CorelDraw
10 The Adventure Begins
Maureen
Shannon, NJPCUG
The
title has nothing to do with the application but rather the
installation. Maybe it
should be called, CorelDraw 10 the Nightmare Begins! Oh boy, did I
have problems. Never, ever, have I had a problem with any Corel
product installation so I guess my time was up.
This
in not meant to be a product slam but rather to help anyone who
may purchase this product and run into the same problem that I
had. We know that in a
perfect world all our applications would install flawlessly and
work in perfect harmony with our operating system.
In a perfect world that is, or one in which we are all on
serious medication so that we can deal with little curves that
come our way. My story is one of utter frustration brought on by
trying to get this application to run without crashing the moment
I opened it. Can you
say conflict?
I
began this journey in the normal way, I installed the software.
Eagerly I opened it, anxious to see what wonders version 10
beheld. What I got was
a big time crash. To
be exact this is what happened:
“CORLDRW10
has cause an exception 10H in module CORELDRW100.DLL” Welcome to
DLL hell! This was
followed by CORELDRW caused an invalid page fault in module
CORELDRW100.DLL…oh no, the dreaded invalid page fault!
I knew I was in trouble now.
What I didn’t realize was how much trouble I was in.
Every time I opened CorelDraw 10 or Photo-Paint 10 (in
which case it said PHOTOPNT100.DLL) it crashed at the opening
screen.
So
being undaunted by the crash, I thought I’ll just uninstall the
application and reinstall it.
Must have been a glitch. HA!
Glitch my Aunt Annie’s afghan…it was not going to work,
no way, no how, not ever. Four installations later, I called Corel
Tech Support. They
blew me off in 3.5 seconds flat.
I was told that version 10 has issues with Windows 98 and
to do a “recovery installation of Windows 98 SE”.
Recovery installation? I never heard of that in Win98, I
didn’t know how to do that.
So then I was told, call Microsoft and let them sort it
out. I muttered a few
things back to the technician and hung up.
I sat here and steamed for a bit and then I totally lost
it. How dare they not
help me! My Irish was up and I wasn’t going to take this
anymore. At least
pretend that I was important and worthy of help, don’t treat me
like I’m a bother. So I fired off an email to Corel and told
them that I would write a review about how the software didn’t
work if I couldn’t get help making it run properly. Something
was very wrong here and I needed some kind of support to get me
going. Now it was
entirely possible that there was a Windows related issue but then
why didn’t they know more about it?
I received an email back from Corel informing me that
someone would be contacting me about my problems.
I sat back and smiled, victory! I got somebody’s
attention!
Well,
this was just the beginning, folks.
The same technician called me and asked to look at my
system.ini file, which I then sent off to him.
He sent it back suggesting that I “rem” out a few
drivers he found questionable. That didn’t work. But I had an
area to look at now that could be considered questionable. Then he
told me that I had to reinstall Windows, I told him I don’t do
that without help. (The previous upgrade to Win98 SE had problems
and I had hours of tech support to get it working, did I really
want to do this again? I don’t think so!) He then told me he
would contact Microsoft and get back to me.
When he called back a few days later, he asked if I had
reinstalled Windows 98 SE yet! I told him no and, again, not
unless someone who knew how to do this was on the other end of the
phone. The Corel technician didn’t know how to do this procedure
either. A few days later he called again, same question, same
answer from me. A short term memory problem here? He then called
Microsoft and put me on with a Microsoft Technical Support person.
(*There is no recovery installation of Windows 98 SE, it’s all
or nothing)
Round
two begins. The
Microsoft Technician also went right for the system.ini and we
started by shutting down everything in the ini and than turning
them back on one by one. Eventually we ended up back in the
drivers folder where the Corel Technician began. Now I have to say
the MS technician was very nice but after five hours of fiddling
around we were both reaching the end of our ropes and I pretty
much had his life story by now.
He had me turning various drivers on and off, then the
system had to be rebooted, then CorelDraw 10 tested to see if it
would run or crash. It did both. Sometimes if worked, sometimes it
crashed. He couldn’t
find the offending drivers or dll’s. He’d work on the top of
the list and then the bottom and we were all over the driver list.
It was getting very confusing.
Do you have any idea how many times I rebooted this system
in a 5 hour period, I must have done it a hundred times! Finally
he decided that maybe the Corel technician was right and we should
reinstall the OS. Panic set in.
He then had me put the CD in and left me with a “just
follow the screens and all with be fine.” Right.
The new install took a short time and then flashed a window
telling me the installation failed and to do it again! One more
time, I installed Windows 98 SE and one more time it failed. Back
to the phone I went and once more to technical support, case
number in hand, for help. Now
not only did CorelDraw not work, but Windows was giving me error
messages. Did I mention that he also had me delete my entire
driver file and then come up in safe mode and let Windows rebuild
the driver database from an old backup…well it dumped that same
drivers in!!! My blood pressure was rising.
Round
three, a man with
a little more patience. It’s
now
7 P.M.
, I began this at
noon
.
Technician two went right back to the system.ini file and
worked on the Corel problem. Once
again we turned drivers on and off, msconfig must be worn out at
this point. After trying all kinds of combinations and my ruling
out one driver that was from an old mouse, which I remmed out and
left out, we narrowed the field down to 4.
One of the 4 was one the Corel technician questioned. Now
here’s where it gets interesting, no one could tell me what
these drivers were. Microsoft
insisted that they must be drivers from Corel, Corel said they
were unidentifiable drivers. Below are the drivers singled out by
Corel which didn’t help when they were all turned off – below
that the entire driver folder, note the redundant drivers that
Windows 98 SE dumped in during the original upgrade – after the
2 other attempts I have 5 more of the one driver and 4 more of the
second, most of which I then deleted. What fun!
VIDC.MRLE=msrle.drv
VIDC.RT21=indeov.drv
VIDC.YVU9=indeov.drv
VIDC.MSVC=msvidc.drv
[drivers]
midi1=wavsynwg.drv
midi2=ctvmd.drv
TXTS.DRAW=txtout.drv
pspctrlb=psp6174c.drv
drv (this was the old driver that I remmed out).
IV32=ir32.dll
VIDC.IV32=ir32.dll
VIDC.MRLE=msrle.drv
VIDC.RT21=indeov.drv
VIDC.YVU9=indeov.drv
VIDC.MSVC=msvidc.drv
msvideo=gfxnull.drv
wavemapper=*.drv
MSACM.imaadpcm=*.acm
MSACM.msadpcm=*.acm
midi=mmsystem.dll
wave=mmsystem.dll
This
was a version with things remmed out – note the wave=
mmsystem.dll and the midi-mmsystem.dll had added more dll’s from
the first reinstall, and then it added even more with the second
Windows install that aren’t shown here.
midi1=wavsynwg.drv
midi2=ctvmd.drv
TXTS.DRAW=txtout.drv
;rem
TShoot: pspctrlb=psp6174c.drv
;rem
TShoot: IV32=ir32.dll
;rem
TShoot: VIDC.IV32=ir32.dll
;rem
TShoot: VIDC.MRLE=msrle.drv
;rem
TShoot: VIDC.RT21=indeov.drv
;rem
TShoot: VIDC.YVU9=indeov.drv
;rem
TShoot: VIDC.MSVC=msvidc.drv
;rem
TShoot: msvideo=gfxnull.drv
wavemapper=*.drv
MSACM.imaadpcm=*.acm
MSACM.msadpcm=*.acm
;rem
TShoot: MIDI=vpiano.drv
;rem
TShoot: tablet=wttablet.drv
;rem
TShoot: MSVideo.VfWWDM=vfwwdm.drv
;rem
TShoot: wave=mmsystem.dll
;rem
TShoot: wave=mmsystem.dll
;rem
TShoot: midi=mmsystem.dll
wave=mmsystem.dll
(eventually
I remmed out the three drivers causing the problem and deleted the
redundant drivers near the bottom – it seemed to keep defaulting
the bottom two so I took the ones above it out.
By
11:15 PM
, we had determined that at least
four drivers were causing the problem and had them unchecked and
CorelDraw was working. Windows wasn’t but CorelDraw was.
I was told to try and see if I could narrow the field down
to three and he would call me back tomorrow. I had a headache the
size of
Texas
at this point but did manage to
get it down to three. In question right from the very beginning
with the second technician and I were these two drivers/dll’s:
IV32=ir32.dll
VIDC.IV32=ir32.dll
These
two caused the msconfig utility to lock up my system every time we
touched them. So we figured there was something wrong here but it
wasn’t the entire solution.
We then further narrowed it down to these two:
VIDC.MRLE=msrle.drv
and VIDC.MSVC=msvidc.drv
I
ruled out VIDC.MRLE=msrle.drv.
So now we had the three troublemakers identified,
IV32=ir32.dll, VIDC.IV32=ir32.dll, and VIDC.MSVC=msvidc.drv.
I then asked the question, where did these drivers come
from, what do they do, and what, if anything, will they affect if
I turn them off? He didn’t know.
This didn’t make me feel any better. I wanted to know
more about them and if turning them off would add a whole new set
of problems. So I took
myself off to www.google.com,
while the technician was looking elsewhere, and did a search on
ir32.dll. I got
something like 8 pages of hits. One by one, I went through the
links it found. I discovered that they were Codecs.
Then I discovered that they were video compression codecs.
From there, I found out they were a Windows 3.x and a
Windows 95 codec and I never had Win 3.x on this system it was
built with Win 95 and upgraded to 98 and 98 SE.
Windows 95 or an application for it must have put them here
and they were lying in wait for the moment they could wreak havoc
with my software! Technician two was worn out at this point as it
was day two plus three hours more and counting.
He made an attempt to fix the Win 98 dll problem that now
afflicting my system but it didn’t work. He sent me some
information and told me to call back if it didn’t work.
Like I need
a little more LD charges on my phone bill! He left me at this
point, happy in the knowledge that CorelDraw 10 was working but
not having a clue as to what these drivers were or what they might
do if turned off. These
new technicians know nothing about Win3.x (a system from the dark
ages of computing) and little about Win 95 related things.
Unfortunately what Microsoft has left behind is still on
our hard drives from all the various upgrades.
My Windows still has problems - dll problems.
I
kept searching and found an article that said something like
“application crashes on opening screen” Eureaka!!! That’s my
problem!! Off I went to the site with this article. It explained
in detail what these drivers/dll’s were, what installed them and
how they conflicted with another application and wouldn’t let it
run. It was nearly the same set of problems afflicting me!
If anyone is interested in that article, let me know and I
will send it to you. The drivers, along with all those weird ones
near the beginning:
IV32=ir32.dll
VIDC.IV32=ir32.dll
VIDC.MRLE=msrle.drv
VIDC.RT21=indeov.drv
VIDC.YVU9=indeov.drv
VIDC.MSVC=msvidc.drv
According
to the article these come from: Video for Windows Runtime
Oops
is Corel right, is this a Windows issue?
Is Microsoft wrong, it’s not a Corel problem?
Looks, like Corel was right.
What they told me later on was that this problem had
surfaced in about 1% of the systems that CorelDraw 10 was
installed on and that they couldn’t reproduce or isolate the
problem Well Corel, I did it for you.
You gave me that area you believed it was in, Microsoft
helped me narrow the field, and I found the rest of the
information by researching the dll that no one could identify. At
least as far as my system is concerned.
The
purpose of writing this is not to fault the software, if you
don’t have these drivers and were to purchase the product, you
would probably not have an iota of trouble. But for those of us in
that one percentile that somehow installed something that put
these drivers on our systems once upon a time, this is meant to
help you so that you don’t have to go through what it did.
Fourteen hours of technical support calls to Microsoft
is thirteen hours more than I needed to sit through!!
Isn’t it amazing what some leftover garbage that isn’t
being used but got carried over from heaven knows what can cause?
And by reading the article that I found, CorelDraw is not the only
application that had problems because of these drivers.
This
is the current set up: ;
= a remmed out driver(that reads ;space)
[drivers]
midi1=wavsynwg.drv
midi2=ctvmd.drv
TXTS.DRAW=txtout.drv
;
pspctrlb=psp6174c.drv
;
IV32=ir32.dll
;
VIDC.IV32=ir32.dll
VIDC.MRLE=msrle.drv
VIDC.RT21=indeov.drv
VIDC.YVU9=indeov.drv
;
VIDC.MSVC=msvidc.drv
msvideo=gfxnull.drv
wavemapper=*.drv
MIDI
=vpiano.drv
tablet=wttablet.drv
MSVideo.VfWWDM=vfwwdm.drv
midi=mmsystem.dll
wave=mmsystem.dll
MSACM.imaadpcm=*.acm
MSACM.msadpcm=*.acm
A
note here, the technicians from Microsoft were very nice, they
would have to be to spend that many hours on the phone attempting
to troubleshoot a problem! My
recommendation to Microsoft, every box of Windows, whatever
version update, should come with a lifetime supply of Valium…the
yellow ones, 5 milligrams! Now I need some one to come in and
massage my back and shoulders because I am bent over the keyboard
and frozen in this position!
If
you have problems and need a place to research them, go to www.google.com
, one of the MS technicians mentioned this place and it is
amazing.
*A
final note. I spoke to
the technical support person from Corel that was working on this
problem today (May 2nd) and he tells me that they are
still having some Windows related problems with Me, and the
98’s. So while some
issues have been tracked down, other systems with other
configurations, may still have some sort of a problem but this is
happening in a very small percentage of installations according to
them.
