Windows 8.1 & X5 - take care!

[Bob Davis]

I've just done the free upgrade from Win 8 to 8.1 on my home computer.
Everything's fine...except that on startup of CorelDraw X5 there was a notice that the program is not compatible (!). I have no idea why this would be the case as it has been working fine with W8, so I started it up regardless. Things were fine for a while, but it locked up and become unresponsive after a few minutes. I'm not sure yet if this behaviour will continue, but it doesn't look promising.
Apparently the only way to fix it is to upgrade to X6 at the normal upgrade cost. I really don't want to do that; I can't see any advantage to me in X6 over X5. If X5 continues to be unstable under Win 8.1 I'll be looking for a way to rollback the Windows update.
If you're using Win 8 and X5 it may be worthwhile giving the upgrade a bit of thought before proceeding.

[Mike Lassiter]

I heard on tv that Microsoft had pulled the update from it's website due to problems people were having. Reports of computers becoming unstable after updating as I recall. Maybe this is what's going on in your case.

[Bob Davis]

Hi Mike,
No, this is nothing to do with that particular issue.
The advice that comes up on starting X5 is: "This program has compatibility issues."

[matt zabel]

Hi Bob, I just got my laser this weekend (used ULS M360) and am having issues doing anything with Corel or Illustrator. My problem isn't unstability, but rather scaling and vector cutting. I have an old Vista laptop that works fine. I had assumed this was simply the ULS print driver, but it may have something to do with 8.1. ULS claimed "windows changed the way it is scaling the image, it used to be around the field but now it is around our pixel resolution." I have no idea wha that means, but the result for me is getting wacky "media size" (aka paper size) defined by the driver. Sorry I can't help, but interesting to hear other problems with 8.1.

[Bob Davis]

Hi Matt,
Fortunately my computer with 8.1 (at home) isn't required for use with our lasers; our work comps are all on Win 7 and therefore I'm not aware of any actual output problems.
By the sound of the problem you've described above it would appear that 8.1 will present big problems for laser engraving.

[Dave Sheldrake]

"windows changed the way it is scaling the image, it used to be around the field but now it is around our pixel resolution."

Makes sense, if that is indeed the problem it's not going to be an easy fix if one can be done at all. in effect it means a change has been made between measuring the bucket capacity to measuring the sum of the multiple contents. Windows in all it's derivations has a habit of trying and trying to fix something that is sending back bad commands before going ping where other systems see a problem and stop trying to fix it and simply end the errant process.

Great for writing letters to Mom or drawing pictures but a nightmare if you are trying to error trap a complex system device like a driver.

cheers

Dave