Ongoing issue with my iPhone.

Question

So here's the story from the beginning.
Just before Christmas 2008, my phone completely locked up while I was away from home. Couldn't turn it off, couldn't do anything. I didn't freak out too much because I've had multiple issues with it locking up. When I got home that night, I plugged my phone into the computer to try doing a restore on it, hoping that would fix it. Well, joyous occasion, it did. However, just before unplugging it after it telling me it was okay to disconnect, my computer crashed. Black screen. Almost like the computer went into permanent hibernation. The only way to get it to restart was to unplug it for a few seconds, then plug it back in and start it back up. That has to be good for the computer, right?
My computer never has issues unless there's just been a big World of Warcraft patch and the servers are having issues. But then that's not necessarily my computer.
A monthish passed, and I decided that I needed new music on my phone. I was getting rather tired of the same ole. I plug my phone in, and YES! My computer crashes immediately. I spent about two hours on the phone with tech support after that, my computer crashing numerous times during the phone call.
If my computer doesn't crash right away, it will back up my phone, then sync all of my apps (every single time I plug in), then nothing. I've done the while uninstall then reinstall of iTunes, I then checked all of my system stuffs and all that was good. I decided maybe it would be a fabulous idea to do another restore on my phone. So I do this, and not only does it still not sync my music, but it deletes all the music I had on there already. I even went as far as doing a complete system restore on my computer. STILL nothing. I've gotten all kinds of virus protection, scans, updates, everything that I can think of.
At one point, I had my phone just sitting on my desk, not plugged in, accidentally bumped it with my elbow and it fell and bumped the side of my computer case and it crashed. After that I gave up.
Well today I thought I'd give it one more try, so I plugged in after doing some windows updates. AH! A glimmer of hope! My computer doesn't crash! Phone backs up, apps sync, then nothing.
HOW IS MY MUSIC STILL NOT SYNCING?!

Answer 1

BSoD's (blue screens of death) are not necesarily a bad driver issue. you could have a dying hard drive, dying processor, dying motherboard, dying ram, or anything else in your computer might be going wrong. there are a TON of free hardware test programs out there, and i would suggest testing out your computer to see what it might be.
i've never had a firewall issue while syncing my phone.
however (and this is the most important) - if you have not backed up your computer, DO IT NOW! do not turn it on unless you are ready to back it up. if something in your computer is going bad, every time you turn it on and every minute it is already on is leading your computer into the hole of death, and you might lost all of your data.
there are 2 main ways of backing up your computer, using dvds or an external hard drive. my preference is for the hard drive, however, like any other hard drive, these can go bad with little/no warning. however, they are a lot better then dvd's as you can only burn 4.7gb to a dvd, and using dvd's can split folders into multiple pieces and then you have a management nightmare, not to mention 100 dvds if you have a 500gb hard drive.