It always amazes me when a person using a very old piece of software is shocked that it isn’t working perfectly on a new operating system. There comes a time you need to upgrade and there is no other solution than to upgrade. I’m going to list versions of CorelDRAW below and requirements as far as operating system. I’m not going to go back to the first version, but I am going to go back seventeen years.

Microsoft does a great job with backwards compatibility and Corel works very hard to supported the previous 2-3 versions of Windows while also keeping future versions of Windows in mind.

• CorelDRAW 5 was released in May 1994 and is the last version to support Windows 3.1. Note that Windows 3.1 was released in 1992.
• CorelDRAW 6 was released simultaneously in August 95 with Windows 95 and was the first 32-bit version of CorelDRAW. It required Windows 95 which meant users had to upgrade to both.
• CorelDRAW 7 was released in May 1997 and supported both Windows 95 and Windows NT 4 (released in 1996)
• CorelDRAW 8 came out in May 1998 and also supported Windows 95 and NT 4.
• CorelDRAW 9 followed in May 1999 and could run on Windows 95, 98 and NT 4.
• CorelDRAW 10 came in 2000 and dropped support for Windows 95. It was supported on Windows 98, Me, NT 4 and 2000.
• CorelDRAW 11 was released in summer 2002 and added support for Windows XP to the OS supplied by CorelDRAW 10. Keep in mind that it support five separate versions of Windows which leads to all kinds of extra testing by Corel to maintain that level of compatibility.
• CorelDRAW 12 came in February 2004 and the supported operating systems dropped to only Windows 2000 and XP. By dropping the three other operating systems, it made it easier for Corel to test and implement features.
• CorelDRAW X3 was released in February 2006 and was supported on Windows 2000, XP (both 32 and 64-bit) and 32-bit Vista.
• CorelDRAW X4 followed in February 2008 and was only supported on Windows XP, Vista and the yet to be released Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit). Note that Windows 7 was not released until October 2009 so Corel added support for it in a service pack.
• CorelDRAW X5 is the most current release and it came out in February 2010. It also supports Windows XP, Vista and 7 (32-bit and 64-bit).

Now that you understand the history of the past 11 releases and the operating systems upon which they run, let’s talk about some of the ridiculous questions users post. As an example, I saw a user asking about running CorelDRAW 8 on a new Windows 7 computer. It won’t work. That’s it! CorelDRAW 8 was released in 1998 and it is time to upgrade to a new version. Corel has no desire to update such old software and they sure aren’t going to do it for a user who hasn’t spent money on a new version in the past decade (plus). I can say the same for users of CorelDRAW 12 and below, there just isn’t as much time since they were released.

I’m sure there are some of you who are quite upset at this. It is just the reality of the software business. You have the choice to continue running an out-of-date (and insecure) operating system so run an out-of-date CorelDRAW or you can upgrade them both. I can understand upgrading every other operating system version or every other version of CorelDRAW. But I don’t understand getting any further out-of-date. If this applies to you, it’s time to upgrade!

If your CorelDRAW is out-of-date, here’s a link to upgrade. No matter how old your current version, you are eligible for upgrade pricing.

Typically it is best to upgrade your operating system when you get a new computer. For those who are still running XP or Vista, I’m going to suggest you start investigating a new computer with Windows 7 64-bit running on it.