troubleshooting a program crash

I have norton ghost 12 that crashes when starting a backup. The crash is so severe it takes winxp with it. The only way to get out is by using the power button. The program starts and runs fine up to that point. I haven't seen others having this problem. It does it when using usb or firewire external drives or to another partition on the hard drive. So I don't think it's a hardware issue. All other programs are turned off and a virus scan shows nothing. Version 10 of ghost works fine with no problems. I've been on the phone with norton tech support for 2 hours with no results. Is there a diagnostic program that can record what happens prior and up to the crash and then give an analysis? Is there a way to analyze this crash in a virtual environment so xp keeps running? Is there software that can diagnose outside of windows? I tried other companies' backup software but their boot disks use linux that doesn't see my firewire drive. Thanks.

Can look in Event Viewer....

What are you backing up? I would try backing up folder by folder (one at a time) and seeing which folder causes the crash. I've seen backup programs crash because of illegal file names and such. Try by backing up one folder at a time on C and seeing which folder causes a crash. If you narrow it down to a specific folder, you can then continue looking for a specific file within that folder to see which causes the crash.