CorelDRAW file will not open
Andrew McDonnell
the following problem with a CorelDRAW 4 file (in .CDR format).
While working on this file I received a message stating something
like "Unexpected condition encountered, please refer to CorelDRAW
Help.” The only choice was to click OK. I continued to work without
incident for about an hour, saved and closed the file, but was unable
later to open the .CDR file, or its .BAK backup later. (The two files
are of identical size, and regrettably probably are identically damaged
or corrupted.)
The file thumbnail is visible, and is up-to-date, displaying objects
that were created on the day of the last save and corruption. The file
size is consistent with its normal earlier versions. On the evidence,
all the data would seem to be intact, but inaccessible.
The drawing was rather complicated, and large (2.4 MB), and I
speculate that it may have too many objects, or too many nodes;
or that an “illegal” object was inadvertantly created and saved,
and that a corruption developed, which the aforementioned message
flagged, and which now keeps the file from opening.
Subsequent research suggests that the problem most likely is due to
the generation of objects with only one node: many users report that
this can cause file corruption. This may have resulted from my using
the standard Corel procedure of creating pie wedges from ellipses, which
in their initial state have only one node. The “unexpected condition”
message came up while these wedges were being manipulated.
I know that later versions of CorelDRAW have “media manager”
capabilities, including the use of .CMX files, which might be
able to re-open this file or extract its data, and I wonder if
experienced users are familiar with this sort of “unexpected
condition” error and corruption scenario.
Can anyone suggest a way to open this file?
Can anyone suggest a data recovery procedure to repair the file,
even partially, and to extract objects from the file?
Lastly, can anyone inform me of the proper steps to avoid such a
condition in the future, or the proper procedure to follow in the
event such a message comes up, to avoid such lockouts from a file?
Any help that could be provided would be sincerely appreciated.
Sincerely,
Andrew McDonnell
amcd...@concentric.net
Jerry Sanderson [C_Tech]
The fact that the thumbnail image is intact is irrelevant; that's generated
during the save as a simple bitmap image which is tacked on to the beginning
of the actual Draw data. The most common reason for corruption to develop is
that the drawing has too many Styles, or a corrupted style. In future, you
might want to check your drawings when you open them and delete all but the
default styles, and then re-save them. And of course (20-20 hindsight), if you
encounter such an error message again, immediately close and re-start Draw.
Once its brains have been scrambled, you just can't count on spontaneous
healing.
As for recovering the file: Try importing it instead of opening it. Try
double-clicking it in Explorer so that Draw is launched by means of OLE, which
loads the file slightly differently. As a last resort, make sure your \Temp
directory is empty (which it should be anyway), and try opening the file.
After you get the error message, or Draw crashes, or whatever, look in \Temp
and see if any of the files there are an appreciable fraction of the
original's file size. If there is one, rename it to MYFILE.CDR or something
similar, re-start Draw, and try opening that.
If none of the above work, I'm afraid it's history. :(
Jerry
C_Tech Volunteer
Graeme Standage
--
Graeme Standage
Vi Wisdom
Rob Bird gave me these instructions some time ago. And if these steps don't
work, the file is history.
Before I type the instructions, here are just a few words about avoiding
these things happening again. I had a very large tiff image that caused my
problem and here is what prevented the problem from reoccurring. I got more
hard disk space. Corel needs lots of space to write temp files in. More
about that later. I also got more RAM. I now have 128 and that has helped. I
am running CD7 and things seem to be going smooth.
I have a 6 GB hard disk that is partitioned into 3 2GB drives. I redirected
my temp file to write to one of the partitions and I put nothing else on
that drive so that it has the max available to use. That has helped
immensely. You will need to open your config.sys file and modify it like
this:
SET TEMP=F:\TEMP
SET TMP=F:\TEMP
You will of course use whatever drive you plan to change it to. I have a 2nd
hard drive that isn't partitioned but it is only a 540MB and not useful for
this purpose. But if you have 2 drives, you could do the same thing. By
default, the temp file writes to C:\ and that is usually the fullest drive a
person has where everything gets loaded.
While I was experiencing this problem, I made backups of files "on save" and
I still use it whenever I think I could experience anything happening on an
unusually large project. But by far and large, the above measures have
eradicated the problem. Hope it will for you as well.
Rob Bird's Recovering a Corrupted File:
1. Click Start, Programs, CorelDraw 7, Graphics Utilities, Corel Multimedia
Manager 7.
2. Double-click the C:\icon.
3. Click File, New, Album.
4. Double-click the folder where the file is located.
5. Click the file, and click Edit, Copy.
6. Double-click NEWALBUM.CMM, and click Edit, Paste.
7. Click the pasted file and right-mouse click File, Export.
8. Click Corel Presentation Exchange 6/7 CMX from the Files of Type list
box.
9. Type a file name, and select a folder to save the file in. Click Export.
10. Launch CorelDraw 7.
11. Click File, Open. Open the CMX file.
12. Save the file as a CorelDraw .CDR file.
Vi
"Andrew McDonnell" <amcd...@Concentric.net> wrote in message
news:39E7FA...@Concentric.net...
Vi Wisdom
Are you sure? I have it in my config.sys file and it is definitely writing
to the drive it should be. Or is that because it is also changed in my
corelapp.ini? I guess I should change it to my autoexec.bat file, no? I
could have sworn I was instructed to put it in the config.sys. Did I make a
huge boo-boo?
Vi
"Brian L Johnson" <draw...@corel.ca> wrote in message
news:MPG.1454c06e1...@cnews.corel.ca...
> Vi Wisdom said,
>
> Well... lots of good things. <g>
>
> But just a small change...
>
> > You will need to open your config.sys file and modify it like
> > this:
> >
> > SET TEMP=F:\TEMP
> > SET TMP=F:\TEMP
> >
>
> HTH B^)
> --
> -blj-
> C_Tech volunteer
Vi Wisdom
It may be that it works in either place or, as I suspect, when I changed the
temp drive in my corelapp.ini, that is what in reality reset it and made it
work. One would have to test it to see if that is the case. I am the curious
type so it may be that if I get some time, I will check it. Since Rob's post
about recovering unopenable files is so long ago, I don't remember his exact
instructions but one would think I would have followed it to the "T". Who
knows?news:MPG.1456f1244...@cnews.corel.ca...
> Vi Wisdom said,
>
> > Did I make a huge boo-boo?
> >
>
> But you could have knocked me down with a feather! '^)
>
> I've lost track of the number of years I've been doing this sort of
> stuff and I never knew that you could set Environment variables in
> CONFIG.SYS Well, I'll be... <g>
>
> Thanks for making me think! B^)
> --
> -blj-
Jerry Sanderson [C_Tech]
>CONFIG.SYS
You can set 'em live, at the command prompt in DOS, right? So why not? ;)
Jerry
C_Tech Volunteer
Vi Wisdom
It seems to work either way. I had also added it to my corelapp.ini and
maybe that was extra insurance.
Vi
"Jerry Sanderson [C_Tech]" <JerryLS...@compuserve.com> wrote in message
news:721qus85eu79q0tmeab7leoaoc4g44g2j5@localhost...
Jerry Sanderson [C_Tech]
>a question of order.
Right. And since CONFIG is processed last, that would be the place for iron
control. You just need to make sure your iron is in the right fires. <g>
Jerry
C_Tech Volunteer
bobby.2...@gmail.com
http://www.recoverytoolbox.com/coreldraw.html