What's a panic disk?

A "panic disk" or "startup disk" is a diskette for your A drive that has all boot files and drivers needed to start up your PC, whether your hard disk is working at the moment or not. It typically needs to be for your A drive, because originally PCs could only boot from the A drive or a hard disk. Most modern PCs can also boot from an optical drive.

A panic disk is needed in certain troubleshooting situations; for example, when a hard disk wears out, or if the hard disk boot files become corrupted. A virus scanner will sometimes prompt you to restart from a write-protected boot diskette (a panic disk or startup disk) if the scanner detects a virus that has installed itself in RAM memory.

Making a Windows startup disk is a lot easier in Windows 95 and later than it was under MS-DOS and Windows 3.1.

Go to Settings, Control Panel, open Add/Remove Programs, select the Startup Disk tab, and follow the prompts.

There's also a prompt to make a startup disk that's seen when you first install Windows, but you can make a startup disk in Windows 95+ whenever you want.

Once you have your Startup Disk, test it by booting your PC with it, to make sure it works, label it ("Win98 startup disk for Sue's Athlon") write-protect it, and store it safely. You should re-generate your Startup Disk anytime you change your system setup, by adding or removing software or hardware.