Fax Troubleshooting Guidance

  • Article

The first thing to do if your are having a fax issue is to ensure that your fax device is on a phone line all by itself. If you are still having problems, here are some things that can be to assist in finding the root cause.

 

When troubleshooting fax issues for Windows 2000/SBS2003 there are 3 set of log files to work with for incoming and outgoingfaxes.

 

1)        Activity Logging – can be found within the Fax Service Manager. Right-click on Fax (Local) and select Properties. Select the Activity Logging TAB. From there you’ll see the “Activity Log Folder Location” path. Highlight the path and copy it into the Start\Run\<path>. Within the ActivityLog folder you’ll find Inboxlog.txt and Outboxlog.txt

 

2)       PSS Logging – can be found within the C:\Windows\System32\Logfile\Fax folder. You’ll find two folders with this directory Incoming and Outgoing. If the folders are empty or you can’t find the folder with the appropriate date then the modem isn’t picking you as a fax call. (Most of the times this denotes a problem with Modem drivers or a bad modem. I’ve seen many cases where people are able to send faxes but can’t receive faxes. This is still a problem with the modem is nothing is written to this folder.

 

3)       T.30 logging  - T.30 logging is not enabled by default in Windows Server 2003 and SBS 2003 and must be enabled manually via the registry.  To enable T.30 debug logging of fax transmissions on your PC, please do the following:

 

  1. Using regedit, browse to the following key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Fax\Device Providers\{2172FD8F-11F6-11D3-90BF-006094EB630B}. Create the following DWORDS and set their registry values as follows:

 

            DebugLevelEx to 0xffffffff (8 f’s)

            DebugContextEx to 0xffffffff (8 f’s)

            DebugFormatEx to 0xbbffffff (2 b’s and 6 f’s)

 

2. Stop and restart the Fax Service so these settings will take effect.

 

Debug log – this file is named T30DebugLogFile.txt and can be found at %windir%\temp or at %SystemDrive%\Documents and Settings\NetworkService\Local Settings\Temp

Note: The NetworkService folder is hidden by default therefore you will have to unhide this folder to get to the file.

 

After you are done, please delete (or set to zero) all the values set/created above to stop debug logging. Restart the Fax Service.

 

Thanks,

 

Roderick White