[ljsteel]

Hello,

I am encountering a very recent problem with sending faxes using WinFax Pro. My platform is Windows XP, SP3; I have used WinFax Tools v138 (and will detail the steps that I have taken thus far). I do not use the WinFax (Photo Quality) printer when printing to WinFax from external programs.

Observations:
1. When I attempt to send a fax from within WinFax, I can get the send dialogue window, use the pull-down menu, select recipient, and even type out a message on the default cover page. However, immediately after I send it – it has disappeared. There is no send dialogue that appears and shows me the progress of the outgoing fax. There is no record of the fax itself in the Outbox, Sent box, or even in the Wastebasket. It just… poofed.
1a. If i try to bring up the send dialogue box again, it just hangs and then sends my CPU into a tizzy, pushing the processor to 94%..
(Sometimes, I can’t even get past the program trying to open the send dialogue window because it hangs in the process – don’t even bother trying to select a recipient.)

2. When I attempt to insert a file from my scanner…. PFFT… the scanner dialogue box never appears, and WinFax has sent things back into a tizzy again.. program hangs, CPU flips out… mass hysteria on a nano level =)

What I have tried short of tossing the machine against the-next-person-that-asks-me-to-send-them-something-via-fax:
1. MS 3finger salute (CTRL-ALT-DEL) and manually shut down any process that begins with “WFX”
2. Rebooting the PC (6 times thus far)
3. Winfax Tools 138:
a) End all winfax tasks (about a dozen times);
b) WinFax noPages fix (2x);
c) Install & Setup tools (3x);
d) compatability check (3x);

I’m not familiar enough to mess with the other buttons, and know enough that I’m dangerous when it comes to “what happens if I press THIS BUTTON?”

help.. oh for the love of all that is chocolate, HELP 😥

[Administrator]

Ok from what you are describing it appears there is some corruption of a WinFax file. It could be your send & receive logs, or it could be the WinFax printer driver that you are using.

To pinpoint what is the source of the problem:

the first step is to attempt a test print using the WinFax PRO printer driver.
To do this, follow these steps:

1. Start WinFax Tools and Click on “Start Controller”. The WinFax PRO controller should appear in the task bar. If your WinFax was locked up or frozen from a previous test, it is recommend to reboot or make sure all WinFax PRO processes are shut down.
2. Click Show Printers.
3. Find the “WinFax” printer. Right-click the “WinFax” printer , and then click Properties.
4. On the General tab, click Print Test Page.
5. Click OK to the message if the test page printed.
6. The WinFax PRO Send Screen show now appear. Does the Windows XP Test page appear in the Send Window? Does a thumbnail appear?

If NO. Click CANCEL <-- Note that at this point, it is likely WinFax PRO will stall/freeze and you will be unable to close the Send Dialog box. This indicates a problem with the printer driver, STOP here and post back the results. If YES. Then click CANCEL in the WinFax send screen.
At this point, you can start WinFax Tools.
Click on the option “End all WinFax Tasks”. If prompted to shutdown “wfxswtch.exe or wfxsnd40.exe” click Yes. This should close down all WinFax Tasks, but in some cases you may have to manually shut down “Wfxctl32.exe” and “wfxmod32.exe” processes.
Then, click on “No Pages Fix” and click Yes.
Once completed it will report if any problems were repaired. Click OK.
Now click on “Logs & Phonebooks. “
Click on “Check Send/Rec Limits” and click Yes to continue the check. This will report back total number of receive and send slots available.
STOP here and report back the results.

[ljsteel]

1. Start WinFax Tools and Click on “Start Controller”. The WinFax PRO controller should appear in the task bar. If your WinFax was locked up or frozen from a previous test, it is recommend to reboot or make sure all WinFax PRO processes are shut down.
2. Click Show Printers.
3. Find the “WinFax” printer. Right-click the “WinFax” printer , and then click Properties.
4. On the General tab, click Print Test Page.
5. Click OK to the message if the test page printed.
6. The WinFax PRO Send Screen show now appear. Does the Windows XP Test page appear in the Send Window? Does a thumbnail appear?

1. I did the “end all processes” and then had to manually shut down the remaining 2 processes from Task Manager.
2. I noticed that I now have a total of 3 winfax printers: 1) Winfax; 2) Winfax (Photo Quality); 3) Winfax (Copy 1) — no idea where that extra copy came from, but carried on with the next steps on each of the two, one at a time.
6. Winfax PRO Send Screen did not appear, for neither of the two Winfax printers. I received a dialog box that says:
“Winfax is not active for this user account. Please start the controller and try again”
okay.. oops.
Back to WinFax Tools 138, and I hit “Start Controller”

Back through the steps again, and I hit “Print a Test Page”… the page shows up under the printer queue then disappears as if it printed, but the WinFax PRO SEND dialog window never appears.

-lj

[Administrator]

ok what you describe is a problem with the WinFax printer driver.
try the following in WinFax Tools.

1. End All WinFax Tasks. (yes to all)
2. Show Printers.
3. Select the WinFax (Copy 1) and click Delete. Remove this printer.
4. Select WinFax printer and click Delete. Remote this printer. you should now only have WinFax (Photo Quality) listed. you can leave this.
5. In WinFax Tools, click Install & Setup Tools.
6. Click Manual Printer Driver Install.

Once you are done you should see “WinFax” listed again under “Show Printers”

Now, click Start Controller.
then try a test print from the WinFax printer

[ljsteel]

5. In WinFax Tools, click Install & Setup Tools.
6. Click Manual Printer Driver Install.

Error Popup appears:
“WinFax Port Starter (WFXSNT40.EXE) is not active. The Port Starter is required to use the WinFax PRO printer driver, and should be set to automatically start with Windows NT/XP/2000x”
I clicked “OK”
“Please wait while the Controller closes..”
“Install the WinFax printer driver manually via Windows PrintUI.DLL?”
I click “Yes”
An alert dialog box appears stating:
“The software you are installing for this hardware:
Printers

“Has not passed Windows Logo testing to verify its compatibility with Windows XP. Continuing installing of this software may impair or destabilize the correct operation of your system either immediately or in the future…. etc… etc….

(At this point, I’m looking for Bill Gates in a Chicken Little costume shouting that the Windows Cloud is falling)

I click “Continue Anyway”

“Show Printers” reveals a WinFax printer.

click on “Send Test Fax” – *facepalm* wrong thing.. ugh.

Click on “Show printers” again, to easily get to the Printer properties and print a test page to WinFax… However..
“This action cannot be completed because the other application is busy. Choose ‘Switch To’ to activate the busy application and correct the problem”

Did that, went nowhere, nothing happened… I’m shooting something with a nerf bazooka soon.

Suggestions? reboot?

[Administrator]

yes, those are the proper steps. The Windows XP Logo testing Warning message is normal, and will always appear when manually installing the driver. Yes, if you haven’t done already I recommend a reboot and then try starting WinFax PRO again, and perform a test print.

just make sure that WinFax Controller is active before you attempt a test print, or it will give you an error.

[ljsteel]

Good Morning,

I rebooted.

On a positive note, WinFax is still actively receiving faxes (yay!) I just can’t view them. When I try to open up a fax, the entire program freezes. Perhaps this requires a new thread, but I’m keeping it here since it is probably related to the bigger picture of my WinFax.

Having rebooted the machine.. again, I attempted to print a test page from the printer properties dialog box, and it does not bring up a WinFax SEND dialog box. It’s all frozen… lifeless…
..(cue Donnie Darko music)

ideas? suggestions? prayers? ritual sacrifice of modems to the WinFax-Powers-That-Be ?

-lj

PS. I ran “Check Send/Rec Limits” thing..

Your default send log folder is 78% full.
Your default receive log folder is 62% full.

WARNING: Your send log folder is 78% full.
You should consider moving faxes or deleting older faxes.

WARNING: Your receive log folder is 62% full.
You should consider moving faxes or deleting older faxes.

Received Fax (*.FXR files) slots available (Maximum of 10,000) : 3767
Send Fax slots (.FXD Files) available (Maximum of 10,000) : 2136
Cover Page Text files (*.CVR files) total count is : 4673

[Administrator]

The check rec/send limits reports you do have a lot of faxes in your default send and receive logs. This can (and will eventually) cause WinFax to fail, cause you to stop receiving faxes and as you can see, give you unpredictable results. One common mistake people do when using WinFax (and this is true for those who receive & send a lot of faxes, or have used the program for many years and have accumulated many faxes in the default logs) is that they allow faxes to be stored in the main default send or receive log folders without ever deleting them, or storing them in another archive folder. There is a limit to the log structure database, and as it grows, WinFax gets slower and slower and eventually fails.

Buried somewhere in the WinFax documentation is this little note which often goes unread :

WinFax PRO and TalkWorks PRO stores log records in the default Messages message store. A message store works like a filing cabinet with drawers that hold different types of files. For easy access, the Messages message store organizes your messages by placing them in one of four default folders:

Send Log Stores sent messages.
Receive Log Stores received messages.
Outbox Stores scheduled, held, and pending messages.
Wastebasket Stores deleted messages until you remove them manually or automatically.
Fax and voice log entries in the Messages message store are uncompressed; the Messages message store is therefore more suitable for short-term message storage or for storing a smaller number of messages.

If you want to keep your messages for long-term use or you receive large numbers of messages, you can set up your own message filing system with custom message stores and subfolders. For example, you might want to organize correspondence by customer and your sales reports by quarter.

The easy solution to this problem is to start deleting old faxes that you no longer require from your send and receive logs. Start deleting faxes from the logs, and then check with WinFax Tools Send/Rec Limits to verify. Anything reported under 60% is acceptable, but it is preferred to get below 50% in free slots, as once you start accumulating more faxes the problems will re-appear in WinFax.

IF you need to keep all your older faxes, then the process gets a little more complicated (and those steps would be in another message)

FIRST I would recommend installing an update available in WinFax Tools under the option “Logs & Phonebooks”. Click “Move/Copy Logs Disk Space Error” .
There is a known problem with Windows XP and WinFax PRO when moving faxes where it will report a message “Not enough disk space…”.
This update installs a Windows XP patch file which corrects an incompatibility with Windows XP and some hard drives when moving faxes from the logs. Installing this patch is a good idea, even if you don’t ever plan to move or copy faxes to other folders.

[ljsteel]

Well,

I’m now fully destressed and eating a extra-large helping of Humble Pie. As you suspected, the issue was related to the rather large amount of faxes in my SEND and RECEIVE folders.

While I had been diligently moving things into organized folders, I was foolishly moving them into sub-folders within the main SEND and RECEIVE folders which does absolutely nothing for clearing up the logs. Looks fabulously neat, and does absolutely nothing functional – it’s like…. corn.

I had already spent 2 days trying to fix something that was escaping me, and ultimately used the remote assistance. I’m so thankful that I did, and grateful to the tech (KUDOS TO YOU, Mr. Moderator!!) that was able to sort out the issue.

Have a great weekend, I know that I’m going to be spending “quality time” with WinFax and my 2 days of backed up faxes. 😆

-lj

[Administrator]

@ljsteel wrote:

While I had been diligently moving things into organized folders, I was foolishly moving them into sub-folders within the main SEND and RECEIVE folders which does absolutely nothing for clearing up the logs. Looks fabulously neat, and does absolutely nothing functional – it’s like…. corn.

In most cases, organizing the folders the way you did is acceptable. Its just when the # of files get so large that WinFax can no longer process the log structure and the system hangs.

Thanks for using our service!

[Author]

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