First things first. Your Windows-driven computer is going to crash. Period. Accept the inevitable. Now, prepare for it by following the steps below. When you eventually DO have a crash, you'll be ready for it.

What is a crash, you ask? Don't ask unless you really want to know. A "crash" is a general, vague term that includes a program being surprised into inactivity by an exception, being caught in an infinite loop, confused by a race condition, starved for resources, or corrupted by a memory violation, according to the folks at Byte magazine. There, feel better for knowing all that? It can be as minor as a program locking up, and simply needing to be shut down to rectify the problem, or as major as the entire computer refusing to boot up. Most system crashes are caused by bad memory chips, mismatched drivers, overwritten system files, applications that are moved without going through the proper Win 9x song-and-dance, and frantic mouse clicking (angrily click-clicking is like smacking a TV set to make it work better). These will be dealt with later. Now, fasten your seatbelts and prepare for takeoff.