Anyone familiar with the Mac "Time Machine" program?
 

So, I have no idea what went wrong but my Time Machine back-up system has stopped working. The last backup date was "Yesterday 5:27 PM" and any attempts at backing up since then (including automatic backups) are never successful. I don't get error messages or anything, it just attempts to backup forever.

When I first noticed it, it was saying "Backing up 0KB" for an eternity. There's no telling how long it said that, but I have a feeling it'd been several hours and that it'd been an automatic backup that had gone wrong.

When I try to instruct a backup, it just says "preparing backup" until I get sick of seeing it.

Also, even when I disconnect my external hard drive, the status icon in the menu bar doesn't fade/change to "Disconnected" like it usually does.

I know it's apparently rare for Macs to get viruses without being a direct target, but my computer started acting funny when I opened up a web page with one of those irritating pop-up ads that you have to click "Okay" to close. I'm just worried that it somehow affected my Time Machine program, though I don't have any idea why.

I've restarted my computer, unplugged my external hard drive, even repaired it using Disk Utility, and the problem remains.

Backups work for crap on operating systems, try doing it yourself or use 3rd party software.

I'm not sure what went wrong. Do you live close enough to an Apple store? You can make an appointment with the Genius Bar to get it looked at, for free, to see what they say. It could be something simple, hopefully.