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The ironic thing was that soon after phoning local repair guy on Friday, I saw something I'd never seen before. An activation screen in Sketch Pad. (Which informed me that I lived in the Ukraine, so that I'm no longer disorientated.) Well - I had to try the Wacom serial number in the box, being stuck in activation box mode. Error! But box gave me a telephone number to ring. Off I went - ring, ring - and I did get a different voice this time. The recording of a young lady telling me that Corel'd closed up for the weekend 3 minutes ago. Duh.

Oh this is rich ...someone turn off the Auto Responder in the support thing please.

I left 2 replies asking for help in Corel's support area you can even see how I updated the discussion. No response from Corel but their auto responder kicked this in:

We have not heard from you concerning your request for support in the
48 hours since we sent you a response. Consequently, we have changed
the status of your question to SOLVED. 

Excuse me? You never sent a response in the first place. What is this?

That statement for US Intuos4 users - "you need to address this as soon as possible" - is that a joke? Also - what about us foreigners, and what are we to do when we're advised not to fiddle with the registry if we're not confident about it - and most people aren't? What address (Wacom or Corel) do we send the repair bill to within the time of the guarantee? I was getting tired of pursuing the matter but now the 'response' you got, Arshes, is just that little bit provocative.

(Quote from James, computer repair geek regarding the registry fix: Even I couldn’t be 100% confident of getting it right, if I did it instead of you.)

Polly,

Both statements are from me. I got ZERO response, but the ticket said Corel responded. I'm in the US so I know that the region was going to get the software downloads. I can't do support for every region. I let Wacom know on their forums about the software bundle for international users or at least regions I knew (US and UK). 

I'm upset that it closed the ticket saying it didn't get a response from me when I was waiting for  Corel to at least acknowledge the problem.

I'm hoping that you won't fret about it upon my behalf at least. I have a few weeks left before the trial expires anyhow. And as for me going to the length of paying for a registry fix - that genuinely goes along with my also wanting a memory upgrade, plus
James to kindly cart away some dead computing equipment that I can't otherwise dispose of without paying a similar fee for.

I am naturally also concerned about how others in this buggy Sketch Pad situation might succesfully cope with the problem. Like I said, it's a matter of ethics most importantly. Currently I do not need the distraction of this problem, yet I suspect that I will keep coming back to it until it's resolved. In other words I may well find time for emailing or phoning support lines tomorrow and even later on if needs be. Both Wacom and Corel were friendly towards me when I phoned, however unhelpful so far; that's a point needing to be made in case I make an impression of being Mrs Cynical Anger righteously on the prowl. And I may yet still hear back. Such slowness in Britain is scarcely exceptional. We'll get there in the end, I'm sure of it. Sometime this year, ha!

(Can I just sneak in here my approval of Arshes' Painter 11 review at Amazon.com? It speaks for someone who cares about the program's welfare. Oh, and first time anyone's called me Polly, which is pleasant.)

Apparently Sketchpad applied its first patch- 1.0.75 is the version number I'm showing. I did get an update to install the patch.

Is there a changelog that is stored somewhere so I can see what changes were made?

I did notice the brushes are behaving a bit better when using the touchring on the intuos4 to scroll through brush size. Up to a certain point, but much better than before.

I have noticed though the "wobbles" in lines are still present when using brushes with tilt sensitivity. Kinda makes me feel like I'm part of some Beer League Softball team with the wobbles D: 

I hope the installer is fixed so people can install sketchpad with their intuos4 bundle. 

Nah - I tried installing the Wacom version after uninstalling the Corel trial one that I'd already patched.  Patch or not, no difference regarding the serial number blip. Have been hunting through Corel Sketch Pad folder in Programs, along with the one in App Data - anything resembling 'changelog' I cannot locate, but am quite happy to admit that I suffer from stupidity and am not entirely sure where I'm meant to be searching. Anyone more techy-minded around who can assist us?

(Seeing those XML brush files, though, made me think - they look the same as the Painter ones - interchangeable?  That'd be nice because a few of them - great chalk - are more useful to me than the sketch pad format itself. While what frustrates me about Sketch Pad is that I can't make the brushes as big as I want - I want to sweep the chalk/pencil/whatever across the paper in two strokes, fill in a whole background with that effect merely. Can't do. Little dabs at a time. Not like real chalk you hold on its side, longways, and just drag along. Or have I missed something in the (hide & seek) Help?

Beer League Softball?! Am only using Intuos4 touch ring for zooming so far.* Trying to read about 4 different manuals at once. Somethings got to give. However, I did use Intuos3 touch strip a lot - not that it worked all that precisely, it was just handy (even when the driver reversed the in-out direction). Well, my hand keeps reaching out for that on the Intuos4. It's all supposed to be convenient, but I have to pause each time to look at the Express Key area to see what's there. Have spent ages learning keyboard shortcuts, and having so many options for, say, just the Hand/Grabber in Painter, Photoshop, etc is actually slowing me down at this stage.

* Photoshop's new Alt + Drag brush resize feature - resembling that in Autodesk's Sketchbook Pro - is my favourite way of doing it. Keep trying to do that in Painter. This is all wrong thread stuff but - since it was mentioned - blah, blah.)

Okay, it's mid-afternoon Monday here now. Have phoned Corel UK again. The person I spoke to had no knowledge of the serial number conflict issue but said she would look into the thread discussing it at Wacom Europe. By now Corel has four times over tried to persuade me that it's Wacom's problem not theirs, owing to the Wacom OEM version factor. I tried to explain the whole situation with some insistence  - including saying that it's a UK PC problem especially - as best I could but I'm sure Arshes could've put it more clearly/assertively than I. Anyhow Corel UK are at least now obviously aware of the existence of the issue - although I'd would have thought that Wacom itself would've been able to have notify them by this time. Am fed up with this.

Hello all...

So we have identified the issue, there seems to be a file left behind in the uninstall from the original trial of Sketch Pad that the OEM version (the one that come from the Wacom Intuos Bundle) doesn't like...

We are looking into a resolution, and hope to have something that we can get out to you all early next week (at soonest)...

I just ask you to be a little patient with us.

Is there anybody experiencing this issue on Mac, or is it only affecting Windows users?

Many thanks, Steve, that's all we needed to hear - a definite statement that the problem was being looked into by Corel. The impression of being dismissed by technical support had started feeling more frustrating than the uninstaller issue itself.

All I know about the Mac side of things, is that Wacom Europe has told a Mac person not to worry because only PCs are affected.

Thanks Steve, good to know the matter is being looked into. It's appreciated.

Monday 20th April. Dear diary, I have lost count of the number of technical support seeking phonecalls and emails I have made regarding Intuos4 and Corel Sketch Pad this springtime. Only just now I have been freshly giving Wacom my details, informing them of the installation problem's existence, so that sometime "Maybe tomorrow?" I might be phoned back helpfully. Remembered to mention funny thing about American people seeming to have had the activation issue sorted out.
    Last week was the ultimate joke on me however. The Intuos4 pen began spitting all over my screen. With pen hovering above tablet merely. Not just in Painter 11 but in Photoshop, Sketchbook Pro, Art Rage, you name it. Menus scrolling down, program boxes flashing open all over the place. Whole day and more spent troubleshooting, trying driver versions, removing preferences that had taken a fair while to configure, antivirus off for reinstall, tablet testing, pen testing, all that checked through. Wacom sent me an RMA ticket to send drawing tablet back to Germany for repair/replacement - it would take anything up to a month before I got the working tablet back. What kind of postage to pay at distant - this is modern Britain - post office before mailing off carefully repackaged faulty item?
    Decided to check out returns policy of firm I bought Intuos4 from before it came down to that. Clicked Returns Policy on their website. Click, click, a dead link apparently. Phonecall - told to email firm from website. Two emails later, 3 days and still waiting. Phone firm again - put through to technical support - sorry, line is busy. Phoned again, am still waiting to be phoned back. This is what I blew my budget for.
    The great thing about returning to Intuos3 is it's comparative simplicity. And it works! There's just the missing strokes/dabs thing in Painter to work around. Could always try a bit of sketching ... but, there again, maybe not that either.
    Will be sure to come back later with more news, dear diary, since I have all this time to expend nowadays.

After a little more time than expected, we have tracked down the issue, and have a solution.

A Knowledge Base article will be added shortly to our support pages, but here are the details and info in the meantime to get the issue resolved.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Install the Corel Painter Sketch Pad Try Before You Buy

2. Run the Corel Painter Sketch Pad Try Before You Buy and quit the app

3. Uninstall the Corel Painter Sketch Pad Try Before You Buy

4. Install the Corel Painter Sketch Pad OEM included with Wacom tablets (DVD or ESD)

5. Launch Corel Painter Sketch Pad

Result:

Corel Painter Sketch Pad will not launch.

Solution:

Keep Corel Painter Sketch Pad OEM installed and apply Hot Fix 2.

The link to the patch is: http://www.corel.com/akdlm/6763/downloads/SketchPad/ServicePacks/SKPHF2.exe

I hope this resolves this for you all, please let me know if you are still having issues.

Thanks Steve for quick response. It took some time to uninstall the trial version due to corrupted files from last attempt without Hot Fix, but eventually managed to repair then remove the installed trial through running the original Corel download again over it. Reached stage of having OEM version installed with serial number from Wacom - Sketch Pad not opening at all, as before. Ran Hot Fix with antivirus off - result being this error message:
    'Your update was not installed.
    The upgrade cannot be installed by the Windows Installer service because the program to be upgraded may be missing, or the upgrade may update a different version of the program. Verify that the program to be upgraded exists on your computer and that you have the correct upgrade.'
    Can't seem to get past this stage. Have been keeping Corel trial and Wacom OEM versions in separate named folders, so I don't think they could've got confused. Will have another go or two in a while but am not too hopeful. Anyhow, many thanks for reply. Polly.

Thanks Steve.

This isn't an issue for me anymore since I got on the phone with support, but I'll post this in relevant communities where it still is an issue and see if it fixes it.