Which Corel Program is Creating Constant Popups?

[mxlplx00]

Hi valued Corel support team,
WTF is happening?

I have a problem with constant popups telling me that I need to buy Corel Painter 2022. Please tell me which one of your amazing products is doing this incredibly disrespectful thing to me and how to stop it?

Paint Shop Pro 2021
Painter Essentials 7
Aftershot 3(64-Bit)
Painter Thumbnail Preview

I have gone into PSP Help/messaging and turned everything off and opened these other programs and spent hours of my time (that you don't seem to GAF about) looking for a way to turn it off and can't find anything.

I have been a very happy user of Paint Shop Pro since before 1999. Why must you now wage war on your client base? I know times are hard, they are hard for me too. I just wish that we could come to an equitable agreement on how to get along with each other before, well it may already be to late for us. I trusted you. I never hounded you or pried into where you go when your out by yourself, told you that you are fat (you know you COULD lose a "few" pounds) or insulted your mother (to her face).

Please take a minute out of your busy (exercise time) to help me resolve this issue.

Love always
MXLPLX00

[Ken Berry]

You don't seem to realize you are not talking to Corel (or Alludo these days). The "Corel Team" you are in fact addressing is made up of users just like you who volunteer their time to try to help other users.

So with that out of the way, I'm afraid that receiving Messages from Corel urging you to buy Painter, VideoStudio, PaintShop Pro etc are an ongoing headache for us all. You have already found where to go in the Help menu of various Corel products and turn off messages there. That at least works for a while. But you also need to delete Messages already downloaded on your computer in fairly significant numbers. I do this every week or so, and by and large this allows me to control or manage how many messages I receive. But I have also found that when one program or another has an update patch, the Messages start again, and I need to go into Help again to make sure things are turned off there, and also delete any messages downloaded on your computer.

To make things more complicated there are two places you need to go to. The first is relatively obvious. It's in C:\ProgramData\Corel\Messages. Just delete everything in that folder. The other folder is in C:\Users\[YourName]\AppData\Roaming\Corel\Messages. Again, delete everything there too.

As I say, this should give you some relief but eventually the Messages will start to creep back. But if you keep those two folders empty every week or so, the relief goes on for a longer while...

[mxlplx00]

Thanks Ken Berry,

That sounds like great advice. I did it and will see if it helps.
I don't think that I'll use the programs besides Paint Shop Pro and maybe ifs I uninstall them it will be easier to manage but if I ever have time I might want to see what they do and if it's worth learning how to use them.

I'll save your instructions for future reference.

Marc

[Dypsis]

1. Open Task Scheduler
2. Click on Task Scheduler Library
3. Locate CorelUpdateHelperTask, right click and select Disable or Delete (I deleted)
4. Locate CorelUpdateHelper TaskCore, right click and select Disable or Delete (I deleted)
5. Close Task Scheduler


Delete the contents of the "Messages" folders located at:
C:\ProgramData\Corel
and
%AppData%\Corel


In Windows 10 or below, right click the "Messages" folders > Properties and select Read Only Attribute.

NOTE: In Windows 11, the Read Only Attribute doesn't seem to stick, so use folder Permissions.
Right click the Messages folders > Properties > Security tab. Click Edit and Deny Write Permissions for the Everyone group.

[Andy2011]

Seeing this post prompted me to get round to killing the messages which, of late, have become even more annoying. I had left the 'update helper' (there's a misnomer) running in the blind hope of picking up any bug fixes. But, of course, after a few weeks after the release of a new version, bug fixes become a new paid-for version.
One point of interest I have noted is that after killing messages, an attempt to access 'Messages' and 'Message Preferences' in the Help menu creates a modal window that can't be closed, requiring the use of Task Manager to kill the application.

[mxlplx00]

Thanks Guys,
I did what Ken Berry instructed and it came back today. Oh dang.
So I'm trying Dypsis' solution. It sounds like the right move to me.

I'll have to stop by here more often.

A few weeks ago I was trying to kill the popups and the help/messages window just went blank on me. Like it couldn't render the graphic or something and stayed like that ever after. Shortly after that my keyboard shortcuts quit working (which I use extensively).

So I tried an uninstall/reinstall. I have the full Disk version of Paint Shop Pro Ultimate 2021. And after reinstalling I kept getting:

"This copy of Paint Shop Pro has been damaged or illegally modified. Please reinstall from your original source."

I tried the cleaner and everything and nothing worked. So I contacted Tech Support again and following the instruction took forever because he kept elevating the procedure. And I have JUST got it running again.

How long will it last this time before completely crashing?

I also had a major PSP crash in February when I was still running Windows 7. I worked with the Tech guys for a long time. Lucky that I was unemployed because I wouldn't have had the time otherwise.
So the guy tells me that my Windows 7 is corrupt. He wasn't wrong it was getting buggy so I did a complete Disk wipe and new installation of Window 10 from scratch on this old "non- Windows 10 comparable" system.

Then I reinstalled PSP and it was good for a few months.

I just bought this new addition in October 2021. What a buggy POS this company is turning into. Maybe I should reinstall version 6X next time.

Anyways, thanks guys.

Marc