ORONTO, Aug. 28 — Just as WordPerfect, the once-popular word processing software, was at risk of slipping from the computer world's consciousness, it is set to appear on millions of new screens.

The Corel Corporation of Canada, which acquired WordPerfect from Novell in 1996, announced deals in the last week with Hewlett-Packard and Dell Computer under which the two equipment manufacturers will install WordPerfect, as well as Corel's Quattro Pro spreadsheet software, in some of their consumer and small-business models.

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In the days after the deals became public, Corel's stock, which is listed on the Nasdaq and the Toronto stock exchange, gained 50 percent. It closed at 1.55 Canadian dollars ($1) in Toronto today, down 12 Canadian cents. In New York it closed at $1.03, down 6 cents.

The Corel products will be installed on Dell Dimension 2300 desktop and Inspiron 2600 notebook models and on all Hewlett-Packard Pavilion desktop models. A similar deal was concluded with Sony earlier this year. Corel estimated that a total of five million copies of WordPerfect would be installed under these deals over the next 12 months.

Hewlett-Packard and Dell chose the Corel products ahead of Microsoft's Works, a scaled-down version of Microsoft's popular Office software. Microsoft dominates the market for office suite software, with a share exceeding 90 percent. In addition, the Corel products are compatible with Word and Excel, the equivalent Microsoft software.

Steven Houck, Corel's executive vice president for strategic relations, said Corel had offered a lower royalty to the computer makers than Microsoft, though he declined to give details. "All personal computer manufacturers are under pressure to increase margin," he said.

Paul Lechem, an analyst at CIBC World Markets in Toronto, said in a report today that Corel would not profit greatly, writing, "the deals offer only a minimum royalty for each copy preloaded on a computer."

Mr. Houck said Corel's goal was to increase revenue and profit by encouraging users to upgrade to the full WordPerfect suite and other Corel software. Upgrade offers will be included in the software, and Corel also plans promotions at retail outlets.

Steven Frankel, an analyst at Adams Harkness & Hill in Boston, said the Hewlett-Packard and Dell machines in which the WordPerfect software would be installed were "low-end consumer offerings." He questioned whether many buyers of these models would upgrade to more profitable products.

Corel, based in Ottawa, is best known for its CorelDraw graphics software. The company came close to collapse in the late 1990's, as its flamboyant founder, Michael Cowpland, pursued myriad new ventures, including an ambitious project to produce the Linux operating system and adapt WordPerfect to it.

Mr. Cowpland, who once hired his former chauffeur as a vice president, left the company two years ago. A private company controlled by Mr. Cowpland pleaded guilty to insider trading earlier this year and paid a fine of 1 million Canadian dollars. In exchange, the Ontario Securities Commission dropped charges against Mr. Cowpland personally.

He was replaced at Corel by Derek Burney Jr., whose father is a former Canadian ambassador in Washington.

Mr. Houck said that the new management's priority was to add value to Corel's existing products. For instance, an acquisition last year was intended to help incorporate the new XML standard platform into Corel's core products. Cutting costs had also taken on a greater urgency.

Corel reported a net loss of 6.3 million Canadian dollars for the fiscal second quarter ended May 31 on revenue of 30.8 million Canadian dollars. It had cash reserves of $105.3 million at the end of the period.

Mr. Lechem said that he expected similar results for the third quarter, but that new products would lead to improved revenue and earnings in the final three months of the current fiscal year.

Still, he projected that losses would continue for the next year, given overall weakness in the information technology sector and the early stage of development of new products aimed at professional and corporate users.