Others say...

"Good product: poor implementation and support"
A lot of the issues which are being blamed on Symantec are caused by Microsoft. I have seen this occur repeatedly over the years. Synamtec thinks that antivirus will be their money center because it has been that way in the past. Good luck with that fellas when Vista comes out. I'm sure MS is looking at your market share and monthly subscription revenues and thinks that it should be (and will be) theirs.


Here is the most recent problem Microsoft has caused to Winfax Pro which I discovered 12-6-2006.


MICROSOFTS NEW INTERNET EXPLORER AUTOMATIC DOWNLOAD WILL CAUSE YOUR WINFAX PRO 10.0 NOT TO WORK. Here is a brief discussion of the issue and the repair.


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The recent Microsoft upgrade to Internet Explorer 7.0 and the Malicious Software Removal tool KB890830 cause Winfax phonebooks to be inoperable on my Windows XP machine.


The quick fix is to click programs/accesories/system tools and use the restore to an earlier point.



This explains the problem: I've been using Winfax (Now 10.0) on a stand alone machine for years with minimal issues. Last week I did the Microsoft automatic updates without touching or changing any Winfax settings. However, now, when I go to my phonebook and bring up a recipient or add a new one, I can access the recipients last name, first name, Company and Misc records fine, but if I click the mouse anywhere on the lower part of the record, ie, fax number, phone number, cell number: my entire Winfax program disappears and I am staring at my windows boot up screen. I then have to double click the Winfax icon to bring it back up but the same thing will happen. The program is inoperable and unuseable.


I ran all of the maintenance utilities such as rebuild phonebook, optimize phonebook, DB file repair, and restore default settings.


I tried to reinstall Winfax over my old copy as well and when I do that, it appears to go well until I try and complete the install with "liveupdate" whereupon it connects to liveupdate fine, retrieves and loads all available data on the updates onto my computer fine, then , it hangs permantly on the :Disconnecting from the liveupdate server", and I have to Ctrl/alt/delete to bring up task manager and exit the program manually as it shows as "not responding" regardless of how long I wait.


THE FIX: Is to click programs/accesories/system tools and use the restore to an earlier point solution.


THEN DO NOT LET THE NEW IMPROVED INTERNET EXPLORER 7.0 ANYWHERE NEAR YOUR MACHINE! Get the awesome browser Firefox here: [...]


I have notified both Microsoft and Symantec. If you have the same issue I'd suggest you do the same.

"10.03 is the fix for Windows XP"
Many people have written bad reviews about WinFax, however the 10.03 version is the cure for any issues with Windows XP. I was having trouble with my 10.02 version - now that I have purchased the 10.03, everything is fine and the product is awesome!

"What happened?"
I used this product before Symantec bought it. It was called Delrina WinFax Pro. It was a great product.Based on my past experience with the product and the reputation Symantec has had in the utility market, I thought I would try this "new and improved" product. I USED to be a fan of Symantec's products for many years until recently. Save your money and don't bother with trying the fix from the Symantec website. Install the fax accessory from your Windows XP disk. That in conjunction with whatever templates your word processor uses will work just as well and you'll be dollars ahead.

"You can't divorce this product"
I had an earlier version, 9.0. Couldn't use it on XP. Wanted to upgrade to 10.0. Had to remove 9.0. Meanwhile, WinFax wouldn't let me get to my email. It inserted random crashes into Word and Dragon. And above all, wouldn't let me delete the program or its parts (I still have most of them) without going into the registry, and that's another dreadful story. I finally learned that 9.0 won't work with XP, nor will it work with broadband. From its history and my experience, I suggest that only masochists install any version of WinFaxPro.

"Buyer beware"
I am not new to computers. I am used to fixing many kinds of software problems in Windows. This is not an easy product to install on a Windows XP system, especially after it has been upgraded to SP2. If you are expecting to simply install this product, reboot your computer, and start faxing, you will be sorely disappointed. Despite warnings in many other reviews, I purchased v10.03 for use on my Windows XP system with SP2. While I was able to eventually get it installed and running, it slowed my computer's reboot time to a crawl and trashed my scanner software. It took several hours to get most things working again.

First off, you should not try to install anything less than version 10.03 on an XP system. Symantec warns you about this on their web site. If you insist on purchasing WinFax Pro - which I do not recommend - make sure you buy version 10.03.

Secondly, WinFax Pro conflicts with the built-in Windows Fax program in Win XP. You will need to uninstall Windows Fax (which can be done through Control Panel's Add/Remove programs, but you need to look for it in the Add/Remove Windows Components section) to get WinFax Pro to function properly.

Third, after you install WinFax Pro your computer may take forever to reboot. It looks like it is hung up in this process, but if you go do something else for a while it will eventually reboot. I have not figured out why it does this, but it has definitely slowed my computer reboot time to a crawl.

Fourth, if you have a scanner, it may trash your scanner software (it certainly did mine - HP Scanjet 6300C). Symantec's web site has information about this in their knowledge base for WinFax Pro, so it must happen to many others, too. I did not use their fix, though, as I could not find updated twain.dll and twain_32.dll files that they recommend using to replace the ones they screwed up. Instead, I uninstalled and then reinstalled my scanner's installation software. I had to run Symantec's SystemWorks software to find/fix Windows problems and reinstall the scanner drivers a few times before it worked, but eventually I got the scanner working again. WinFax seems to have permanently disabled my scanner's buttons for doing quick operations, though. I have not found a way to restore button function. But I can scan with the Precision Pro software that is part of HP's available software downloads on their web site.

As far as I can tell, after fixing the above-mentioned problems, WinFax Pro 10.03 does seem to work okay. It does not appear to be any improvement over prior versions of WinFax, so unless you have upgraded to Windows XP you will not likely find it worthwhile to upgrade. As many others have stated before me, this is very buggy software that causes many problems with Windows XP and will be horribly frustrating for anyone trying to install and use this software on an XP system. BUYER BEWARE!