Question about Carbonite and Windows 7

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I have just had Windows 7 installed on a new solid state drive but am keeping my documents on the old C: drive. I had used Carbonite with no problems in Windows XP (I skipped over the Vista upgrade so don’t know how it worked there). I have reinstalled Carbonite several times and it works fine until I shout down the computer and reboot. Then it does not start automatically and when I start it and try to open the Status window, I get a 404 error (the web page cannot be found). Carbonite walked me through a series of changes to security settings that I thought had solved the problem and required another reinstall. But the problem is back now and the only way I can make the program work is to reinstall it every time I turn the computer on. Obviously this is not a satisfactory solution. Has anyone else had this problem and found a solution? I’m using the Windows Firewall and Norton AV.

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I would completely uninstall Norton (with the removal tool available at the Symantec website) and see if that was a permanent fix or not. That’s just me though, I find that about 65% of all problems are fixed by completely uninstalling either Norton or McAfee

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I don’t know if this helps, but I purchased a Carbonite subscription on 6/9. About 15% was backed up through 6/12. From 6/13 until I uninstalled it on 6/20 for a refund, nothing got backed up. Customer service told me that their backup server was down. For over a week? I’ll not try it again.

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I used Carbonite as a backup source. I found out backups were not running. The program was hung on a single, a file that was not in use. Finding the offending file was difficult. I had to remove the file to get the backups to continue.

Carbonite has problems, several of them. I will not trust my backups to a service that fails and cannot bypass files that cannot be backed. A backup service that cannot be trusted is worse than no backup service at all.

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Raymond, what other problems have you noted with Carbonite? I am a subscriber, but do not rely on it totally for backup. I would appreciate your sharing other concerns that you have. Many thanks

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I have just had Windows 7 installed on a new solid state drive but am keeping my documents on the old C: drive. I had used Carbonite with no problems in Windows XP (I skipped over the Vista upgrade so don’t know how it worked there). I have reinstalled Carbonite several times and it works fine until I shout down the computer and reboot. Then it does not start automatically and when I start it and try to open the Status window, I get a 404 error (the web page cannot be found). Carbonite walked me through a series of changes to security settings that I thought had solved the problem and required another reinstall. But the problem is back now and the only way I can make the program work is to reinstall it every time I turn the computer on. Obviously this is not a satisfactory solution. Has anyone else had this problem and found a solution? I’m using the Windows Firewall and Norton AV.

I have Windows 7 (64 bit) and use Vipre for my antivirus/firewall, etc. I have had no problems with Carbonite and have quite a bit backed up there. I also have Carbonite running on a Vista (32 bit) laptop with no problems. Prior to purchasing the Windows 7 machine, I had it installed on an XP machine, again with no problems. I would suggest that your firewall or your antivirus is causing the problem. Have you tried turning those off to see what happens?

Best wishes,
GiGi

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I’m still using XP, but am dismayed to hear about problems with Carbonite, which I use for data backups online, in addition to my local disk backups.

How did you know it was not backing up certain files or that it hung on a file that was not in use?

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The Carbonite tech support people have suggested all kinds of things — turn off firewall, turn off Norton, among them — and even took over the computer for a couple of hours trying to find the problem. Nothing they tried worked, and a couple of weeks ago they said the problem would be referred to the next level. I have not heard anything back since, and the program still has the same problems. As I said in the original post, having to reinstall every time I want to use it is not a satisfactory solution. I haven’t tried to recover any files, but my faith that I could has been shattered, despite the high praise of the program from several computer-related radio show hosts.

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I am using Carbonite on my 64-bit Windows 7 PC and in my second year use of the service. I started out using Carbonite when I was still using 32-bit Vista.
I was an early adopter of Carbonite and have had good success with it. I have checked to see if files were truly backing up and have had no indication that they were not working. I had one occasion where backup seemed to stall on one particular file. I contacted Carbonite via email support and they replied withing 24 hrs. Their suggestion was to re-install Carbonite. I did and backup returned to normal and I have had no further problems. I have only done backups but no recoveries. I have had no need for recoveries at this time. I’ve thought about trying some recovery tests just to see how it works but haven’t got around it.

Let me make a few points on my philosophy of backing up. I have learned and firmly believe that a single approach for backing up is REDUNDANCY! I not only preach this but practice it religiously. If you rely on only one type of backup using more than one storage medium, you are asking for trouble. I backup up using both file/folder and image backup using Windows 7 backup and to different external hard drives. I also use imaging using Acronis which I recommend (they are not the only ones with good image backup, so use one you know and trust). I’ve heard sob stories from not only folks who don’t backup but from those who have only used one storage media and one type of backup. As I mentioned above, I use Carbonite too. Call me overly cautious, but I’ve never been burned because of redundancy. Believe me when I say I appreciate backups and have used them to restore files and my PC more than once!

Before I get off my pedestal, let me try to dispel the idea that Norton AV or other of their products are the source of every PC problem known to man. One hears this all the time for whatever one’s ills may be. I’ve used Norton security products for 15 years and have had very little problem with them. I use Norton Internet Security 2010 right now and have had no problems in use of it alongside Carbonite backup. I’ve only have only had a few minor incidents in using Norton products over 15 years! I suspect that problems arising that are blamed on Norton security products are truly the result of Windows (first choice) or other software problems interacting with Windows. My suggestion is to make sure that nothing else is causing you problems. If you believe it’s Norton, un-install it, but re-install it after your problem goes away. If that doesn’t work, the next thing is to re-install your operating system!! I hear the screams now!! It is painful, but in my experience always successfully gets you back on track. If you bite the bullet do an upgrade re-install first. In this way you don’t have to deal with all your personal data or having to re-install all your programs. Sure, you will have to play catch-up on all the Windows updates, but this is only a minor hardship (it took me less than a day to do that the last time I did it). If the upgrade re-install doesn’t fix the problem, then go the whole way and do a full re-install. I’ve done that too, but was happy after I suffered through that experience.

I now step off my soapbox. In any case, good luck with any approach that gets you back on your feet whether it is with the Carbonite problem or something else!!!!

Don P

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I used to use Carbonite and was happy with their service until my pc died and I needed to restore my files. Their restore file UI is very primitive and tedious. I could have had Carbonite restore my files automatically but with no control over the order the files would be restored. The problem with that approach was it would take 3 months! (I had over 90GB backed up) Then I discovered that before my PC died it corrupted lots of files. Since Carbonite only keeps the latest version of files the backed up files would also be corrupt. At that point I gave up and now backing up to a local external drive.

I reported my issues to Carbonite several times but I did not get any response.

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Thank you for sharing your experiences. Have other Carbonite users had similar problems?

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I gave up on Carbonite about a year ago. I used to recommend it to customers. About 20 per cent of the time users experienced the same problem you have. After installation and restarting the PC Carbonite would not run. I now recommend idrive. And the advantage of idrive is that it will back up mapped drives.

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Thank you- that is certainly worrying- I will look into idrive as an alternative.

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I bought a HP 1TB Simple Save external HDD the other day, and had it automatically backing up my files within hours of receiving it. At the same time, I bought a WD 1TB external on which, through Windows 7’s imaging, I have saved a copy of my C: drive. No ongoing costs. I await your thoughts on what might be wrong with this simple strategy for backing up.

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Bonner: Burglary, fire, electrical damage, not-so-gruntled employees, to name four classic reasons to use offsite storage.

That said, I never trust a single copy of nuthin’. When it comes to backups, think belt-and-suspenders. Carbonite and other similar services aren’t perfect, but they is an easy extra layer of protection that don’t require a lot of time to manage.

One thing to check on is how many generations of backup they keep. For a workstation, a single copy is usually sufficient. For a server, SOS Online Backup offers about the best multi-generation, fully encrypted backups, but it’s expensive and you have to work around your tape backup system to avoid conflicts.

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Bobdog, I couldn’t agree more. I use Carbonite, plus nightly full images on to a fire-resistant flood-resistant IoSafe hard drive. Not much more I can do!

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Carbonite sent me a message a week or so ago that it had issued a new version of its software. I downloaded it, and it works fine on my Windows 7 now. I have a feeling the problems were with Carbonite not my computer, but in either case, things are now fine. Thought I should post this in fairness to Carbonite and anyone else who wants to try it or is having problems.

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I have been using Carbonite for two years, first on a new Vista laptop, now everything (all win7) I have had 0 problems.

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I have been using Carbonite for over a year, and I love the idea of having a convenient off-sight backup.

However, about a month ago, I noticed that the Carbonite UI stopped working..

I un-installed and planned to re-install the software to fix the problem. Unfortunately the software would not re-install.

I could not fix it doing my own troubleshooting and research on the web.

I chatted with their customer support. Although I spent an hour with them, and let them take control of my computer, he could not fix the problem.

After more troubleshooting I finally figured out that Carbonite was not working well with Internet Explorer 9. I reverted back to Internet Explorer 8 and the problem was fixed!

The guy I talked to in customer report seemed very in-experienced. For instance, we wasted a lot of time installing Java on my computer even though Carbonite does not use Java. I think he looked at the log and saw a bunch of JavaScript errors and confused Java with JavaScript.

Their troubleshooting guide at their website does not mention problems with Internet Explorer 9. If it did, it would have saved me a lot of time.

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