Billy Fire LLC

Up until now, backing up my PC has been a very onerous task. I had to use multiple DVDs, without any real confidence that I would be able to restore files should disaster ever strike. And apparently disk drive failure and data loss are very frequent occurrences.

I recently heard about Carbonite on the radio. Carbonite is a new backup service that runs a small backup application on your PC. It gradually backups up all the files that you need backing up and once this is complete it continues to backup files as they change. This ensures that you always have an up-to-date backup (or at least close to up to date). The best part is: this all takes place in the background without any effort from the user.

Two things hat really caught my eye about this service are:

1. Carbonite claim you get unlimited backup
2. At the time of writing this post, one year of services costs $49.95 and 2 years cost $89.95

Use this link to download a free 15-day trial subscription to Carbonite, and get an extra free month of service when you buy: http://www.carbonite.com/raf/signup.aspx?RAFUserUID=148521&a=0

I never realized how much I used Windows Explorer until yesterday.

For some, yet to be discovered, reason every time I opened Windows Explorer (or the Control Panel) for that matter I got a “Windows Explorer has encountered a problem” error. This was followed by a “DrWatson Postmortem Debugger has encountered a problem” error. After this my computer completely hanged and all I could do was switch it off, check disk etc.

I found that I could still use Windows Explorer by just ignoring the error window, but it seemed sluggish and I was just putting off the inevitable computer hang. Having said that, DrWatson only seemed to rear his ugly head on a random basis, so sometimes the screen would just refresh itself and I could carry on as normal.

Of course I searched the Internet for possible solutions - and it seemed that every man and his Windows XP using dog were having similar problems. To make matters worse every problem posted in a forum was followed by multiple possible solutions.

I was beginning to start pulling out my already thinning hair when I found a truly excellent Web site:

http://www.helpwithwindows.com/techfiles/explorer-crashes.html

The site suggests that a lot of problems are caused because of ’shell extensions’. It suggested downloading some (also excellent) software called ShelExView which shows you all the shell extensions running on your computer. By disabling all the shell extensions and then opening Windows Explorer and then re-enabling each extension, one at a time, I was able to find, firstly whether a shell extension was causing my problems (it was) and secondly which specific shell extension was causing me my problems (WMN Toolbar from Visicom Media).

I uninstalled the toolbar and now everything appears to be fine. Pheww….