Windows 7 - Carbonite

Asked By Julie Bove on 30-Jul-12 04:52 AM
Does anyone here have it?  I have had it for probably three or four years
now.  No problems at first.  But then I noticed that sometimes when I had to
reboot, it would need to be reinstalled.  I do have to reboot frequently due
to a game that I play on Facebook.  It locks up my computer if I play it for
too long.  Yeah, I know I should stop using it.  But...

More recently I have been having trouble with the reinstall.  Sometimes I
get a message telling me that there is an error but most of the time I do
not.  Most of the time I have to reboot in the middle of the night.  I am a
night owl.  It almost seems like you simply can not get the download during
the night.  But once in a while it will work.

What is frustrating me is that sometimes I have to spend a good 2 hours just
trying to reinstall it.  Makes me dread having to reboot.

It does say on their website that AV can mess this up.  Actually once I went
to their live chat and the person there took Malwarebytes off of my computer
as he said it was causing the problem.  I watched in horror as he did this
and soon after I got a virus that would have been caught by that.  It
apparently disabled my Norton which is why I did not notice it.  Had to take
the computer in to the shop to get that taken care of.

On the website it shows screen shots of Malwarebytes and my version of
Norton and tells you what to do so that Carbonite can access your computer.
But...  The screen shots in no way resemble what *my* screens look like in
those AVs.  So I am super frustrated.

This always seems to happen when no one is there to ask.  But I am also kind
of afraid to ask them for help after they took off my Malwarebytes.  They
should not have done that.  Grrr...


Paul replied to Julie Bove on 30-Jul-12 05:52 AM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonite_(online_backup)

on the user?s computer that operates continuously in the background.

This client software automatically seeks out new and changed files
on the user?s computer and backs them up using incremental backup.
Each file is compressed and encrypted before it is sent to
remote servers at the company's data centers via the Internet.
Data is transmitted to the servers using a secure SSL link.

The program is designed to automatically back up user-generated content
including text documents, spreadsheets, financial documents, photos, music,
etc. Specifically, on a Windows PC, Carbonite backs up everything in the
Documents and Settings folder, including the desktop, favorites, and all
other files except for temporary, log and video files.

Any file or folder can be added to the default backup if it is on a local
(internal) drive formatted with the FAT32 or NTFS file systems. The backup
software integrates with Windows Explorer, adding green dots to the file icons
of any backed up file. Adding or removing files from the backup is done using
the right mouse button and the Windows context menus.

So right there, that tells you the software is pretty invasive.

What you would  want to do, is ask Carbonite tech support, what they recommend
for AV software. Then see, whether the recommended protection methods,
are horrible or not. (If they recommend an AV which is not good at
detecting problems, you would not want to switch to it.)

I do not know the AV products by heart, but if I had to guess, the payware
version of Malwarebytes probably does a lot of its detection via heuristic
behavior. That means, it watches software, and what that software attempts
to interfere with. It could be watching the Carbonite, and conclude it is
up to no good. And that is why you have a problem. Maybe it quarantines all
the carbonite install files, which is why you have to reinstall it ? Check
the quarantine screens on your AV software, and see what it is catching.
Maybe the missing files are in a quarantine folder. Something similar could
be happening with your Facebook game - AV product took a dislike to the
game, and froze the computer.

All AVs will have some heuristic detection capability (or otherwise, they'd
be "tipped over" too easily). Some are better than others. And some, will
have a "hair trigger". I know in the past, I have had trouble with this,
with dialog boxes galore that did not belong on screen. But an AV product
is not going to get a good reputation for being thorough, if it does not
question everything it sees. This is in the "necessary evil" category.

I was tempted to answer this question, by suggesting you boot with a second
OS, and do the backup from there. But once I read the description of
Carbonite on Wikipedia, I see that such a suggestion would be inappropriate.
Carbonite is designed to back up live content, and trying to achieve the
backups from a second boot OS, would not take advantage of the Carbonite
approach.

*******

If you switch to a local backup method, the disadvantage is no disaster
recovery (if your house burns down, the backup drive could be burned with it).
There are many products, which base backups on VSS, so that when you need to
back up the C: drive, there is no need to reboot (it is no longer like using
on my Windows 7 laptop, that can be made while I am still working. And that
ends up stored on an external USB drive. So the only limitation with a lot
of other backup approaches, is how to handle the USB external drive, in a
way that is disaster proof. And I guess your adherence to Carbonite, is the answer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macrium_Reflect

Macrium, or a similar tool, is less likely to trigger an AV response.
In that, the VSS service does the dirty work, and the VSS service is "trusted".

Paul
Julie Bove replied to Paul on 30-Jul-12 05:57 AM
Thanks!  I just do not understand why I never used to have a problem and now
all of a sudden that is all I have.  But I will look into the AV's/
Julie Bove replied to Julie Bove on 07-Aug-12 09:36 PM
Well I still do not know what the problem was.  Carbonite told me that I had
a problem with my Windows and that I needed to take it to a shop, which I
did.  There was one bad component on the mother board which has since been
replaced.  And apparently it had three viruses.  I have three different AVs
so I have no clue how that happened.  But it has all been fixed now and...
Carbonite still would not install!

I had to contact them again and they somehow forced it back onto my
computer.  I just hope that it stays on there the next time that I have to
reboot.
Paul replied to Julie Bove on 07-Aug-12 10:42 PM
Did you get the names of the three viruses ?

I'd do a Google on them, and see what characteristics they might have in common.
Maybe they even have a "taste" for Carbonite. Yum.

*******

On the one hand, the AV may use heuristics to detect an application
as being a problem. As a result, good AV products will seem "intrusive",
stopping you from doing legit things. I used to have that problem
with my Kaspersky subscription. It seemed about every thirty seconds,
I was dismissing a warning dialog box.

And on the other hand, software which fiddles around at driver level,
can actually make the OS less secure. Which means, there is a remote
possibility, that a Carbonite computer has one extra security hole,
that a non-Carbonite computer might not have.

That's the beauty of open-ended ecosystems, where there are an infinite
number of combinations of "stuff". You never know, when you have constructed
a corner case, that nobody else has ever seen before.

The world was a much simpler and nicer place, before malware came along...

Paul
Julie Bove replied to Paul on 08-Aug-12 12:12 AM
No.  They did not give me the names and I did not ask.
Hmmm...  Could be.

Ahhhhh.  Hmmm...


That's so true.