New Brush Stroke Froze up Xara Designer Pro

[BeanPole]

I just bought Xara Designer Pro today and was following the December tutorial on creating the garland brush. I found that while I was creating the brush the program was dragging. When I went to go out of Xara it froze up and I could not do anything at all. I finally had to force close Xara.

When I went back into Xara, it was of course, still frozen up. I tried everything but could not get it to do anything. Finally, I closed Xara, did a shut down on computer, and started up again.

Still a problem because Xara was trying to open the same file that froze it up. So, I went on to do other things on my computer, and finally Xara loaded the brush stroke page. I deleted the file quickly, then I deleted the brush stoke.

I have a newer higher end computer (i7) and Windows 8. Any idea what happened? How can I create brush strokes without that happening to me again?

Thank you,

[angelize]

Hi Bean pole, that's not normal behaviour for the program but with out being able to have a look at the .xar file it's difficult to say what may be happening. Try creating the brush again and see if it works this time. Sometimes a restart can clear things

[steve.ledger]

Still a problem because Xara was trying to open the same file that froze it up.

Disable that ridiculous 'Backup open document on close and restore on program start' feature. It's just a nuisance.
(Options>>Backups)
At the very least Xara developers should split that feature into two options, yes we might like the open file/s to be backed up on close but NO we do not want them all to open on program start!
Having a corrupt file which causes problems when Xara restarts is an excellent case in point to why this is just a bad idea.
File>>Open Recent is ample IMHO

[Egg Bramhill]

Couldn't agree more Steve. Yesterday whilst working with a brush the program became unresponsive and eventually had to close it with the task manage. On reopening it tried to load the same file "Untitled2*" again and go to 99% Adding colour to document & froze. Rebooted the computer. Same result. Deleted all files on my system named "Untitled2". Restarted with same result. Ended up uninstall / reinstall.

[amoore]

Agreed. The "backup on close and restore on program start" option is one of the first things I turn off when I set up Design Pro. I do want backups, but only when I explicitly save, and I certainly don't want them to open automatically. I'm praying that XaReg will continue to work with future generations of XDP, or that we get an alternative that allows us to get unlimited backups in the current work folder.

[BeanPole]

Thank you to all who responded!

While I don't wish anyone to have the same freeze up problem I had, it was comforting to know that Egg Bramhill had the same problem. Especially as I have a new computer and expect it to have more than enough memory to work in Xara. Soooooo glad I didn't have to uninstall/reinstall, but it was so close.

So, I have done as Sledger has suggested and turned off auto save and reopen.

Now I am free to follow Angelize's advise to try again, but don't have to worry about Xara trying to save and reload a bad file.

[Egg Bramhill]

In all fairness I use Xara for several hours every day and freezes are as rare a chickens teeth