Pcs fax modem answers all calls

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tony Cross
  • Start date Start date
T

Tony Cross

Windows Xp and Word both show NO FAX installed and yet
when the phone rings the PC is trying to receive a fax. I
can find nop trace of any fax facility havingbeen
installed. It is not shown on the Control Panel, in
Device Manager or anywhere else. the only way I can
sol;ve this problem is to unplug the phone line! this
means I cannot use the PC to dial out calls. I have a
seperate fax machi9ne and do not want my PC to have a fax
sending or receiving facility.
This problem occurs when the PC is on and no other
programs are runing!
 
Tony Cross said:
Windows Xp and Word both show NO FAX installed and yet
when the phone rings the PC is trying to receive a fax. I
can find nop trace of any fax facility havingbeen
installed. It is not shown on the Control Panel, in
Device Manager or anywhere else. the only way I can
sol;ve this problem is to unplug the phone line! this
means I cannot use the PC to dial out calls. I have a
seperate fax machi9ne and do not want my PC to have a fax
sending or receiving facility.
This problem occurs when the PC is on and no other
programs are runing!
Click to expand...

The fax program does not answer the telephone. Some program has
instructed the modem to go offhook after a certain number of rings.
This is a mechanical phenomenon. Use HyperTerminal to send the
following command to the modem:
"ATS0=0" without the quotes. Those are zeroes in the command
string. This should turn off auto-answer.
 
Are you sure that it is answering in Fax (rather than Data) mode? Have
you got any data communications/remote control software loaded? Is
your computer set up to allow dial-in logins?

Make sure also that the modem is not set up to wake up the computer,
either in BIOS or in its XP properties.

If the answer to all these questions is no, the modem may have been
set up in its NVRAM to default to auto-answer. Post again, with
hardware details of the modem, and I will try to ake you though
deprogramming it.
 
The problem is that if the default has been set to auto-answer in the
modem's NVRAM, your solution will only work until the system is
rebooted, when he will have to do it again. If that is the problem,
the NVRAM setting has to be changed, the method of doing which is
somewhat hardware dependent.
 
Peter R. Fletcher said:
The problem is that if the default has been set to auto-answer in the
modem's NVRAM, your solution will only work until the system is
rebooted, when he will have to do it again. If that is the problem,
the NVRAM setting has to be changed, the method of doing which is
somewhat hardware dependent.
Click to expand...
That is how you set auto-answer by writing to the S-Register. The
modem S-Register settings are independent of the computer booting
process. The settings will stay the same until they are changed.
Re-read your modem manual.
 
No, you reread yours, or at least one describing a recent midrange
modem, with particular reference to the ATZn, AT&Fn, AT&Wn, AT&Yn, and
AT&Zn commands.

S-registers are generally reset to their default values on a power
cycle or a hardware reboot. If the defaults are loaded from a stored
profile that has been modified to include a non-zero value for S0, S0
will be non-zero when you power up or restart, whatever you had set it
to before. S-Registers had to be volatile in early modems, where their
settings were held in on-board RAM and reloaded from ROM at power up,
but the behaviour has been retained, presumably for consistency, in
more modern ones which do have NVRAM and could theoretically save the
register settings if they wanted to.
 
Peter R. Fletcher said:
No, you reread yours, or at least one describing a recent midrange
modem, with particular reference to the ATZn, AT&Fn, AT&Wn, AT&Yn, and
AT&Zn commands.

S-registers are generally reset to their default values on a power
cycle or a hardware reboot. If the defaults are loaded from a stored
profile that has been modified to include a non-zero value for S0, S0
will be non-zero when you power up or restart, whatever you had set it
to before. S-Registers had to be volatile in early modems, where their
settings were held in on-board RAM and reloaded from ROM at power up,
but the behaviour has been retained, presumably for consistency, in
more modern ones which do have NVRAM and could theoretically save the
register settings if they wanted to.
Click to expand...

Do you really think the original poster has setup stored profiles
when he does not even know how to turn off auto-answer? You are
unnecessarily complicating a simple operation.
 
Do you really think the original poster has setup stored profiles
when he does not even know how to turn off auto-answer? You are
unnecessarily complicating a simple operation.
Click to expand...

The problem that the OP presented was that his modem was _defaulting_
to answering the phone. Your "simple operation" would not have solved
that problem through a power cycle or hard reboot (I notice that you
don't now challenge this, BTW). I don't suppose for a moment he
deliberately set up stored profiles, and it would be very difficult to
do this accidentally, but I also don't know that the modem (or indeed
the entire system) wasn't handed on to him by someone else who might
have done so.

My original response to him ran through a few other, perhaps more
likely, possible causes for the problem and then suggested he post
back with more information if the problem persisted. My original
response to you was an attempt to avoid the propagation of
misinformation.
 
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