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  • #4159
    kaboondy
    Participant

    Intermittently and unpredictably, when sending faxes by printing to WinFax from another program the computer will REBOOT. This is very inconvenient as if we have not saved the information on the other programs that were open at the time of the reboot, we loose the information. This does not happen in a predictable fashion. The only common feature of the events that I can report is that it seems to happen when printing from multiple documents – in other words – printing from more than one PDF and Word documents to create a larger multipage fax document. This does not happen to just one computer but has happened to several computers (networked and stand alone) with WIN2000 and XP installed OS.

    I have looked through the previous posts which do not seem to have any reference to this unique problem.

    I know this is a strange issue and assume there will not be anyone with this experience but thought i should put it on the forum just in case someone has had the same expeience and came up with a solution.

    Thank you.

    🙁 😕 😥

    #9454
    Administrator
    Keymaster

    The problem is due to some sort of failure of the WinFax NT Kernel Mode printer drivers. There is a tech net article which describes the Kernel Mode Printer driver here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc784266(v=ws.10).aspx
    The WinFax drivers are Kernel Mode drivers and were developed with the release of Windows NT 4.1. The drivers were carried over to Windows 2000, and eventually Windows XP. Microsoft has discouraged the development of Kernel Mode printer drivers since the release of Windows 2000 but continued to allow them be used in future operating systems for backwards compatibility purposes. It wasn’t until the release of Microsoft Vista that Microsoft completely blocked the installation of Kernel Mode drivers. This is the reason why WinFax PRO is not compatible with Vista, Windows 7 or any future Microsoft operating system.

    This is not a common problem and is unfortunately difficult to resolve. The problem may be related to the combination of hardware you are using. It may be related to Video drivers or some other device that may be using the same “memory space” as the WinFax printer driver.

    Here are some suggestions you can try to avoid the problem:
    Instead of using the “WinFax (Photo Quality)” printer driver, try the “WinFax” driver or vice-versa.
    Wait until WinFax has finished processing the current print job before starting another (the Send dialog box shows the status of the current print job in the bottom left corner)
    If a possible video related issue, try adjusting your video drivers to lower resolution, or update video drivers if they are available.

    #9455
    kaboondy
    Participant

    @Moderator wrote:

    The problem is due to some sort of failure of the WinFax NT Kernel Mode printer drivers. There is a tech net article which describes the Kernel Mode Printer driver here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc784266(v=ws.10).aspx
    The WinFax drivers are Kernel Mode drivers and were developed with the release of Windows NT 4.1. The drivers were carried over to Windows 2000, and eventually Windows XP. Microsoft has discouraged the development of Kernel Mode printer drivers since the release of Windows 2000 but continued to allow them be used in future operating systems for backwards compatibility purposes. It wasn’t until the release of Microsoft Vista that Microsoft completely blocked the installation of Kernel Mode drivers. This is the reason why WinFax PRO is not compatible with Vista, Windows 7 or any future Microsoft operating system.

    This is not a common problem and is unfortunately difficult to resolve. The problem may be related to the combination of hardware you are using. It may be related to Video drivers or some other device that may be using the same “memory space” as the WinFax printer driver.

    Here are some suggestions you can try to avoid the problem:
    Instead of using the “WinFax (Photo Quality)” printer driver, try the “WinFax” driver or vice-versa.
    Wait until WinFax has finished processing the current print job before starting another (the Send dialog box shows the status of the current print job in the bottom left corner)
    If a possible video related issue, try adjusting your video drivers to lower resolution, or update video drivers if they are available.

    This is a very helpful explanation as I have always thought this issue was related to my NIC card (network interface card). It would be easier to use the other solution (trying the winfax photo quality) first as this does not require changing anything expect the default printer setting (which is currently set to WinFax regular quality printer driver. I personally do not see any difference between the two when it comes to simple documents.

    I can also see if there is an updated video driver for the video card(s).

    This also might explain the intermittent nature of the problem. In other words, if the user is really fast at posting the documents to the WinFax printer – it might crash and if the user is slow (and therfore the each print job has a chance to be completed) the computer does not crash. One way to test this would be to take several large multipage files and post them quickly to winfax printer not allowing the completion of the printer task before another is sent to the printer. In fact, I am motivated to try this first just to prove the point. If correct, then changing to WinFax Photo Quality will not make any difference.

    I will report to you once I have completed this. Again, thank you.

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