If the worst has happened, contact me and I'll do my best to help. The quality of recovery that is possible will depend on how much disaster avoidance planning had been done in advance and that planning is one of the services I offer.   After the flood, fire or theft The first step will most likely be  new computer hardware which  will arrive as a “blank slate”  possibly with a newer version of  Windows than the old PC so  straight away there may be  some compatibility problems.  Will you be ready to move onto  a new version of windows?  Will your existing software and  peripherals still work? The second step is going to be  getting the internet connection  working and this might require a  new router configured with all the  usernames, passwords and  broadband settings originally  supplied by your internet  provider; Will you have the correct  broadband router and email login  settings to hand? The third step is to install all the  software applications that you  rely on so you'll need the original CD/DVD sources and the licence  numbers.  Will you have them?  Only now can you consider  restoring your essential data  from the off-site backup that you  so carefully made just the other  day: you did make one didn’t  you? Good! glad you  remembered! Now you can relax and thank  your lucky stars that at least you  had prepared for the disaster. Or maybe you’ll be one of those  people unable to proceed  beyond step one because they  had not prepared for their IT  disaster?