Coreldraw X4 load delay

[Bob Davis]

Hi all,
I'm hoping somebody can give me some advice regarding Coreldraw.
I had Coreldraw V9 on a dualcore computer with 512 meg of ram running Win 98 (to run an Epilog Radius which didn't have good drivers for XP) and everything was fine.
The Radius died a few weeks ago and was replaced by a Helix 45w, so I updated the computer to XP Pro and x4, along with another 512 meg of ram. Everything works just fine, except that it takes a l-o-n-g time to display the saved files in my "Corel Saves" folder.
After starting X4 I often want to open a saved file. The "Open" dialogue starts, I navigate to the "Corel Saves" folder and move the slider to the right (say to look for a file starting with W), the dialogue box freezes at a point mid way through the alphabet for over a minute, until it eventually comes good and proceeds. While it is frozen the file icons appear as boxes and then eventually change to the Coreldraw icon and I can then look further down the alphabet.
It appears that the delay is caused by the computer taking a long time to draw each Coreldraw icon beside files in the saves folder, and it's amazingly irritating and time-wasting. I don't recall ever having a delay opening files on the same computer using 98/V9. It had the saved files, around 1500 in number, in a single folder.
I have other computers with X4/XP-Vista, and they don't suffer the same problem. The drawing process appears to be nearly instant, and the major difference appears to only be the video cards. The dualcore computer has an old Radeon 2900 from years ago, the others are much quicker. My understanding was that almost any video card works just fine for 2D.
Is this a video card problem or some hidden setting in X4 (or something else?) Ideas welcome, I don't want to sacrifice the readys unless it is worthwhile.

[Dave Johnson29]

Everything works just fine, except that it takes a l-o-n-g time to display the saved files in my "Corel Saves" folder.

Hi Bob,

It is very unlikely it has anything to do with the video card and with 1G of memory with XP that side should be fine.

Is that "Corel Saves" folder on a network drive? If so you my need to update the drivers for the network card for XP. Make sure it is a 10/100 card too.

It is possible that it could be a hard drive issue. Run ChkDsk

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315265

[Bob Davis]

Thanks for that, Dave.

No network installed (yet) - it's completely standalone with a USB laser connection.

Bob

[Mike Null]

Turn off the icons. They definitely slow the computer.

[Joe Pelonio]

I had that problem after accumulating 5 years worth of files. Turns out I had been allowing Corel to save the backup files automatically in the same directory as my job files. I moved them to a new subdirectory, changed Corel to file them there, and the problem was fixed.

[Bob Davis]

Turn off the icons. They definitely slow the computer.

Hi Mike, thanks for that. But how do I turn off the icons?

Bob

[Frank Corker]

I am going to take a guess here. I bet you have a shed load of fonts on your computer. If you do, it'll always run slow. If you wanted, drag and drop half of your fonts from the windows/fonts directory into another folder and try it again. You will see a big improvement in speed.

[Bob Davis]

Frank, thanks for that suggestion; I think there may be something in that. I'll try it out when I get back to work but it sounds very promising. There are a lot of fonts on that computer.

[Mike Null]

Bob

On the Graphics Unleashed site there is a tutorial by foster Coburn about font management. I recommend it.

I have learned that X4 compresses all files into a zip file and has to uncompress them to open. This may be part of the slowdown.

I couldn't find any place to turn off the icons in X3 (what I have) so that feature must have gone back to an earlier version.

[Bob Davis]

After checking today it doesn't seem that fonts are the problem, but a possible culprit has been discovered.
The computer only has a 2.4 Celeron chip, not a dual-core; I obviously have too many beige boxes kicking around and have lost track of what component is where.
The Celeron has only a small cache. I'm thinking that this must be the culprit as it is the only significant difference between this comp. and others that load quickly.
Any thoughts?

[Dave Johnson29]

The computer only has a 2.4 Celeron chip, not a dual-core;

Hi Bob,

I doubt if that is it. Did you run chkdsk on the offending hard drive? If there is a problem and it has to retry many times to get a clean read then that would slow it down.

From memory the OS will try 25 times before declaring an error and in my experience it usually gets a clean read by around the 11th try or never and declares and error.

Maybe also try a defrag. The files could be all over the place and the disk is thrashing.

[Dan Hintz]

On-chip cache is going to affect speed of processing functions (like Photoshop filters, telephony, etc.). If your machine is dragging doing general stuff, that's not it.

[Bob Davis]

Hi Dave & Dan,
Check disc and defrag = no change.
The delay isn't really with opening files, it's with displaying files in the dialog box. Only happens with the first "load". That is, after the long delay in initially displaying the files there is no further delay. It appears that the delay is caused by the comp. checking each file for its type (.cdr, .jpg etc) on initially opening the folder. The next time I go to the "open" command there is no delay, unless I've closed Coreldraw in which case it starts the long process again.
My thinking with cache was that it's used for that process, and then the info goes to ram from where it's deleted after closing the program. None of our 7 other computers have the delay despite various flavours of chip/video card, but all of them are not reduced-cache Celerons.
I think I'm running out of options and yet another box may be required. The delay is really frustrating.

[Dan Hintz]

Not to say this is your issue, but the computer takes a while to create the thumbnails file for each new directory. Consider turning off thumbnails and going to a new directory with a ton of files, see if that resolves the issue (or delete the thumbnails file and try an old directory).

[Mike Null]

Dan
That's what I was referring to when I said icons. I didn't find the option in X3 as it was in previous editions. Is it still there?