Big question. What should you do if Windows 95 refuses to boot?

The emergency boot disk that I always talk about is the Windows 95 Startup disk, which you can create from the Add/Remove Programs applet located on the Control Panel. You can create other, arguably better emergency boot disks with programs like Norton Utilities and Nuts & Bolts, but these aren't available to as many people. And besides, the basic rules are the same no matter which one you use.

After yelling and screaming awhile, boot from your emergency boot disk (if possible, avoid using one created on another PC, since it may not know about your system's unique settings). To do this, put the floppy in drive A: and either press your PC's reset button or turn your computer off and then on. In a little while, you should see an A:\> prompt on your screen. Congratulations ù you're in DOS.

At the A:\> prompt, enter dir c:. If you get a list of files that you recognise from your hard drive, heave a sigh of relief. You haven't lost your data. Now it's time to try some of the programs on your Startup disk to see if they can help. You can check your hard drive for errors with the command scandisk c:. If everything seems to be working, the command sys c: will copy to your hard drive the files needed to make it bootable again.

If you cannot read C: at all, you have a problem, but it's harder to tell what kind. It might just be a loose cable that you can replug after opening your computer. Or something may have wiped out the contents of your hard drive, in which case you'll have to repartition and reformat the darn thing (the programs Fdisk and Format are on the floppy for this dirty job). Or you may be faced with having to replace the physical drive.

Caption: When your hard drive won't boot, your Windows Startup floppy disk probably will, and its programs can help you get back on track. Type a program name and /? for instructions.

If you feel nervous about undertaking any of these operations, consider having someone else look at your system before you do anything drastic.

If you do end up reformatting the hard drive, you'll want to reinstall Windows, and that's where the Startup disk falls down. It doesn't provide a way to read your CD-ROM drive. Neither do Norton's or Nuts & Bolts' emergency floppies.

Then it's a matter of resetting your defaults and reinstalling your applications ù or restoring everything from a backup. Let's hope you can do the latter.