I was working with a long-time reader yesterday as part of my Hire The Geek service and our goal was make CorelDRAW stop crashing so often. For some users, these crashes happen all too often. I will repeat again and again that I rarely crash when using CorelDRAW. I don’t even remember the last time I crashed it has been so long ago.

There are be many things that can contribute to crashes, but the more times you crash the more likely you are to crash again. When any program crashes, it leaves temporary files behind. These temporary files tend to gunk up your computer leading to even more crashes. With this user, each time CorelDRAW was run she was asked if she wanted to open up each of the Autobackup files found.

I personally can’t stand autobackup files. I go into Tools | Options | Workspace | Save (same command in most recent versions of CorelDRAW) and turn off Autobackups and also the Make Backup on Save option. If you save your files on a regular basis and backup your computer, these features don’t provide much more than false security. They also can create many more problems than they solve.

If you already have a build-up of temporary files, you will want to delete them. Typically there are found in C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Local\Temp where YOURUSERNAME is the name you use when signing in to Windows. Note that AppData is a folder that Windows hides by default so you’ll need to make sure that you’ve changed the Windows default that hides certain folders. Microsoft has instructions for doing this at Show hidden files.

Once you get to the Temp folder, it should be safe to delete any and all files/folders with a time/date step prior to your last reboot. If this sounds a little scary to you, you can also do this with the Disk Cleanup utility described in Delete Temp Files to Prevent Crashes and Increase Speed.

Cleaning out the junk should allow your computer to perform with fewer crashes. Just remember this is only one possible solution so you’ll need to dig into other solutions if the crashes continue regularly.

What did the user think about the help I provided? I’ll let her tweet speak for itself.

Seriously? Have Corel Issues? Talk To @fostercoburn http://t.co/xPeGEmG7SA I’m an END USER designer NOT a computer geek. He is AWESOME!

— Katie Dambro (@chicfullaideas) April 8, 2015