There seems to inevitably come a time when things will go wrong on your system.  If you take some minor precautions the trauma can be minimized. This intails making a few backup disks and refreshing them regularly. 

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BOOT UP DISK(S)
The first, and the only one that does not need refreshing, is a system backup for Win95.  Put a clean disk in the drive.  Then click your START button and choose SETTINGS/CONTROL PANEL from the menus.  In the Control Panel window double left click on the ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS icon.  Select the STARTUP DISK tab and click the CREATE DISK button.  You will be prompted from there.  Note, you'll be prompted to install your Win95 CD for file copying.  This will create a disk you can use for booting up if the system on your hard drive is corrupted.

If you're using Win 3 go to File Manager, do a disk format and add the system files.  I'm fuzzy on this as I haven't used Win3 for some time.

Make sure the bootup disk has copies (from your hard disk) of these files which will be needed to restore your system.
   DBLSPACE.INI		These three files will be needed 
   DRVSPRACE.INI	to access your C: drive
   DRVSPACE.BIN		if you use hard disk compression.

   FDISK.EXE		Used if you have C: drive partitions

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WORK FILES
You might consider saving special work files you have on your disk also.  Things like important letters, spreadsheets, databases, address lists, inventories, tax info, etc.  As you work with your computer practice evaluating the documents you create with the critereon of "how much trouble will I have trying to reproduce this information?"   Save them on labeled floppies and you might want to include a text reminder of the folder each file came from and the last date it was saved.

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SYSTEM & USER DAT FILES
In a separate text file (Registers.txt)  you will find the description for saving your SYSTEM.DAT and USER.DAT files.  These instructions also define what these files are. These copies should be refreshed at regular intervals.  The length of the intervals depends on how often you add or delete programs, change system components, etc.  An arbitrary monthly schedule would be a good compromise.

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INTERNET FILES
If you're an addicted internet user (as I am) you'd be devastated by the loss of your bookmark or email address files.  When you refresh the other backups why not save the current versions of those too?

In Netscape 4.x they're found in C:\...\USER\your name\.  In Netscape 3.x they're usually in C:\...\Netscape\ .  The Bookmark file is named BOOKMARK.HTM and the Email address file is called ABOOK.NAB and one other file in the same folder should be saved too.  The PREF.JS file contains your Metscape setup preferences.  In MSIE I have no idea where they are or what they're called. 

All you have to do is copy them to a single disk.  If they won't fit on one disk you should do some cleaning out (grin).  You might create a notepad text document to put on that disk too.  In it identify the path where files came from so you can restore them to the proper place if necessary.

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RESTORING
All of these files can be copied to your hard drive and overwrite the existing (corrupted?) files.  They will return your system to the state it was in at the time they were saved.  Any new programs installed, addresses added or preferences changed since then will be missing.

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OTHER FILES
Other files will be needed if you want to recover from disasters. Some or in the root folder (C:\) of your hard disk while others will have to be found by lookup. The files that you may want to backup include:

MSDOS.SYS		CONFIG.SYS		CONFIG.DOS
AUTOEXEC.BAT		AUTOEXEC.DOS		CMOSINFO.DAT
PARTINFO.DAT		BOOTINFO.DAT		SYSTEM.REG (already mentioned)
MSDOS.SYS		USER.REG (already mentioned)