Recovery systems and methods for sustaining the operation of a plurality of networked computers (20a, 20b) in the event of a fault conditions are described. The basic recovery system comprises a plurality of virtual machines (31a, 31b) installed on a recovery computer (30), each virtual machine being arranged to emulate a corresponding networked computer, and the recovery computer being arranged, in the event of a detected failure of one of the networked computers, to activate and use the virtual machine which corresponds to the failed networked computer (20). The recovery computer (30) may be located on the same network (12) as the networked computers (20), or alternatively on a remotely located local network in case of failure of the entire local network (12).