The computer of She Who Must Be Obeyed was working fine yesterday and today so I decided to reinstall Carbonite and resume Her backups. No sooner did re-installation complete than Windows XP gave up the ghost with the all-too-familiar Blue Screen of Death (BSOD): BAD_POOL_HEADER …. STOP:0X00000019.
After uninstalling Carbonite –again– in Windows Safe Mode, I resumed my online search with a little better focus: Carbonite was somehow directly involved in the issue. After a couple of variations I finally tried Carbonite BSOD as Google search terms. There, among the search results was a description of our issue complete with THE SOLUTION! It seems some other poor saps had also cloned/migrated their Carbonite-protected hard drive using an Acronis product and had the same BSODs as our computer experienced. Thank goodness those who solved the problem posted the solution to their forum!
The solution (found here) involved these steps:
- Go to Windows Device Manager
- Click "view" and select "show hidden devices"
- Scroll down to "storage volumes"
- Click on the plus to expand.
- Click on each one listed and right click and uninstall. (you will get a message on some saying to reboot before it takes effect. Select no until you do them all.)
- Reboot.
- Wait till windows automatically reinstalls devices. Will prompt to reboot again.
- Reboot.
I knew it had to be some persistent file or process but had no idea what it was or where to find it. Following the prescribed steps I then reinstalled Carbonite and watched breathlessly as the hard drive began accesses similar to those that had led to crashes. No crash! Carbonite completed its updating file scan and began its backup work. Success! What a relief.
Now, I don't know why Carbonite got messed up or whether Windows Indexing Service was implicated. Apparently the same thing has happened to people who have used Retrospect to back up and restore. And what a strange set of circumstances. Sometimes even good software doesn't work or play well together and I guess this is one of those cases. I am, however, feeling much better about things but worry… how much more grief would have been suffered by someone with less knowledge and experience than have I ? I don't want to even think about that one… but the software producers ought to!
PhotonStopper 
Why isn't anything straightforward when it comes to computers? Retorical question.
You may want to try an alternative to carbonite, http://www.myotherdrive.com.
Thanks, Jeff, I'll look into that. There are several other good choices that I'm also investigating and more than a few mashups. I'm seriously looking at HP's Upline and SOS Online Backup. The hard part will be ferreting out the truth about the technical support/customer service experience.