KernelEx and CorelDraw 9

[Guest wsxedcrfv]

The PC in question is running 98se and KEx 4.5.15. It has had CorelDraw 9 installed on it for years - probably soon after win-98 was originally installed (5 years ago) but it (coreldraw) doesn't get much use. Now I can't say for certain that Kex is interfering with Corel, but CorelDraw hasn't worked properly for several years, potentially coinciding with when I first installed Kex on this PC.

I have set the properties for coreldrw.exe to "disable KernelEx extensions" and it doesn't help. What I see is that certain dialog windows pertaining to file operations (open, save, import, export) are missing quite a few options, buttons, and drop-down lists.

When I start coreldrw without doing anything else, and then run cctask.exe (to see a process list of modules in use) I don't see "kexcom.dll" in the list. If I then bring up the "file-open" dialog window in coreldraw and then switch back to cctask and refresh the module list, that's when I see that kexcom.dll seems to be in use by coreldrw.exe. So hence my question - what is kexcom.dll and why is it attaching itself to coreldrw.exe?

My next option is to either rename kexcom.dll (so the system can't find it) or un-install kernelEx and see if normal coreldraw functionality returns.

I've re-applied two large service-packs for coreldraw, and have bulk-copied the coreldraw directory over from another hard drive to this drive (in case I have a corrupt file) but that did not change anything. My only other option is to re-install coreldraw from original media...

But in the mean time - is it possible that kexcom.dll is causing this issue?

Edit: I have un-installed KernelEx and this did not change anything (the issue remains). I have looked at the versions of all program modules (dll's) called by coreldraw and compared them against what I think are standard versions for a typical win-98 system and have come up with a short list of descrepencies which I will pose as a new question in the main win98 forum as I no longer think this is a Kex problem.

Edited December 30, 2010 by wsxedcrfv

[loblo]

What's wrong with Corel Draw 9?

AFAIK kexcom is the file that allows some 2K-XP only ActiveX/COM files such as for example certain DirectShow filters, shell extensions, etc... to run. It is a rather recent addition to KernelEx.

Edited December 30, 2010 by loblo

[Guest wsxedcrfv]

It turns out that this problem was in fact caused by an old version of Kex (3.6) which was installed in December 2008 (it modifies comdlg32.dll). According to what I can find on the net:

"comdlg32.dll is a module that contains Common dialog boxes used by Windows applications, such as the standard Open File form"

Which makes sense, given the problem I was having with various file-based operations in Coreldraw.

At some point I installed Kex 4.5.15 on top of 3.6, so perhaps comdlg32 wasn't cleaned up during that migration. After correcting the problem with comdlg32, I have installed Kex 4.5 final (last night) and so far, so good (no problems with Coreldraw).