Basic Maintance
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The process to make a Windows BOOT diskette if you do not have one already. Start with a new high quality diskette the size used for your Drive: A Generally this is a 3.5" 1.44mb diskette. Here are the Windows 98 instructions on how to make a boot diskette. To create a startup disk: Go to the START button, (lower left corner on the desktop ) then left click the mouse, then go to SETTINGS, then CONTROL PANEL, then ADD/REMOVE Programs, Create Startup diskette or, then Properties. A dialog box will open when you do, click Startup Disk tab. Click on Create Disk. Follow the instructions on your screen. Note You can also open the Add/Remove Programs Properties dialog box at the Startup Disk tab by clicking Start, pointing to Settings, clicking Control Panel, double-clicking Add/Remove Programs, and then clicking the Startup Disk tab. To make a startup disk, you will need one floppy disk with at least 1.4 MB capacity. When you insert the startup disk in your computer before restarting, the computer starts from that diskette, not from your hard drive. This is useful in the event of a hard disk malfunction, or major virus infection. Without having one you can have major problems making even resortation of the Windows operating system from a CD. Regardless of anything else, make very sure you can boot with this diskette and access your CD-ROM drive. You may wish to test the diskette after making them to be on the safe side. They may be required should you ever need to reinstall Windows, and it is often best to know they work before you get to that point. After you do this remove the diskette from the drive, and place it a secure place for safe keeping. What you have done with this is made diskette that will boot your computer in the event of a hard drive problem, or major failure of Windows. Without it, in many cases, you will not be able to start your machine up and get much in the way of results from it. Most Anti-Virus programs will also have a provision built into them for a bootable diskette to allow one to start the computer should a virus not allow the boot up of drive C. So it is vital that you make such diskette(s) and keep them in a safe place in the event they are needed. Many do not do this, and without doing so recovery from a problem can often be impossible without taking the computer in for repair, and perhaps data loss. It is also very important to obtain surge protection for your computer. While it is not going to be very useful for me to explain the details about this fact, I can say that the processors chips used in most computers run on a lower voltage than some flash lights do. Any spike in household voltage can result in major damage to your computer, even to the point of making it totally useless. Surge protection is vital to keeping your computer in operation. A good surge protector should cover the phonelines as well as provide you with enough outlets to plug in all related parts of your computer such as the monitor, and printer. These all should be plugged into the same surge protector. A good surge protector should have a rating stated in Joules and should be rated in excess of 1000 Joules. It should also provide RFI suppression. Even better yet is the option of a Uninterruptable Power Supply ( UPS ) which will not only provide surge protection but allow you to power down from a power outage by closing files in the correct manner and thereby cutting down on possible errors from an overwrite during an unexcepted power down of the computer. Close This Browser Window |
Here are a few other pages dealing with making bootup diskettes.
http://www.everythingcomputers.com/
http://www.user-friendly.net/download/download.htm
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12-20-01