Corel PaintShop Pro X8 Service Pack 1

[Heavysteel]

Update:

Just received the following from support:

Thank you for the information. I just wanted to let you know that I will be forwarding the information to our engineering team for further investigation. Once I hear back from them I will follow up with you.

So for the time being I would suggest you stick with the original build.

I received the exact same scripted message with my support ticket. Then I read all the other comments from many that have issues and then there are the Corel supporters that say we are a minority. It never ends .........The folks that love to troll on the people having issues. Below is the follow up to my support case from Corel. Support @ Corel is completely ((((FAIL)))). I have given up on Corel and have gone to the other side. Good luck to everyone that is looking for resolution. I wish you all the best. To all folks here just knit picking and pretend you know something about Corel. Stop already!!! People with problems since this SP1 update are just looking for help. It is great that your software is working fine.

Below I have edited to remove case numbers and personal info.
Corels follow up email for my support case:


From: My Case Support
Sent: Sunday, January 10, 2016 4:58 AM
Subject: Case 0######## is Awaiting Additional Information

Hello John Doe,

This is being sent to you to remind you that I am waiting for information or feedback about your support case 0#######.

Please reply to mycasesupport@corel.com and include this reference ID ( ref:_######qva._##########:ref ) with the outstanding information or to let me know if your issue has been resolved? I will assume there has been resolution if I don’t hear back from you within the next 5 days, at which point I will go ahead and close your case.

Sincerely,

Lou Michelle - Customer Support Representative

Case Number 0####### - Cannot Update to Service pack 1

My response back to Corel after reading this support email:

You haven’t done anything to resolve my case. You said you were in contact with engineering about my case and you never did get back to me with a possible resolution.

[JoeB]

To all folks here just knit picking and pretend you know something about Corel. Stop already!!! People with problems since this SP1 update are just looking for help. It is great that your software is working fine. KNOW BODY CARES. We just want help not your opinions.

I think most can understand your frustration with your issue not having been addressed, but I must disagree that nobody cares to hear reports that indicate that others do not have those issues. At the very least, those who have to troubleshoot the issue care. If you read the thread carefully you'll find that most posts at the outset were from people with issues and they were on Win 7 or 10 platforms. Only 2 of us reported no issues, the only 2 on Win 8.1 platforms. With those limited reports it would be easy for troubleshooters (and others also, like myself) to think perhaps the patch had only been tested rigorously on 8.1 platforms and a and not sufficiently on older Win 7 or newest Win 10 platforms. It was the subsequent reports from others on Win 7 & 10 platforms indicating they had NO issues that at least showed such an assumption to be incorrect and not likely the best troubleshooting path to pursue.

As a much younger lad I spent 5 years in the air force as an electronics tech troubleshooting and repairing air-ground-air com equipment. And one (of many) things you learn when troubleshooting is that simply concentrating on what does not work means you can waste a lot of time because you're working with incomplete data. Taking into consideration what DOES work (i.e., why similar pieces of equipment don't have the same issues as a few others that have regular failures) is useful in eliminating some attributes common to all of the similar pieces of equipment as the cause, helping to ascertain the few attributes (or, particularly, combination of attributes) shared only by the failing equipment.

Troubleshooting IS finicky business, and the more data you have, pro and con, the better chance you have to eventually pinpoint what is causing the issues and hopefully lead to a solution.

[Bobby55]

My issue has been satisfactorily resolved.... well after sending my video, the purchase price has been refunded.
I'll stay with Corel X6 & Aftershot pro. Also trying opensource Gimpshop & Rawtherapee .
Thanks for all suggestions and thank you Corel.

[Heavysteel]

I think most can understand your frustration with your issue not having been addressed, but I must disagree that nobody cares to hear reports that indicate that others do not have those issues. At the very least, those who have to troubleshoot the issue care.

I did remove the "Nobody Cares" part. Frustration talking indeed.

I stand corrected . I do apologize to the folks that try to help, but the issue here is that Corel does not help. Corel's support has been sub standard since before they ever assumed ownership of Paintshop Pro or several other software. Like I said before I continue to use Paintshop Pro x5 for smaller projects because it does play nice with Plugins. I never did upgrade to the newer X6 or x7 because after trying them the upgrades were not substantial enough to warrant buying again IMO. I am not out any money because x8 came as part of the Wacom Intuos Pro Tablet / software Bundle. The folks over at Wacom support are great. They treat your case like it matters. Again.....I wish all of you with problems a quick resolution.

[JoeB]

Corel's support has been sub standard since before they ever assumed ownership of Paintshop Pro or several other software.

Again, I can definitely understand where you're coming from here! This, as evidenced by the old newsgroups and the forum since it started, has been a legitimate complaint since version X and definitely an issue that has fuelled frustration among many, many users who have had PSP program issues over the years.

Hope you don't mind but, just taking into account very recent (the past few weeks or so) observations regarding several threads in this forum, I'd like to play a bit of devil's advocate. That is because, in the past several weeks or so, I have noticed a sudden - and to me unexpected - presence of Corel personnel replying in a couple of threads to recent PSP issues. This is, to me, not a minor development given their virtually non-existent presence over the years. And, in this thread at least, they have continued their presence and have continued communication with some people having issues with SP1 even outside of the forum.

Now granted, as things progressed, the furthest some users have seen their issue proceed is to have the issues recognized, being requested to provide more specifics, and then being told the issues were being referred to engineering. And then some users seem to spend a lot of time waiting to hear anything. BUT at least one (maybe 2, 3??) either have seen some more progress (refund beyond the refund period), or updates on how engineering is proceeding in their troubleshooting with the user's specific issue. This does, of course, seem like small, incremental improvements over what has happened in the past. But the point is that they ARE small, incremental improvements in terms of (a) somebody at Corel actually monitoring the complaints posted in this forum, and (b) making some effort to keep in touch with those having issues to show they haven't been forgotten.

I bring this up because it is, in my experience in this forum and previous Corel PSP newsgroups, unusual to say the least, and a step - albeit small - in the right direction. IF, in fact, these small steps over the past few weeks indicate that Corel is working on changing it's previous attitude of just ignoring the groups, then perhaps we as users should at least take a wait-and-see attitude to see if it continues.

And my bottom line with regard to my position is based on understanding that whoever is monitoring the complaints now is likely a Customer Support person and NOT an engineer. In other words, info that person(s) glean from our posts has to be passed to the engineers to work with. AND customer support, at Corel at least, is likely a somewhat isolated department from software development/programming departments, so they likely have little or no influence on how much effort or priority those other departments put into solving the issues.

And so the slowness is understandable. In other words, while Corel MIGHT now be trying to improve its customer relations situation, it's a matter of changing what has always been a corporate culture that didn't make that part of the operation a priority. So changing the corporate culture overall (i.e., having all departments come on board and learn to adopt a new approach in a cooperative way among all departments) will not be something that can or will be achieved in a few weeks. It's an incremental process, and takes time to spread and become integrated throughout the organization.

So that's my lengthy (nobody ever accused me of being brief! way of saying we should (a) start by being grateful that we are seeing a presence from customer support in the forum, and (b) hold our breath but try to be optimistic that it portends an actual change in Corel's customer support priorities, and (c) give things a bit of time draw final conclusions. Perhaps we, as members/users, could consider providing a bit of encouragement for Corel to continue monitoring and responding to actual PSP program issues rather than just complaining that, now that we're seeing a bit more effort, we want more response faster.

Just my opinion, of course, but I generally lean towards giving the benefit of the doubt, at least for a reasonable period of time.

Now, back to our regular programming!

[Simone Corel UK]

Hi to all

I can only talk about the problem (font and menu is blank) what Pathfinder has got.

I have spent at least 6 hours with an English customer in 4 remote sessions until now. I'm extremely grateful for his patience. During the sessions, we have restarted his system several times, and I don't know many customers who are willing to do that with their machines.
My theory that NVidea GT/GTX cards might have a conflict is smashed by reality as I have 2 other graphic cards in "my collection".
To find out what these 8 customers have in common is very difficult despite that they have got Windows 7. Even "my" English customer realises and agrees that it has to do with his specific system that cause the problem.

Fact is that Pathfinder's problem appears on 8 systems until now. Everybody else here in that forum who is affected, please send me a private message with your case number or PIN/e-mail and I will "collect" your case and keep you up to date.

Many thanks for your understanding!

[hartpaul]

Thanks Jo and Simone for your comments. Bit disappointed that someone refers to those who say they have no problems as being trolls - the statements that systems were working was included with info about the systems for comparison with others and not as an inflammatory statement to get a reaction.

Now some more details:
My Windows 7 has PSP X8 working with SP1 with no problems.
It is Windows 7 Professional running on a Toshiba Satellite Pro L50 A. It has an Intel Core i7 2.40 Gh processors and 654 bit operating system.
Under Device Manager it says I have a NVIDIA Ge Force GT 74oM graphics card and Intel HD Graphics 4600.
I am running AVG free, Zone Alarm free, and Spybot SD (also free).

If anyone else has the same laptop with these specifications and a working or non working X8 SP1 then perhaps we need to hear from those as well. By comparing the ones that work with the ones that don't work it may be possible to isolate what the difference is and what may be causing the failures.

My Windows 10 is also working as well:
It is Windows 10 Home running on a Toshiba Satellite Pro M300. It has an Intel core Duo 2.2Ghz processors
Under Device manager it says I have a Mobile Intel 4 Series Express Chipset Family under Display Adaptors.
I am running AVG free, Zone Alarm free.

Again If anyone else has the same laptop with these specifications and a working or non working X8 SP1 then perhaps we need to hear from those as well. By comparing the ones that work with the ones that don't work it may be possible to isolate what the difference is and what may be causing the failures.

EDIT - update - still no problems - but all of my laptops are Toshiba brand . Each of the brands comes with its own bloatware eg Toshiba eco-Utility, Toshiba PC Health Monitor and who knows what else. I notice that some with problems have Dell systems - Is this a common feature in those with problems is there a background feature from Dell that interferes with PSP X8 SP1. Do other brands systems with problems have the same?

[flagpole]

Stupidly updated to SP1 without reading the forum.

Completely borked my 32bit installation. Missing garbelled text in menus. I normally give it a while just to check there aren't any problems. hence installing it now.

There are some corrupt files there if i know anything. dilemma.

[SJS]

Windows 10, 64-bit, & NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti [Display adapter], PXP X8.

Service pack 1 installed, and using PSP for 2 days, things seemed fine... BUT next time I started PSP, maybe after restarting my computer (not sure about this) I got a flash screen that updates were ready to install. I thought "patch to the service pack" and clicked "OK". Next message that no updates needed, but NOW: I have the garbaged unreadable flash screen, and not sure what else yet.

[pdxrjt]

My issue has been satisfactorily resolved.... well after sending my video, the purchase price has been refunded.
I'll stay with Corel X6 & Aftershot pro. Also trying opensource Gimpshop & Rawtherapee .
Thanks for all suggestions and thank you Corel.

Very nice of them. Most companies won't do that when you have problems with their software.

[karebai]

Finally decided to do a re install of X8 - uninstalled, used cleanup, reinstalled. Feathering (or lack thereof) resolved - now working as it should. The "moving" text still persists.

I am sticking to X8 without SP1 for the time being and will keep looking in on this thread to hopefully find a time when it is safe to install SP1.

[rondo]

I'm still sticking with PSP X6 as well after reading of botched updates on X7 & X8. It's bad enough Corel support is nearly useless, but the programmers and their supervisors are just plain incompetent in putting out an update that causes so much trouble.

[flagpole]

I'm a bit dumbstruck to be honest. SP1 doesn't work and they're still leaving it up there.

Crazy.

[Joelle]

I'm a bit dumbstruck to be honest. SP1 doesn't work and they're still leaving it up there.

Crazy.

Works fine here, haven't had any problems caused by SP1.
Yes, I can't believe it either

Joëlle

[Kathy_9]

haven't had any problems caused by SP1.

Joëlle

Any notable improvements?