PI's WOES!

[trueblue]

I have PI-12.

I've posted several threads here regarding sudden closure of the program. There have been others too, such as -
It's inability to remember preferences
Problems initializing
Program won't open
Problems with Tasks
Can load personal presets to EP with the .smp but try to use them, PI doesn't remember where they are?
AND, I'm sure lots of other people have problems too.

I was advised to have my RAM checked out, which I did by the technician who built my machine. I have since had two new sticks of RAM installed and also ran another RAM check on those, all is working perfectly.... that is, with everything else, EXCEPT PhotoImpact 12.

For the past 2 days I've lost count how many times I've tried to open this program without getting an error message, or can't read the memory, or just won't open.
I've exhausted just about everything to appease this program with my PC which is 2 months old, all to no avail.

This is a forum for Ulead products and as such, there SHOULD be interaction from Ulead staff/technicians to address the problems with their software. PI 12 should NOT keep closing down, it SHOULD run smoothly without glitches and WITH other programs running in the background, sadly, it will not.
I am personally becoming very weary of PhotoImpact and feel it's high time I stopped putting my hard earned money into their pockets until they lift their game and produce a stable and secure program. COREL, PLEASE TAKE NOTE!

On a customer service level, Ulead rate very low as all they do is spit out standard "uninstall/reinstall" which often doesn't address the particular problem. Could it be a language problem that they just don't understand?
It is very sad they do not put more effort into better programming as PhotoImpact is one, if not the best user friendly programs on the net for graphics, digital art and photography - when they run correctly.

They may have issued a patch for PI with Vista, but the other numerous problems raised about PhotoImpact have not been addressed or fixed.

I think this forum should have a stickied thread so people can add to a list the problems they are having with PI 12 and this thread should be READ by Ulead senior programmers and take seriously what people are saying about the program and address these problems fully and above all FIX THEM.

Be aware!..... they fix these problems, add new problems and issue Version 13 or 14 and want us to pay for their mistakes!!!!!!

Ulead, give the people that purchase your product a fair go... I think that's a reasonable request.

[MrA]

I have PI 12 as well, but, have no problems with it what so ever.

Maybe the install was bad? Did you try uninstalling it, rebooting, then installing it again? I noticed you mentioned this in your post, but did you do it?

I just had this problem with another software product, (my firewall, to be exact) and when I did the above, it fixed itself.

You have to have a love/hate relationship with windoze to expect anything out of it..

[immersive]

I agree Uleads forum support is quite non-existent. I have Vista 64bit and cannot get any of custom my settings (easy palette gallery) into the program, thus making it useless to me. I have posted here as others have, with no reply what so ever. I would just like to be able to use this program on Vista but can't seem to get it to work.

[trueblue]

MrAmigo, it's been installed/uninstalled 3 times.....as per Ulead's instructions.

PI doesn't like me

[heinz-oz]

Maureen
I'm sorry to hear about your woes and not being able to tell you do this or that and that will fix it.

I'm sure it is something with your system and the software/hardware mix on it. That doesn't help you, I know.

Ulead programs must be some of the most sensitive programs around. I remember when I got PI 11. I had used PI 10 extensively, especially the masking tool. It worked just great, until I installed PI 11. Immediately, my masking tool in PI 10 started to behave funny. The brush wouldn't move smoothly. It was just useless. I move the brush on the screen and it would stop, even though I had moved the mouse further. Then it would jump to the position where I stopped it which wasn't where I wanted to stop the movement, of course. Uninstalling PI did not fix it. Reinstalling PI 10 did not fix, nothing fixed it. You may remember this because I had a lengthy post about this at the other forum at the time.

Finally I gave up. I had messed about so much that the OS started to become erratic as well. To cut a long story short, I reformatted my HDD and started with a clean install of Win XP Pro SP2, fully patched it and removed the sytem from the internet again. Unistalled virus scanners, fire wall etc. Everything worked fine.

Slowly, one by one I installed my Ulead programs and tested before I would install the next. Lo and behold, PI 10 as well as PI 11 worked happily next to each other. MSP 7.3 was the next to go on, so was GA 5 and PEX 8.6. No problem. I installed Cool 3D, NERO 7, no problem. I thought I had it licked. Until a few weeks later. I realised that I didn't have DVD MovieFactory 3 Disk Creator installed. Only noticed it because I wanted to finnish a DVD I was working on in MSP 7.

When I installed MF3 all hell broke lose again. The same problems I was having before with my masking tool. I didn't believe it. Uninstalling MF 3 immediately fixed the issue. I upgraded, after running the trial of course, to DVD MF 4 Disk Creator and never had this problem again.

I know it is a pain in the proverbial but, if you insist on running PI 12, you will need to find out what is causing the headache. The only way I know to do that is to start with clean slate. I know, it should not be this way but it is. The only other alternatives are to forget about PI or use it as is.

Nobody I know, could look at your system and say, ahh, it's this or that.

Incidentally, I don't have any problems with PI 12 but have canned PI 11 and 10 since I got 12. They are still installed but never used.

[fortemac]

So could my installing PI12, deleting PI10, deleting PE4 and installing PE6 now have anything to do with my DVD Express 2 and VS10+ getting memory errors every time I try to open them? They will not open now at all. They were functioning programs at one point in time. Not until I messed with my EasyPallette & did the above (plus Windows update) did I ever have any trouble with these programs. Now I cannot get 2 good programs to open. One time tonight I had a different error about corrupt thumbnails. I'm wondering if my temp directory for ULEAD programs is messed up somehow as I had a program one time that I accidently deleted the temp folder, and it wouldn't open. It did fix itself after reinstalling. I didn't have the same luck with these ULEAD products as I've tried reinstalling over & over.
Cyndy

[heinz-oz]

Who could tell for certain?

If everything happened the way you describe, chances are there is something in the mix of software you use that's causing these problems.

If you want it working and, if I were you, I would reformat my OS partition, making sure all files I still want are backed up, and start with a clean install of the OS first, motherboard drivers next, all drivers for the hardware I use and then any SP for the OS. Get on the internet and fully patch the OS. Get rid of the internet connection all together, no virus scanners, no fire wall etc.

Then I would install one program after the other, testing each installation as I go before installing the next.

This is a lengthy and drawn out process. It's a pity that there is no other way. You are bound to find the offending software this way, I know I did.

[trueblue]

Thanks for all the info Heinz, but I'm not reformatting the pc, it's only just 2 months old.

My woes with PI 12 are worse than ever, I can't even open it without getting an error. I notice it dumps a file in the temp file, so before click the error messages off I took a copy of this file and put it in another place.
I looked at it and it's a file of PI-12 opening and going through its sequence. Once I click the error messages off, this file disappears from temp!

MS have done a couple of upgrades and also FF has too and something messed up my system.

I'm now waiting for Ulead to try at least and give me some help. I think I'm going to have to do a full uninstall of PI 12 clean out my pc and reinstall.
I fear there's some form of incompatibility with XP.....I think you may have mentioned that.

[heinz-oz]

I don't think it's an incompatibility with XP, some other software is to blame. Come to think of it, recently, someone couldn't open PI 12 also. Turned out he had some tiff files in his My Documents folder. After moving these to a different location, Pi worked again.

[fortemac]

I got it to work by changing this setting in system performance of Windows XP.
Cyndy
http://www.explorecommerce.com/members/ ... 1&ID=10268

[trueblue]

I bit the bullet and did a complete uninstall.......reinstalled, but sadly it would not reinstall my profiles even though they were saved on a different HDD.

So far, so good, but what a pain having to start from scratch again. Reinstalling my EP aghhhhh!!!!!

PI 12 is way too buggy and Ulead need to address this very seriously.

[dafalias]

I did a complete and fresh install of my system, only to find PI12 still not working. It got even worse, now it freezes my system.
As mentioned some where else in this forum, I have virtually the same Windows 2000 installation on a second machine, where PI 12 works without problems.
heinz-oz, I do appreciate Your suggestions, but when I pay money for software (even if it is only 10% of what Adobe would have ripped off me), I just expect it to work.
I do not have unlimited time to figure out why PI 12 does not want to cooperate - so either Ulead gets out an applicable patch soon (and brings up the Taiwan server again - I do not understand why they are hosting the patch on one machine only that has been down all weekend now) or I will find me another software for the future.
Maybe there is a company out there that takes the concern of paying customers seriously.

[heinz-oz]

Well said, dafalias, if I were in your shoes, I'd do the same. Luckily, for me and many others, it works. In fact, I just reformatted one on my machines and installed PI 12 on it. Everything works first time every time.

Ulead programs are some of the most troublesome pieces of software if they do not work on your system. So are others but here we concern ourselves with Ulead. If you haven't got the time or the inclination to work out why, on your system, it doesn't work there is nothing anyone of us or at Ulead could do to get you out of your predicament. Because it works on so many systems but not on yours and some others, what would you have them do? Stuff it up for the rest of the users to make it work on yours?

In order to fix something like that, one has to find out the cause first

Maybe they haven't tried hard enough, I could second that. Maybe they don't care, could also be ( In which case I wouldn't care to buy any more software from them), or, most probably, they are unable to recreate your problem.

All the above doesn't help you, I know and I'm sad that I can't help you either but don't forget, I am, we all are here on this forum, just users like yourself. We just have been deemed by Ulead, at one point in time, to be knowledgeable enough to offer assistance to others while maintaining a certain continuity on this board. That's why some of us were made moderators, nothing more, nothing less. We are not Ulead and we do not gain from our activities here either. We genuinely try to help where we can.

If that is not good enough for you, sorry, but maybe you would be better off trying some other brand of software.

[VikingAnimations]

Sometimes it helps when installing (or reinstalling) programs to disable every security-related piece of software on the computer, from anti-spyware and anti-virus to the firewall. Be sure to disconnect from the internet first, though!

Cleaning out all your temporary files (C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Temp\) may help, too.

[heinz-oz]

...
Maybe there is a company out there that takes the concern of paying customers seriously.

if you find one, please make sure you let us all know. Such companies are very hard to find you know.