Operating systems can fail for multiple reasons. Sometimes they simply crashes because of a missing file or a corrupted file system. In these cases it’s good to have a bootable floppy recovery disk which contain a special recovery software which is good to have it in case that you need it. It’s not a problem if you have the install CD with the kit of operating system, you can repair with it. But if you don’t have it’s time to restore the operating system and make it bootable.

Special software designed specifically for this purpose are available. After you install the program you can create from the setup of the program a recovery disk for emergency cases and use it later. They can make backups of your important system files to recover them later helped by the special floppy recovery disk.

Another solution is to build your own floppy recovery disk. First you must make a bootable floppy disk. Place a diskette in your floppy disk of your computer. Open My Computer, right click the A:\ drive and click Format. In the Format window, check Create an MS-DOS startup disk. Click start.
Now you must install the software you want to use. This software must have also the possibility to run from MS-DOS, to be compatible, because when you’ll boot from the floppy disk all you have is MS-DOS. It doesn’t matters where you place the program. If it doesn’t fit on the floppy just place it under C:\. Because you’ll access later from the floppy.

Now it’s time to do a small test. Boot with your floppy disk. After the messages you will see the prompter with the A:\ drive. Type “cd C:\” and follow the path to the directory of your software. Now execute the exe file which corresponds to the MS-DOS variant of the recovery software. And from here you can choose whatever you want to do.
Recovery software have helps to guide you through the process. I will not detail them here. A great utility to recover a corrupted file system in Winternals and ERD Commander. They contain special files that are needed by the operating system to boot. You could also use a CD with these but if you don’t have, the floppy disk can be helpful in the same way.