This page provides information to help you understand 
How you can install the NetCFax client across 
every PC on your network quickly and easily

Quite naturally, one of the first things you want to do after successfully installing the NetCFax Server is to install one or more fax clients on your networked PC's so you can really see what it can do.  If you wish, you can even install a client on the same machine that you have the fax server installed on.

We have tried pretty hard to make this about as simple as possible for you...

First of all, just go to the "Fax Clients" menu and either have a quick look at the "How do I....." information option, or if you just want to get on, continue reading here.... 

The third option is pretty obvious, and will immediately start the fax client install program for you to let you install it on the same machine as the fax server.  IMPORTANT - You should only do this if you are not working on a Windows Server 2000 or 2003, as you cannot run both the server and clients at the same time in this particular environment.  You can of course do so in all other Windows environments such as W98, Win ME, W2000 Pro and Windows XP with or without Fast Task Switching enabled.

The second option shown on this same menu is the one to copy the Fax Client install file(s) to your networked PC's. We strongly recommend that you use this option as it also installs a small configuration file in the same folder as the actual fax client installation program which allows the newly installed fax client to connect to the NetCFax server without your needing to remember any login names or passwords or IP addresses.

When you select this option, a standard Window's File/Path selection dialog will be displayed to let you navigate across your network to the client machine on which you want to install the NetCFax client. Once you select a suitable destination folder on that machine, NetCFax will copy the files to that machine for you totally automatically.  We strongly advise that you NEVER try to place these on the desktop of the remote machine, as the client install program will NOT WORK correctly from the desktop.

Then, all you need to do is to go to that machine, open Windows Explorer, and find the folder you specified (that contains the fax client install program [FAXCLIENT.EXE]), and then simply double click it, which will run the installation program and install the fax client on that machine.

If you prefer, you can also chose to put these files in a public accessible folder on a network server,  and then run them from there on each client PC to install the fax clients.

The client install only asks a very few simple questions, and once completed and the client is started, it will display the NetCFax client login window with the IP address of the NetCFax server, and even the login name and password will be prefilled for you.  This always uses the initial administrator's login details on this one occasion only, thereby ensuring that when you login to the NetCFax server, you will also have full administrator rights.  ALL SUBSEQUENT LOGINS will require that the user enters their own login name and password, so please don't forget to let them know what these are.

If you are installing the fax client on an XP Pro machine that has Fast Task Switching enabled, or a Windows Server 2003 system that is going to provide access to the fax client via Remote Desktop Sessions, please ensure that you read the prompts carefully so that the client is installed with the correct settings to support these environments correctly.
                  

To make this task as simple as possible for you, the Fax Server automatically creates and even regularly updates a special configuration file named CLIENTSETTINGS.TXT that you can find in the \CLIENTS sub folder of the Fax Servers installation tree, which is also where the fax client install program NCFAXCLIENT.EXE can be found.

This CLIENTSETTINGS.TXT file is a very important file when it comes to installing the NetCFax client on other machines. 

This file contains a lot of information about the fax server, such as it's current IP address, the TCP and UDP communications ports it is using, and various other details.  If you wish, it can also allow you to "preconfigure" the fax clients that are installed using this file in quite a large number of ways.

Therefore, if you decide to copy the fax client installation program (NCFAXCLIENT.EXE) to other machines manually, or even to a centralized file server, IT REALLY IS MOST IMPORTANT THAT YOU ALSO ENSURE THAT YOU COPY THE CONFIGURATION FILE (CLIENTSETTINGS.TXT) TO THE SAME FOLDER.

If you do this, the fax client will normally install and start up with virtually no input required from you at all.

If you want to know more about the settings you can change to pre configure your fax clients at the point of installation, please open CLIENTSETTINGS.TXT in an ASCII text editor and you will see that all of the available configuration options in the file are fully documented.

The only significant questions the fax client install program asks you concerns Domain controllers and Remote Desktop Session environments, such as under Windows 2000/2003 servers.  Please read these dialogs carefully and answer the questions accurately, a failure to do so could for example result in the fax client not working correctly when started and run on the server machine under an RDP session. IMPORTANT - You cannot run both the fax server and fax clients at the same time on Windows 2000/2003 servers.  You can of course do so in all other Windows environments such as W98, Win ME, W2000 Pro and Windows XP with or without Fast Task Switching enabled.

If you are installing the client in these types of environments, we recommend that you say YES to both the domain controller and RDP sessions questions.  Doing so will not effect the client being run "normally" on the local machine, except that the "Remember me" option to prefill the login name and password on the login window has to be disabled in that environment.

POSSIBLE WINDOWS XP ISSUE

If the XP Pro system you are installing the fax client on supports Fast Task Switching and/or RDP sessions, it is essential that you check the option in the install program to let it know it will be being used in an RDP environment, as this switches the client into "multi instance" mode.

However, if you did not do this during the install, we have provided a backup option on the File menu of the fax client labeled "Set fax client's operating mode".  If when you look a the fax client's main window, the caption bar contains "[LOCAL MACHINE SYSTEM]" and you want to use it via one or more RDP sessions, you need to use this to switch the operating mode, and then the main caption will say "[REMOTE DESKTOP SESSION]".

If the fax client is running in [LOCAL MACHINE SYSTEM] mode in any RDP session, and you then login under another RDP session, the fax client will not allow you to run a second instance in that new RDP session, or indeed on that XP machine, but if it is set to [REMOTE DESKTOP SESSION] then you can run as many instances as you like, but XP itself only allows one client instance to be run in each individual RDP session.

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