Problem with Samsung Kies to back up phone data.

ProudDUB

I have an issue with the battery life of my Samsung Galaxy smart phone, so I am leaving it in for a repair next week. I was worried about losing all the content on it, so the folks in the O2 store told me to download the Samsung Kies program to my lap top, so that I can back up all the contacts & pix on the phone to my lap top, while my phone is in being repaired.

The Kies program downloaded no problem. But when I plugged the phone into the laptop to import all the stuff from my phone, it would stop importing after about 30 seconds, and my internet connection would disappear.

Then when I shut down the Kies program, and was just doing regular internetting, I couldn't get on line at all. My browsers (I have both Internet Explorer and Firefox) wouldn't open up any webpages, even though my control panel told me that I did have an internet connection. The internet in the house was fine at the time, as both of the other devices in the house were able to get online at the time. So I uninstalled the Samsung Kies program off the laptop, and the internet is now working fine again. WTF?

Does any one have any experience of this, or know what the heck is going on? Why would my downloading and/or using the Kies application interfere with my browsers not opening up web pages? (I was not trying to access the net as I was trying to use the Kies program btw)

Is there any other way to get the stuff on my phone onto my lap top, without having to use that Samsung Kies program? Ta.

PS. The lap top is a 3 1/2 year old Toshiba. I am very vigilant about downloading updates to it, so I doubt if its age can be the problem. I have never had a problem downloading programs to it before.

BopNiblets

Google backs up most stuff to the cloud, never mind Kies.
Contacts, Gmail, Calendar, Picasaweb for photos (just make sure its turned on), nothing they should do to the phone should wipe your SD card anyway, take out the card first even.
For texts, get SMS Backup+