Corel pop-up ads

Hello all,

I have Corel PhotoPaint 17 and the CorelDRAW Home & Student 17 suite. I'm getting pop-up ads about every other time I exit from any of them. It's really annoying. I've tried the three main methods that I've found to stop the ads.

1. Checking the "do not show again" box on the ad itself
2. Going into message preferences and unchecking those options
There's a dropdown menu that should be there but I don't have
3. Going into Task Scheduler and disabling any Corel tasks
I don't have any Corel items listed there

Over a series of five emails, Corel tech support gave me the same suggestions and when I told them that none of them worked, they blamed Windows 10 and said that my Corel product versions were no longer supported anyway. It was too long ago to remember exactly what I did but I must have been able to use these methods on 8.1 because I got the ads then and did something to stop them. They never came back so whatever I did worked.

So, I'm looking for some less conventional options to stop the ads. I'm totally open to suggestions.

Thank you.

Log into Win 10 as Administrator.

Click on Windows Search or open Control Panel then open File Explorer Options.
Click the View tab.
Click the Show hidden files, folders, and drives radio button.
Click OK.

Open Windows Explorer and navigate to:
C:\Users\[your user name]\AppData\Roaming\Corel\Messages

There will be one or more sub folders. Drill down in each and look for a last in chain folder called Messages. Click on it.

Click in the right file list pane, then select all files and delete them.

Return to the left navigation pane and click on the Messages folder (to give it focus).
Right-click and click Properties.
In the General tab, check the Hidden box.
Click the Apply button, then click the OK button.


That should do it.

The users on Corel's Paint Shop Pro forum have some clever ideas about blocking these ads.

[Sticky] -- How to Stop Ad Popups? - Alludo USER to USER Web Board

Maybe they'll work for Corel Draw as well.

(FWIW: I'd rather deal with Corel's ads than pay Adobe's high subscription fees for Photoshop).

Digital Life said:

2 way's that might work.

1: Block corel's exe file in Windows firewall.

2: You might be able to block their DNS requests and hopefully block the popup too.

Either sounds promising. Thank you!

Ghot said:

@FTNR21

There's also this. They work on Win 10 and Win 11... I've been using Paintshop Pro 7.04 for 20 years now. Love it.

Paint Shop Pro 4.12 and 7.04 and 8.1 and 9.01

Awesome! I will give these a shot. Thank you.

GEWB said:

Log into Win 10 as Administrator....
... That should do it.

It's a shame that such a simple problem has to be so complicated to fix but I at least there's a way. Thank you for this excellent suggestion and instruction.

Carmano said:

The users on Corel's Paint Shop Pro forum have some clever ideas about blocking these ads.

[Sticky] -- How to Stop Ad Popups? - Alludo USER to USER Web Board

Maybe they'll work for Corel Draw as well.

(FWIW: I'd rather deal with Corel's ads than pay Adobe's high subscription fees for Photoshop).

I've read numerous posts loaded with complaints and a lot of the same-old-same-old solutions and nothing that actually worked for my situation. I'm glad you found something potentially useful. I will check this out. Thank you.


These suggestions are all exactly what I was hoping for. I will give them a try and report back.

Thank you all very much.