could some-one please tell me how to back up my data as i,ve never done this before, my wife rang the company who made my commy and he did a few tests on my commy and said that my commy is working fine but i need to back up my data, how do i do this please help.

You can back up data in many ways! But you will need something to store the backups on e.g. removable hard drive, cds/dvds.

You can just burn things to cds or transfer things to removable hard drives or other media.

moved to general software forum btw because it is not a pc case question.

To do a "Let's include everything" backup go to;
Start
All Programs
Accessories
System Tools
Back Up

But as upgrader stated you need a removable media as, to my mind, there is no point in backing your items to another partition on the drive.

i have checked what you said and clicked on start, all accessories, system tools, but there is no back up in system tolls to click on, so what will i have to do now.

You need to put in your xp disk and get it off there. I will find out how to do this for you or wolfeymole will first!

As upgrader quite rightly remarked you need to obtain Backup off the cdrom.
You are using XP Home as your OS so to save me a lot of typing please look here;
HOW TO: Install Backup from the CD-ROM in Windows XP Home Edition