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I’ll put in my vote for CrashPlan. The free version can backup to a local Hard Drive (USB or otherwise) and can also backup to a Friend over the internet for free.

They have paid plans that are reasonable, I use the unlimited one for $60.00 a year. That comes out to $5 a month for unlimited cloud backup and local too, which is what I recommend. If you want to be protected from all possible dangers, CrashPlan covers you pretty good.
Fire, Theft, Natural Disaster, Mechanical Failure, Electrical surge damage or user error.

3-2-1 Backup is the best approach. 3 copies, 2 different media and 1 off-site.

One of the only things it doesn’t cover is an Image Backup of your Operating System. There are a variety of programs that can do that, some free.
Windows 7 and probably 8 offer that for free.

I have had some success with Outlook Recovery Toolbox (http://www.oemailrecovery.com/outlook-recovery.html). Just recently I used it to recover e-mail from a damaged Outlook 2000 file that was too large.

Sometimes you can do an Import from it, even if you can’t open it directly in Outlook.

John

It’s possible you have a driver problem.

For example, I had a Dell laptop that would crash when starting up at one guys apartment. I would bring it home and it worked fine. I was getting very frustrated. I took it outside into the apartment parking lot and it worked fine. I took it back into his apartment and it would crash every time.

Then I completely wiped the hard drive and re-installed Windows XP and all drivers and software. It worked fine at my house. Then I took it to the apartment and it would always blue screen crash during startup.

Eventually I discovered that there was a driver update for the Intel Wireless card that was known to cause this exact same problem with “some” WiFi Routers.

Check for Driver updates to your WiFi adapter and then I think you should try a different WiFi Router. Many places will allow you to return it after a few days, so you won’t be out the money for long.

John