CorelDRAW X3: "File Copy Error" is killing me...

[Magritte]

I recently upgraded my system, in part because I was having issues with CorelDRAW that I believed were related to insufficient memory (as I was working on some relatively large file). Now I'm thinking that may not have been the case...

In any case, on one file I've been trying to work on I keep being unable to save it. I get the error message:
File Copy Error. TEMP Drive or Output Drive may be Full.

followed by:
Error Writing path\name.cdr file.

It doesn't really matter where the path or what the name is...

Anyway, my newly upgraded system is Windows XP Pro SP2, Core 2 Quad CPU, 4 GB RAM (3.25 GB available to XP). I also made sure there was plenty of room on drive C: (the system partition) where I put the windows swap file (using the recommended size). In Coreldraw I set the memory options to use 33% of total memory (about 1 GB), the first scratch disk in the user folder (default) on drive C (about 25 GB free) and the second scratch disk on another drive (about 90 GB free).

I'm running CorelDRAW X3 with SP2 installed.

As far as I can tell, there shouldn't be any memory or disk space problems so i don't understand why I keep getting this error!

Also, I've noticed it starts happening after I import a graphic in pdf format. The graphic imports okay but then I'm no longer able to save without getting the error. If I ungroup the imported graphic and start randomly deleting bits and pieces of it, eventually I get to a point were I am able to save the file again! (Although, at that point there's not much left of the imported graphic.)

Incidentally, I tried the X4 trial and it seemed to have the same problem. (Although I couldn't test it thoroughly as after my upgrade the trial "expired" prematurely...) I found X4 to be quite bad in terms of failing to properly refresh the window. I've generally found that to be a problem with CorelDRAW for as many versions as I can remember, but X4 seems to be particularly bad. Minimizing and restoring the window requires a subsequent window refresh to make the graphics visisble!

Anyway, I've had to resort to using PowerPoint (!) to get my work done but I want to resolve this so I don't have to do so in the future. If anyone can help, THANK YOU!

 

[Brushman]

Ctrl W will refresh your screen, Try doing a save as or export as cmx, import the cmx and then save. CMX is very much like cdr but has no style information so importing the cmx should strip anything not right out of the file.
Alan D

 

[Magritte]

Saving as CMX SORTA works... But not really. If I already imported the pdf file then try to save as CMX the CMX file won't load (it says it's an invalid format). If I save as CMX before importing the pdf then save again as CMX after importing it works. But if I then try to save it as a CDR file again, i get the same series of errors. Actually, this time it was worst. I also got a "out of memory" error when closing CorelDRAW... Also, CMX, while it preserves the objects, doesn't preserve the page layout. In this example I was working on a poster around 56" x 41" so preserving that information is actually relatively important. So CMX isn't a suitable workaround as a working format and doesn't seem to fix the file so that it can be saved as a regular CDR file. This seems all very strange to me. I have been working in Corel the last day on other files and haven't had any serious problems with them, so I really don't know what it is about that one. Maybe Corel doesn't like imported pdf files?? It doesn't seem like it's an issue with massive complexity and given the amount of available RAM and disk space on this sytem I can't imagine there really is a memory resource shortage...

In terms of windows refresh, I realize I can manually trigger a refresh. I just don't feel that I should have to do so with such frequency. It wouldn't bother me if in order to improve performance I occasionally had to trigger a refresh. But it happens way to frequently and just seems to be worst with X4 when I tried it. On top of that, I don't know that performance has been improved. It seems to me given the exponential growth in CPU and GPU processing power since the young days of CorelDRAW, that by now it should be able to show us a live preview during object moves (including bitmaps) rather than have to pause for half a second to get a wireframe refresh. In fact, even the promised live preview of font changes promised in X4 seemed to be pretty buggy on my system. X4 would be a much more compelling upgrade to me if they fixed the core functionality rather than introducing new bugs in the most basic of features.

But I'm just whining at this point. CorelDRAW's been very good to me over the years. But I haven't had much sleep in the last few days and having been forced to use Powerpoint to set up my layouts has left me in a bad mood...

 

[Brushman]

Ok if the file is not massive (or sensitive from your point of view)can you send to test@adsignwriting.co.uk and I'll see what happens this end.
Regards
Alan D

 

[Magritte]

Okay, I've e-mailed the files.

Thanks!