One trick is to dual boot with the same operating system - the first one fails, go to the other. Another is to create a D: drive and move all your data to it (and the paging file), then copy it off to another hard drive regularly, keep it in your pocket. If Windoze falls over, you then don't lose it, as it places your data on the C: drive which is lost if you have to reformat it. All I use extra these days is F-Prot.