Corel Draw 8 causing IPF's and running verrrrrrrry slow

[Tymergnath]

Our company recently updated our art department from draw ver.7 to ver. 8. We have encountered an unacceptable number of crashes (5 or more /day)<br>
I've found the problems to be compounded when we made use of the customizable workspace. I've also found that killing the corel media indexer uses about 100% of the processor.<br>
The slowest system involved is a win95 machine with a P133 processor and 64Meg RAM. Sorry, I don't have all of the system specs with me as I write this post. <br>
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My question, in short, is:<br>
Are there any known bugs/patches dealing with Draw 8's resource management? Or are my problems caused by something simple I've overlooked?

 

[Rev]

2 things that I have found. 1. Corel 8 doesn't know how to deal with more than 200 fonts on your system. It freaks. Secondly download and install the RevB patch from Corel. It does fix some of the problems. Also, I have been aware of some problems with running a ethernet card. I don't know why, but that seems to be the most common link between people who have this problem. I don't have an ethernet card and I never ever crash. Perhaps it has something to do with a protocol or something. Try investigating that.<br>
Hope this helps.<br>

 

[rycamor]

I use Corel8 right now with around 700-1000 fonts on 3 systems from a P166 with 64MB RAM (Win98) to a K-6 350 with 128MB RAM (NT). Two of these have an ethernet card. Yes, I use the Rev B patch. I have never had ethernet related problems.<br>
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However, one thing I do right away with every Corel install is disable the Media Indexer--just remove it from the start-up location in the Start Menu. It has always struck me as a memory hog which offers very little extra functionality in return.<br>
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Maybe you have already done this, but make sure you have CorelDraw and Photopaint set up to use a good chunk of memory under Tools/Options/Memory (the default install is very conservative--I generally set it at 75%-85%). If a system has more that one hard disk, allow Corel to use two disks as swap disks.<br>
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There is absolutely no reason for Corel to crash that often. For me its about twice a month at most. This is probably a really stupid question to ask, but did you by any chance install Corel to run from a network server?<br>
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If you post more detailed info about your computer systems, I will be glad to be of any help I can.

 

[Tymergnath]

Thanks for the info. After naging consistantly to our IT department I was able to aquire a test system to prove our need for more resources.<br>
The test system is a dual Pentium III 450Mhz with 256MB RAM.<br>
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The remaining systems are P200 with 64 MB RAM. We are running the Corel products from a network server.<br>
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I'm not sure of the details on the network interface. (our tech people are sometimes unwilling to divulge such info)<br>
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I think the server is NT and seem to remember hearing something about Tolken-Ring???<br>
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I have requested the Rev.B patch (last fall) and we're still waiting. We may have our patch or we may have to wait for them to upgrade to vers. 9. Version 10 should be in common use by then.<br>
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I agree with you about the Media Indexer....never found a good use for it (at least not one that justifies the resources that are gobbled up). <br>
I will try increasing the memory allocation.<br>
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Thanks again for the help.

 

[rycamor]

I just happened by here again...<br>
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When you say your workstations are running Corel from a networked drive, your problems at the beginning of this thread make sense. Using the customizable workspace, for one. If different users are using the same Corel file AND trying to write configuration changes BACK to that file, you will have problems. That applies to customizable workspace and memory settings, etc...<br>
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I'm not too familiar with Token Ring, but it seems to me that it's a network format that has trouble with file sharing. (Does it allow Opportunistic Locking?) Is Corel set to use swap space on the local user's drive or on the network drive? (Please say local; the second option would be a huge performance hit, especially on a 10 megabit network)<br>
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BTW, here's the URL for CorelDRAW 8 Service Pack 2 (Rev C) <br>

http://www.corel.com/support/ftpsite/pub/coreldraw/draw8suite/index.htm<br>

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If you're desperate for it I will be glad to burn it on CD and send it to you, as I have a fast download here. Check out my email address in my profile.