Forgive me if this has been brought up before, but I don't have time to be shifting through a thousand posts to find the answer.  

 I've been using Coreldraw for over 6 years and have learned to deal with the general bugs and glitches, thanking the stars that auto-backup and Corel's crash uard have saved me more than not.  I've been using CorelDraw via Corel Graphics Suite X3 since it first hit the market, and have loved it.  But recently I upgraded computers and *gags* forced to go to Vista Premium.  For the last 3 months everything is fine, but I was having old bugs bothering me, when I remembered I hadn't updated X3 since I had re-installed on this machine.  Since installing both SP1 and SP2 I've been having horrible crashes that I have no warning of, no crashguard save, and no auto-backups. 

This is killing me!! 

I wasted more than 2 hours yesterday having to remake work that was lost before I could hit Save.  And before I get some useless "save early, save often" BS.  I save on a regular basis, but not during actions.  I've gone to literally saving between EVERY action to keep from being screwed again.   Is there a reason I am crashing for no reason?  Is there a fix?  What can I do? 

Porky,

Vista isn't the problem here. Have you rebuilt your workspace? I can almost
guarantee it is the problem. Hold F8 when starting CorelDRAW and you'll get
a dialog asking you to overwrite your default workspace.

I assume when you refer to Vista Premium you are actually referring to Vista Home Premium. None of the other editions of Windows VIsta have the word premium in the title.

I am running X3 with both SPs on Vista Home Premium and have been for 8 months. I have not yet had a CorelDraw Crash. My autobackup is functioning. As I haven't had a crash, I cannot speak to the 'crashguard save'.

Have you installed all the Microsoft Updates and updates for things like Video Cards? Since you went without installing CorelDraw updates, it seems a logical question.

How much RAM is on your system? How complex is the graphic on which you are working? Do you have other applications on at the same time? I have seen behavior like this from bad RAM. If the bad spot is high enough up the stack, you don't hit it until you fill RAM to that point and that may not happen until you are just about to hit save.

Thanks Foster, I'm not sure if this will help, but I went ahead and did it anyway. 

I'm okay with crashes, but not when they're so unexpected and frequent that I feel like I keep getting caught with my pants down.  

 Actually I assumed that I didn't have to spell Vista Home Premium without having someone feel a compulsion to correct it.  Really?  No other edition of Vista has that word in it?  Wow, I'm shocked then and glad you were able to figure this out without me having to spell it out completely.   

 Yes, I'm running 2gb of RAM, The graphics I deal with are insanely complex, and yes, I have multiple programs open because I can't operate with only one app open at a time.  Yesterday I was running Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2, InDesign CS2, CorelDraw X3, Thunderbird, FireFox, Acrobat and some others...  I could see that being a problem, however today, I'm only running CorelDraw X3 and Thunderbird and was crashing earlier.  So that was not the problem, thanks anyway.   

Just making sure of the version-no correction intended.

I would hate to help someone with the wrong version and give them incorrect advice.

Good luck with your issue.

 Thanks, I appreciate it.   

 The workspace fix Foster recommended seems to have worked.  

Glad to hear the workspace seemed to fix things. It often does. I wish I
knew why they got corrupted. I just know that rebuilding them is almost
always the answer.

Works fine now, thanks!  I started working on Coreldraw 8 and have upgraded multiple times on multiple systems and never had that problem before.  I will be sure to keep that trick in my bag of tricks.   

 Why is it that my saved workspace doesn't keep the simple preferences?  I'm having to go through and make minor adjustments to get it back to how I like it.  Not looking for a solution, just wondering...      

Porky,

The first thing I do after installing CorelDRAW is to create a new workspace
with the name of my choice. Then I customize my settings. After the
workspace is good, I create a backup copy. Thus, I can rebuild the default
workspace at any time without losing anything. And if my personal workspace
was corrupted, I have a perfect backup to replace it.

I don't have any idea why your settings aren't being saved unless you are
changing something that isn't part of a workspace. "Document" settings are
changed in a different way.

Foster, 

I was talking about settings like turning auto-center off in powerclip, Undo Levels, turning off node tracking, turning on antialias bitmaps in enhanced view, and other settings.   I've been using the same workspace since CorelDRAW 9, and have my own Color Palettes backed up.   But after I rebuilt the workspace, I had to reset the palettes, reset the settings mentioned above.   All of my shortcuts remained the same as I have had them, just my preferences were altered back to factory default.  Can I save these prefs too so I don't have to waste anymore time when I upgrade again.  

Porky,

When your workspace got corrupted, the solution was to reset to factory
defaults. That's the only solution to the crashing you described.

When I first install, I IMMEDIATELY create a new workspace with the name of
my choosing. I customize it as I like and I IMMEDIATELY export it. Then if I
ever have to reset to defaults, I just reload the workspace I saved earlier.

Do NOT import workspaces between versions even though it has been supported
in the last couple of versions. The chances of corruption are very high.

Wow.  I did it, and it works fine.  Irritated the you-know-what out of me.  But I just opened up an old doc and it seems to respond well.

Thanks for your F8 suggestion.

 ceebeebee