One of my favorite movies is a little stinker called Airplane! And one of my favorite scenes is during the final descent, when the stewardess calls out, "Assume crash positions!" The passengers promptly do so, arms and legs thrust out everywhere, faces stricken, tongues lolling out...okay, it's a visual thing. Anyway, the advice is good enough, but what exactly should a PC user do to prepare for a crash? Besides fling themselves into the aisle, that is? Well, there are some things you can do to get ready for the big event.

The first is strictly mental. Understand that your Windows-driven PC WILL crash. It's inevitable. It's going to happen, just as sure as if you strapped it into Granny's wheelchair and shoved it down the hill. Once you accept that, you can move on to the next step - preparing for the worst.

Gather together lots of printer paper, a manila folder or large mailing envelope, and a pen. You're going to create an emergency folder with your system settings and other vital information. Most of this information might as well be in Etruscan for most of us, but trust me here - the techies who may end up poking through your machine will appreciate your having it. Let's get the CMOS settings first. (CMOS stands for "complementary metal-oxide semiconductor." You're retrieving BIOS-related information like numbers and types of drives installed, memory configurations, power-management info, etc. Yeow! Don't you feel better for knowing all this?)

Fire up your machine, and as it boots up, squint hard at the opening screens. Somewhere in the early going you'll see a line that tells you a key or key combination to press to let you enter Setup and see your CMOS settings. Most of the common choices include F1, Del, Esc, and Ctrl+Esc. (Man, that screen moves fast! Hit the Pause key if things are moving too fast for you to read. This pauses the whole boot-up process, and lets you actually read the tiny print. If it zooms by you, just let it boot up, shut it down, and do it all over again, this time with your finger poised over the Pause key.) If you're a Norton Utilities or other inclusive disk utilities user, you can access your BIOS info through that program. However you do it, get into the Setup screen and tell it to print that stuff out. Jam all of this paper into your manila folder or large envelope and scrawl "Emergency PC Information" on the front. (Make VERY sure you exit this screen without saving any changes.)

Let's print some more settings. Go into My Computer/Control Panel/System/Device Manager, and click on the top item in the list, Computer. Click Print.... Select All Devices And System Summary. Click OK. Make sure you have enough paper in the printer, as it may spit out up to 20+ pages of techie stuff. Now click once on each entry in the Device Manager list, click on the Properties button, and check the resource values listed on your printout against the ones on screen. Every once in a while the two will not match, and the screen is always right. Correct as necessary. (No one said this step was fun.) This is a good time to retrieve and jot down your Registration Number as well; in case of a reinstall, Windows will need this number. Right-click My Computer, select Properties, look for the last number under "Registered To," and jot it down on the sheet. Date and store this sheet. Technical support people may need this, as will you when you want to compare your old setup with your restored version.

You're not done, put down that doughnut. You need to create a map of your hard drive and all of its contents. Why? If Windows lobotomizes itself, you'll need to reconstruct your hard drive structure from scratch. This will help. Open an MS-DOS window (go through Start/Programs/Main/MS-DOS Window), and type this at the C: prompt:

DIR C:\ /S /AD > C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\DIR-MAP.TXT

Now for a list of your Start programs, type this at the C: prompt:

DIR "%WINDIR%\START MENU" /S /B > C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\PROGLIST.TXT

and don't forget the quotation marks. You've just created two new files on your C: drive, DIR-MAP.TXT and PROGLIST.TXT. Open them in Notepad (find them using the Browse function if needed) and print them both. Grab that doughnut; this will take some more time.

Next time, we'll get to play with floppy disks and the mystic and portentous ERU program. Thrills, chills, and spills await....