsers being what they are nowadays) ...
I suppose I could try running it in a VM...