PSPX3: A kind of sort of fix for X3 crashing

[df]

Hello, I've been having a heck of a time getting X3 to just stay running. It installed just fine but anytime you tried to do anything at all it would crash, totally unusable. So after a lot of coffee I think I have a bit of a fix, at least temporarily.

When PSPX3 starts it initiates a background program called "MediaCataloger". I killed it via Task Manager and the program runs smoothly now. So for a more permanent solution I found and renamed it "01 MediaCataloger" and since X3 can't find it under it's original name it doesn't run.
For me the folder that MediaCataloger is located is C:\Program Files\Corel\Corel PaintShop Photo Pro\X3\PSPClassic

I don't know how this affects the organizer or express lab. But there's also another thing that you can do with Windows 7 (possibly other OSs too). Start Task Manager (Ctrl Alt Del, choose task manager). Find Media Cataloger in the Processes tab, right click it and set the priority to Low. This will make it use less computer resources. I don't know how to make the change permanent. I can only assume that once the cataloger has searched your entire hard drive that it will use less resources automatically and the need to set the priority to low would be much less.

All three of my computers exceed the recommended specs for X3, much less the minimum. Once I renamed the background process and restarted the computer I ran X3 through some paces. I taxed it as much as I could creating a script that used the tools that kept crashing the program earlier, then ran a batch process of over 30 files and it ran without a hitch and in fact was quicker about the whole process than PSPX has been for me.

Hope this helps someone.
Dan

[LeviFiction]

Sweet. Now if only we knew why it's unusable for some and completely usable by others. I really hate inconsistency, I always find it very hard to follow.

[df]

I had the trial running on 3 computers and all 3 did the same thing. I haven't tried it (this fix) with the Vista computer... yet, but it works for both Win7 32bit and 64 bit.

Although I found it odd that on the 64 bit computer the program installed itself to the x86 program folder. In other words it may as well be a 32 bit program. Does anyone know if it's actually a 64 bit program or is it just a 32 bit program that runs just fine on a 64 bit system?

[OldRadioGuy]

Does anyone know if it's actually a 64 bit program or is it just a 32 bit program that runs just fine on a 64 bit system?

I think it's a 32 bit program.

[budiewid]

This has worked for me so far. Help from Smart Computing Tech; uninstall, restart computer and then reinstall. Shut down back ground programs before installing.

[df]

Have you tried intsalling the patch that Corel issued? It's made me pretty happy with stability. I have the occasional crash now rather than occasionally working.

[Chromenut]

I'm running X3 on a pretty ramped up computer on Win 7. It installs fine, as all of you guys say, and the initial tests were okay. Then, over time, I started getting this weird glitch and it sounds like it might be related to what you're saying here. I'm fine with opening files, modifying them, running scripts, using plug-ins, etc., but when I click on the Text Tool... well that's all she wrote...lol

She goes off into la-la land. White screen over the X3 program semi-transparent and after a while Win 7 alerts that the program has stopped functioning. Once this happens the only "clean" fix I've found was deinstalling and reinstalling the entire program.

I'm going to go try your suggestions now and see how they work. I've got a top end machine with no resource issues and no other programs are bogging down. I shut down almost all processes when running X3 to see if it was a memory issue, which I doubted, and that made no difference. Eventually it just decides that it doesn't want me to enter text.

Lastly, thanks for such a wonderful site. I'm a new member from the USA, and finding this site was a very pleasant surprise. You guys all seem to have excellent ideas and suggestions and I'm very happy to become a member of your community!! Thanks for allowing me membership!!!