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Hello, I may have posted my original post in the wrong place; please  excuse this oversight - in my defence, i'd been trying to fix Corel Painter12 for some 7 hours. Today i've spent another 6 hours and still I cannot get it to work. The program remains unresponsive, "program not responding". I have tried all the obvious things from un-instal, re-instal, cleaning my registry, re booting, re cleaning registry, re installing, hitting the shift key when launching, installing as an administrator, running as an administrator, putting the recommended patch on, taking it off, putting it on, changing the directory, and then repeat the above and again and again. I then tried the trial version downloaded that and it said i had 0 days left. I have tried contacting Corel directly via their online webform, i tried to create a case, it said "case failed". I tried again; no joy. I tried online chat, I was disconnected. I tried again ( god loves a trier) disconnected. I cannot find an email addresss to contact Corel directly and yet apparently my software is blessed by support from Corel for a certain amount of days - but where is this support? I see no support, i see going round and round Corels site being taken back to the same unhelpful pages. I see pages of complaints about the Painter software. I see red, but not in real brushes.......  One day it actually opened, the first time i put it into the machine, but no layers were visible. At that point i pressed the shift key and yes layers appeared. I came to use the software the following day, having changed nothing on my machine and Painter12 refused to do anything but show a little icon brush on the screen ( like the old fashioned egg timer) and refused to respond. Of course i've tried all the above about 30 times, so desperate I am to try this software. I had painterX that was great, and then i bought a new PC and painterX wont work on a 64bit machine. So, i bought Painter12..... i wish i hadnt , i really wish i hadnt , i wish i'd died in the night and saved myself going through all this crap for the zillionth time. Hell i even got into my registry files, because for a while Painter even refused to run its own set up files telling me it was missing one ...... from its own brand spanking new CD bought from reputable Corel dealer i hastened to add, with real money... Oh please someone help me before i take a sledge hammer to this software. I am now going to write to the CEO of Corel, its driven me that crazy.............. please help, kind regards Helen . 

I'm puzzled why Painter X wouldn't work on your 64bit PC. It should, unless you have an odd combination of CPU and Operating System.

PS. Sorry, I find long posts without any breaks/paragraphs very difficult to read - although I understand your frustration!

Have you tried creating a new user profile in windows and installing painter 12 there? It could be anything from a hardware issue to a conflict with another program -- I never had any issues installing Painter 12 on either Windows XP 32-bit and Windows 7 64-bit, althought I used the download installer (from Corels website) and ignored the installer on my CD.

Best,
Jason.

Hello, apparently win64 can have too much ram, something along the lines of .. over 3 and painterx doesnt like it . i've heard people suggest taking some RAM  out in order to run painterx. I am not going through that to run software :) 

Hello thank you for your response, i hadnt tried that, so i did and sadly its still the same. Just a little brush icon on the screen and when i press anything the program hangs and becomes unresponsive. 

I called corel today, they said i have to pay to get technical support. So, there we have it, new software, doesnt work, folk complaining about it all over the internet, and having shelled out over £100 for it, i am expected to pay more to have the issues resolved. How odd. I find it all a bit odd, sure it works for some, and that's lovely. But i've run everything on this new PC built specifically for graphics programs; from zbrush, mudbox, autodesks entire range and the adobe creative suites, plus battlefield3 and crysis. Never have i found software this problematic in over 20 years of computing. PainterX worked, but that crashed all the time too, so one had to keep remembering to save. 

You don't need to physically pull out any RAM to make Painter X work on a 64bit system with a lot of RAM.  Go HERE and apply this fix (it's a third party solution, so done at your own risk - tho I have done it with success).  However this will have no affect on Painter 12 as the RAM limit barrier was fixed in this version.

Could possibly be that your ownership rights have become corrupted.  Worse case senario is that creating a new user wont fix it.  I had this problem.  Although my Win7 Ultimate 64bit system was saying I had the 'right' to install a program or run it, it just wasn't working.  Creating a new user didn't help.  Ultimately I got rid of the problem as I reinstalled the whole OS (due to another problem).  I had found I could install most things, but programs like Corel Draw refused to run untill I'd changed some user rights.

You could try turning off the UAC "User Account Control" settings (type in UAC in the search bar in the start menu to find it).  You'll have to reboot, and see if that helps get the program running.  It may not, so you can turn it back on again.  If it does help then it would indicate that your admin rights have corrupted in some way.

Do this at your own risk, but you could try changing the ownership/admin rights to Painter, by going to the program folder, finding Corel Painter 12 folder and right click on it, select properties, then the sercurity tab, then the advanced button.  Select Owner, then change the owner to your user name, tick the 'replace owner on subcontainers and objects'  then ok.  Then select the Permissions tab and click change permissions and give yourself full rights and tick 'replace all child object permissions with inheritable permissions from this object'.  If your user name isn't on the list click Add, then Advanced, then Find Now.  Then from the list add yourself.  You can can change back ownership to Admin once your done. 

There's also a file under ProgramData/Corel/Painter12 called PF12.dta that may need the same thing done to it.  Again do it at your own risk.  Though as long as you only touch the Coral Painter folder (since it's not working anyway) you're probably not risking much.

Good luck!

I only have one other thought.  Make sure you have the Protexis Licensing service running (go to Task Manager / Services).  On a 64bit system there should be two, PSI_SVC_2 and PSi_SVC_2_x64.   This is Painters licence program to validate the serial which runs in the background.  Painter wont work if they aren't enabled to run.

You could also check if your Mircosoft.NET Framework NGEN v4 (should be two of them there) have installed properly - Painter installs them.  Click the services button at the bottom of the Services tab, and from the full Services list check all these are set to automatic.  If you have the v2 of the NET framework installed these I think should be Disabled (at least mine are).

Oh god, I'm hearing your pain. I, too, have had similar experiences and am desperate to resolve them. Brand new shop bought version of Painter 12, new PC running Win 7 64 bit system. Have been through the hell of Corel online support (with identical results to you, I might add - "case fail"). Trawled the knowledge base, downloaded some registry patches from Corel and did a safe boot, running minimal services. No good. Tried downloading and installing all of the updates, patches & hot fixes with no luck there either. Then my photoshop stopped responding, so I had to do a system restore, uninstall CS5 and tried installing Painter 12 whilst Adobe was absent. No good. Reinstalled CS5 (which happily works again). My Wacom Intuous5 has disappeared while all this crap was going on, but it makes no bloody difference anyway, as it turns out. Painter 12 simply will not install or run. Have finally managed to get in touch with Corel, who tell me that I have tp pay for online support. This software isn't even a week old and it's ruining my life. My brain has become addled and dribbled out my ear. This is seriously getting to be the bane of my life. I am awaiting a further response from Corel, prior to parting with any more $, and will post if I have any fruitful outcomes. Or not, as the case may be.

Did the trial version of painter 12 work for the 30 days in the 64 bit mode?

If I remember corretly on the 32 bit version , the trial version even with 0 days left allows you to enter the serial number of the purchased copy, just a thought

That would tell us if the OS & hardware is working with the software.

Does the software install and accepts the serial number?

Is painter 12 on the C drive, there maybe a path corrupted from the "exe"file to the rest of the programs dll and other files

Is there anything that changed from the end of the trial t the install of the purchased copy of painter 12?

For those that have installed painter 12 on a win 7 64 bit, does the program ask if you want to install the 64 bit version or does it decide as it installs?

With any problem there is a solution but start from the last working time frame and think of anything that might have changed, not that it will solve the issue but maybe give a path to go.

Wyndham

In the end, the nice people i bought it from asked for another copy from Corel ( i'd tried to run the cd on several machines without any luck) .. and guess what , the new one worked fine.. still crashes all the time though, but that's painter.

I found that its very susceptible to screen resolution.. try some different ones. Resolution also effected the dissapearing layers pallette.

I cant see too well , so i had my windows fonts on large ,and it didnt like that one bit. Also it doesnt seem happy with wacom drivers , taking those out of your system completely and then install painter , that sometimes works...

at the end of the day though, Painter has caused me more lost days than any other software i've ever owned. 

Thanks for the reply, Wynpotter. I didn't have a trial version. Bought the disc. All legit and straight from an authorised vendor. I have received a different installer from Corel (which essentially is another downloaded copy, with an alternate serial number). Same thing - doesn't run. Given that I had previously tried a soft boot, running the bare minimum of services, it pretty much rules out program conflicts. It seems increasingly likely that there's some sort of registry problem, but everything else on my PCs running fine. CS5, Xara software etc. Just Corel Painter 12 has a problem. It's really, really frustrating.

Pip - thanks for your reply, too. Yes, I can see that this program's going to cost me dearly. I might have a look at resolution, although I don't have anything too unusual going on in that regard. I'll keep hunting until I find the solution. Have decided to bite the bullet and pay for tech support from Corel. Annoying, but probably the wisest course to take at this juncture. x

Sloo, you might try a registry cleaner then a new install either from what you have or a trial DL then put in the alt serial # Corel sent you. Kinda of a shot in the dark, Wyndham

Well, yes, it might sound promising, but it makes no difference which version, which copy or which serial number. I've tried 3 now. Nor cleaning etc. I had Corel support on the line today, and they remotely took control of my PC and drove it themselves. They don't know what's going on either. They have extracted some files from my computer and sent it off for level 2 analysis. I'm really hoping that they can resolve this nightmare for me. It's becoming ridiculous.

Please let us know what happens. In the end, when you get your system up & going I hope this little bump(Grand Canyon) will be worth it.

Wyndham

have the same problem, but on a mac, i've been hours looking for help, please let us know what happen Sloo.

thanks!

Hi all,

Sorry for the long delay. Yes, I have resolved the problem but - no - it's not a good or an easy fix. After getting nowhere at all with Corel support, I was of the opinion that the failure to run was due to some sort of registry conflict. I tried a fresh installation of Windows 7 on an entirely new hard drive, then installed Painter as the first bit of software, after all the essentials. Bingo. It works.

This is not happy news for someone who isn't in a position to rebuild their machine. All I can say is that if you are able, get a fresh drive and reinstall (this also means you still have your original drive should you wish to preserve or transfer data).

Good luck, Carlos. Let us know how you go. xxx