AboutNeal Ziring Expertise Experienced user of versions 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and X3 mostly for
web page graphics, some photo retouching, some technical document
illustration. Right now I only have versions 12 and X3 available to me,
so I'll be best at answering questions about those.
Question First a little background...I've been using Corel Paint/Draw professionally since version 3. I own versions 9, 10 and X3, but version 8 in my opinion is the best ever developed, particularly in areas of drop shadows and masking. Anyway, my main toolbar suddenly disappeared (please know that I'm very experienced with Photopaint and toolbar settings). When I try to restore it by clicking "toolbars" or customize in the options menu the program crashes. It also crashes when I select "view" from the main menu. It seems to me there must be a software conflict somewhere causing the problem, but I really don't know. I've reinstalled the program to no avail. I've even installed a friend's copy of the program with the same results (no main toolbar). I was hoping someone might have experienced the same problem. I really hate to give up using version 8. Any help would be appreciated.
Answer David,
It sounds like there is something corrupted in the personal
configuration of Corel Paint on your system. That information
is stored separately from the installed software, so doing a
re-install will not help.
If my diagnosis is correct, then the only way to fix the problem
is to eliminate the personal customization data for your Corel
install, and let the program re-build for you a default bunch
of settings.
Unfortunately, I do not know precisely how to do this for
Corel Suite 8. I'll have to tell you the general idea, and
then you'll have to figure out the specific directory for
version 8.
So, you need to find the Corel application data directory.
For CorelDraw suite 12, the path is:
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Corel\Graphics12
Hopefully the path for Corel suite 8 is something similar,
should be something like username\Application Data\Corel\CorelDRAW8.
Anyway, once you have found that directory, make sure
no Corel product is running, then rename it to "backup-corel8".
Then restart CorelDraw or Corel Paint. The directory should
be re-built with the default customizations, and your toolbar
should be present again!
Note that this will eliminate any brushes, scripts, and
toolbar customizations that you might have made. Scripts
you can easily save by copying the contents of the
backup-corel8/CorelPaint/scripts directory to the new area.
