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(More customer reviews)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!
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