I tried one of those tool boxes and I have found that they just do not have enough space. I had enough space for all my tools, but I had no where to put my CD wallet. I trust me, if you are going to do Home / SOHO computer repair, you do need a large CD wallet.
When I was doing that sort of work, I would have a copy of the following
OEM Win 95/98/Me/2000/XpHome/XpPro/XpMCE/XpPro-64bit/Vista32/Vista64/Windows7-32bit/Windows7-64bit
OEM Office 2000/Xp/2003 in all flavors (Basic/HomeStudent/SmallBusiness/Pro). Thankfully Office 2007 onwards OEM is different as it's all Dependant on the serial number you enter
Plus I would have a lot of other CDs along with me. Like a various driver CDs for commonly used drivers. It's one of the things that I don't miss from those days.
You might want to bring a portable hard drive with various other software that you might need.
Tools that you might need
Flathead Screw drivers (big and small)
Phillips Head Screw Driver (big and small)
Star head screw driver (set a set of them and you will come across some thing like that)
Portable antistatic mats with antistatic wrist trap (personally i hate these things, but some people are very fussy if you don't use them)
Can of Dust-Be-Gone (or canned air)
Thermalpaste
extra case screws
flash light
Can of Deodorant (I am not kidding)
You can use the OEM sticker on machines Can't you?
Not exactly sure how I should be replying to this question on a public forum like this. Try to get the end user to produce their own CDs for Operating System. However some people will just look at the OEM sticker on the side of the case. In the case of MS office, there are programs like Magic Jelly Bean which will locate the serial number. But again, try to get the customer to provide you with the CD and working serial number. Reason being is that you never know who you might be servicing a computer for.
And do not give into dodgy install requests. For you all you know, you could be installing a dodgy copy of MS Office on a computer that belongs to some one that actually works for Microsoft. I know some one who had that happen to them.
I normally follow the rule of No CD, No Install. Considering the software piracy down here is $10 000 per offence, it better to leave a job empty handed and run the risk of getting slapped with a $10 000 fine.
I've got external Hard drives for backing up, Got a reference machine for Virus scanning
Get yourself a some drive imaging / copying software and use that on your reference machine. Better to copy every thing as appose to forgetting some thing important.
Currently use freeware such as AVG free, Ccleaner, Malwarebytes etc.
I rather go for the payversion. Sure, Free is good, but it does not put any extra money into your pocket.
Do not leave a copy of HiJackThis on people's computers. Yes, it's a good tool, but if the end user does not know what they are doing, they can really mess up a computer system.
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