Fax Service not responding on Windows Server 2003

[Anthony Williams]

Howdy,

We're experiencing troubles with the Fax Service on Windows 2003 Enterprise
edition. We've set up a shared Fax printer on the server with a SoftK56
modem in it (it's on the HCL) and everything seems to work well - initially.

Every so often, a fax will fail to send - looking in the event viewer shows
an error "The attempt to send the fax failed. There was no answer. This fax
will not be sent..." along with the job id and the username of the person
who sent it.

After a while - and this usually happens after a failed outbound fax
attempt - the fax service will stop sending faxes, and opening the fax
console on the server or the local machine seems to have no result. When
going to the Outbox in the fax console, the toolbar shows "Refreshing..."
and stays there until it finally bombs out with the error "A connection to
the fax server cannot be made."

I've tried restarting the Fax service and all dependent services, but the
Fax Service (fxssvc.exe) seems to hang on starting.

Any ideas? The only way to get faxing to resume is - at the moment -
restarting the machine, and as this is sitting on an Exchange 2003 server,
that's not really the best way to go about things.

Please help!

Regards,
Anthony

 

[Raghavendra R [MSFT]]

What do you exactly mean when you say 'fax service will stop sending
faxes...'? Please give more details here as to what you exactly do & what
you observe.

Give us the full event log details - what are the error & warning events
fired by Fax before it gets into a state like this.
Please tell us how big is your environment to get an idea of the load fax
server is taking up. How many clients are actively connected to Fax Server &
what's the average number of faxes sent, for example, per hour or per day?

--
Raghavendra R
Microsoft Printing, Imaging and Fax Team
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Please do not send email directly to this alias. This alias is for newsgroup
purposes only.'

 

[Anthony Williams]

Hi Raghavendra,

What do you exactly mean when you say 'fax service will stop sending
faxes...'? Please give more details here as to what you exactly do & what
you observe.

Generally, the fax service works very well and is robust - it's just that
whenever a fax is submitted to the server which cannot be sent (for whatever
reason), the fax server stops processing further outbound faxes until the
server is reset.

It still accepts faxes, it just doesn't send them. Also once this happens,
when you open the Fax Console - either from the server, or from a client
machine - all queues show a status of "Refreshing" down on the status bar,
until after a couple of minutes, an error dialog pops up saying "A
connection to the fax server cannot be made."

Give us the full event log details - what are the error & warning events
fired by Fax before it gets into a state like this.

As it appears that the fax service only goes into this state after it cannot
successfully send a fax, the last event log entry before this state is
usually this:

Event ID: 32090

The fax was not submitted successfully.

The following error occurred: 1726.
This error code indicates the cause of the error.

Sender Machine Name: \\10.42.0.108.
Sender User Name: d.smith.
Sender Name: David Smith.
Number of Recipients: 1.

Please tell us how big is your environment to get an idea of the load fax
server is taking up. How many clients are actively connected to Fax Server
& what's the average number of faxes sent, for example, per hour or per
day?

The setup is fairly small - the fax server is sharing a computer with
Exchange Server 2003. The computer has 1GB of Ram, is running on a Pentium 4
with hyperthreading enabled (2 logical processors)

Network load is fairly small - 10 clients using Exchange, 3 - maybe 4 -
clients using the shared fax. On a busy day, about 15 faxes will be sent in
total, so I don't think we're overloading the service.

Any ideas?

Cheers,
Anthony

 

[Raghavendra R [MSFT]]

Thanks for the information Anthony, now I got a good understanding of the
environment. The event log you mentioned below, 32090, is after the service
entered into that state. The fax that corresponds to this wouldn't have
reached the server - so I don't think service is even accepting the
requests. This event indicates an attempt to establish (RPC) connection to
the service has failed.

In your previous post you mentioned about another event log entry, something
like 'An attempt to send the fax failed. There was no answer ...' - that is
more relevant event to the problem. Can you give that event's ID?

I need another important information from you. When the service goes in to
this state, what is the state of fax service - is it running? You can run
'sc query fax' on the command-line to see this or you can go to 'Service
Control Manager'.

Please turn on maximum event logging & try to repro the scenario - this way
we'll get more events from the Fax Server & hence more information for us to
solve the issue. You can increase event logging level through Fax Service
Manager. This is reached through Start > Programs > Accessories >
Communications > Fax > Fax Service Manager or by just typing fxsadmin.msc on
the command-line. In Fax Service Manager, go to Local Fax Properties dialog,
Event Reports tab & set to High for all categories.

Then give us all the event log entries.

PS: I am going on vacation until next Monday. Please expect delays in my
reply.

--
Raghavendra R
Microsoft Printing, Imaging and Fax Team
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Please do not send email directly to this alias. This alias is for newsgroup
purposes only.'

 

[Anthony Williams]

Hi Raghavendra,

Heh, that makes two of us going on holiday! I've just got back from a week
away from my usual place of work (working) and I'm now off on holiday for a
week.

On my return - next Wednesday - I'll get you all the information you've
requested.

Regards,
Anthony

 

[Raghavendra R [MSFT]]

Hi Anthony,
I am still waiting ...

--
Raghavendra R
Microsoft Printing, Imaging and Fax Team
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Please do not send email directly to this alias. This alias is for newsgroup
purposes only.'