The very first thing you will need when your system cannot boot up from the hard disk, for any of the reasons we mentioned before, will be a boot disk. You should have one already, created during the installation process. A boot disk will allow you to boot your system up and, in a matter of minutes, enable you to undo the thing that has made your system unable to boot.
You can also use the Rescue Mode of Mandrake Linux's installation CD-ROM to boot your machine and perform some maintenance tasks, but a boot disk might prove to be useful anyway (for example, if your machine does not support booting from the CD-ROM drive).
Please refer to Section , “DrakFloppy: Creating a Boot Disk” for instructions on how to create a boot diskette.
Always test your boot floppy to make sure it actually works. There are few things more embarrassing than finding that the floppy will not boot because of media errors. If the floppy boots OK then... You are done!
Congratulations! You already have one the most important tools in trying to recover a damaged system: a boot disk. Now, on to some important considerations on another important tool: backups.