Create a Disaster Recovery Disc

It's Great to have your PC's system restore disks and a fresh copy of windows at hand,but if your computer does go south,don't be in suca a rush to wipeout the hard drive.In advance create DVD full og essential utilities that you can use to try to repair and boost your PC before reinstalling Windows from Scratch.
Your Disaster disc should also contain up-to-date hardware drivers,especially for networking devices.Organize everything by folders and keep names short:you may be browsing the folder from command prompt if Windows won't boot

Here's a good selection of utilities that should help out in any crisis large or small.Note the first two listed nedd to be installed on their bootable CD or DVD in order to run at System startup.All these are free or available as Trialware.

MemTest86: This is a venerable RAM tester still working. visit http://www.memtest86.com

Hot CPU Tester:Diagnoses CPU problems with an in-depth testing procedure visit www.7byte.com

Restoration:recovers accidentally deleted files from both FAT and NTFS partitions,as well as memory cards
visit www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html

HDDlife:Monitors the Harddrive to warn you if a failure is near(It's a good idea to install this on PC for occasional checkups) www.hddlife.com

Spybot Search & Destroy: Keep an antispyware scanner on hand all times. visit www.safer-networking.org

Knoppix:Use this free bootable Linux CD to Access Windows directories on a harddrive www.knoppix.org

Ultimate Boot CD:contains over 100 low-level system utilties on a single disc. www.ultimatebootcd.com

EBCD:This free emergency CD is designed for seriously damaged PC's-and expert users.
http://ebcd.pcministry.com/

Microsoft Boot Disks:Download free boot discs for Oss from Windows XP to MS-DOS 6
http://freepctech.com/pc/002/files010.shtml