Xara X (classic) on XP

[John Rayner]

clif,

Please let us know what you find out. I am contemplating an Anthlon64 for my next computer and would hate for that to be the cause. Until I hear more about the sempron I am hessident. the celeron is garbage compared to the pentium 4.

[Scotty]

Hi,
I am running all my pograms on my computer wich I just upgraded to an Asus X series 64bit athalon chip with no problems. I have he K8V-X series Asus motherboard with GeForce 6500 256MB graphic accelerator video board. I run corelDraw12, PhotoPaint12 DreamweaverMX, XaraX, Swishmax and some of Microsofts word, excel, with no problems. I have 1Gb memory insalled.
the increase in speed is great.
Jim

[Mike S]

Originally posted by John Rayner:
clif,

Until I hear more about the sempron I am hessident. the celeron is garbage compared to the pentium 4.

John the Sempron is a cheaper chip designed to compete with the celron. i would definitly go with the 64. i am going to build a new box soon and that will be the cpu of choice

[amoore]

I've been running X1 on a 64 since last spring. No problems. Haven't had a reason to install Classic since I replaced the mobo, but it was running fine on the 64 before that.

BTW, I would definitely go with the Asus mobo. This machine came with an MSI, which we replaced with the Asus after 6 months. It was the 2nd MSI I've had, and both had problems.

[Clif]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone:
I am using Xara x classic from the CD. (ver 1.1D)

Let me first give the detailed info on my system so we can rule out any obvious problems.

I'm working on a brand new HP laptop preloaded w/ windows xp home service pack 2, DDR 512 meg ram, Athlon 64 1.8ghz. The video card is 64 DDR meg Nvidia GeForce 4 440.
I have not upgraded or modified the notebook, but I have already scanned the hard disk for errors. I don't think the issue is faulty hardware or drivers because again as stated above the system
is brand new and very up to date.

My previous system: PC Windows 98, 512 DDR ram, 1.7 Athlon Thoroughbred, asus mobo, Nvidia GeForce FX5200, ( it's either 64-128 meg)



I've noticed that certain small xara files will crash immediately upon opening or saving. Even during drawing, xara is very susceptible to crashing even when the mouse cursor is perfectly still! When a file does crash during saving, it will
crash immediately.

I've recorded a couple of error screens I've recently got and this is what it says:


----------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------
Floating point exception at offset 0X004FD4E2

and

Floating point exception at offset 0X6635CC1E

----------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------


- I have tried to open certain files I know can crash immediately on the notebook, on my pc. They open fine - however crashes do occur on my PC too using win98, but seldomly and only when I'm using
xara files consisting of fonts, moulds of clipviews and have had xara open for a prolonged period of time (ie. 3-4 hours+).



- Even during fresh bootup, some xara files will crash on the laptop when I open the file. Therefore, I can rule out that it is due to having xara opened for a prolonged period of time.
I'm guessing it could be xp related, since I did had a similar problem with photoshop where I could not run the software because it kept on crashing at nearly every single mouseclick.


- I have less than 300 fonts on my pc, and about the same on the laptop. I don't beleive it could be the fonts, though I wouldn't rule it out entirely because I do recall at one time, decreasing the number of
system fonts resulted in better performance and less crashing.



Anyways, I'll keep playing around and see what I find. I'm happy to see that everyone seems to have xara classic run fine on XP. If anyone does have similar experiences like mine however, please do post. Thanks!



Mike S.: I never use brushes or contours or plugins, so we can rule those out. I did reinstall xara but no luck http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

RamWolff: I do have an nvideo card for both the pc and laptop. Granted there both separate models on separate platforms but there is much noticeable crashing on the laptop. I do suspect it could be related
to the fonts somehow, but some files which do not contain fonts, will still crash on opening.

AnthonyF: CorelXara2, rarely crashed for me and I was running on a horribly slow 200mhz. I wish I could get my new system up and running and determine what's causing X to have all these errors

Mark: I've had this similar problem using a Pentium4 on Windows NT, so for now I think for we can rule out the CPU

John: Actually, I did a test and my Athlon 1.7 Thoroughbred ran a bit faster than the Athlon64 on the laptop using xara! To be honest, I haven't found programs to be running exceedingly fast with this chip.
My pc on windows 98 runs much faster.

Mac: I'm hoping to upgrade my ram too - it would be nice to have xara run even faster than it already does - but prices for ram upgrades on laptops are quite expensive http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/frown.gif


Alison: I can't exchange my mobo since the system is brand new - I don't think it is the motherboard causing the errors though.

[Clif]

Sorry, the second error should be 0X0035CC1E



does anyone here know of a freeware that lets me check and fix corrupted fonts? I have a suspiscison these errors could be a result of using foreign language fonts.

[John Rayner]

If you suspect a corrupted font. What you could do is find out what the minimum systems fonts are, then start uninstalling them until you find the one/s that are bad. i would pull groups of 50. then groups of twenty five, 10 etc until you narrow it down to the bad fonts.

[Mike S]

you wont notice the programs or windows running any faster as they are 32 bit programs. if and when the 64 bit programs start coming out then you will notice the differnce. you really should go to windows and download Windows XP Professional x64 Edition Release Candidate 2 (RC2). see if that fixes your problem. here is one thing they say Windows XP Professional x64 Edition is designed to address the most demanding needs of technical workstation users who require large amounts of memory and floating point performance in areas such as mechanical design and analysis, digital content creation and scientific and high-performance computing applications.

i would throw on a partition install it and load your programs on the partition and see if your problem goes away. here is the link windows 64

Sorry about the long post trying to help narrow down your problem

[Clif]

John: I tried doing as you said. Unfortunately it didn't work http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/frown.gif I was down to only 24 fonts, and xara still kept crashing repeatedly on xp


Mike: Is that program for windows home xp? I have service pack 2, but i'm not sure I'm able to install the professional trial software

[Mike S]

no it is the next windows for 64but proccesors. make a partition on your hdd and install the os. when you boot up you will have a boot menu that will show xp home and xp 64 pro. it is a full blown windows os. i am thinking that is causing your problems your cpu is running instructions for a 64 bit os and you are running a 32 bit os. its a wild card guess. hell i might even be totally wrong here but its worth a shot plus you will get to see your cpu run at its potential. are you having any other issues with software besides xara? if so you can start narrowing the problem towards the os and not the programs you are using.