Anyone here fix computers for a living? (at people's houses)

[Stuck_less]

I don't exactly do that for a living, but I do go around fixing people's stuff.
Seeing as most people are rather computer illiterate, I find it's difficult to get an idea of the problem from the average home user. So generally I take some spare RAM, of varying speeds and slot types, mebbe one hdd pre-loaded with an os, spare cpu, a flashdrive (or my external hdd) loaded with drivers, patches, virus scanner stuffs, codecs, etc.
Usually you can get enough of an idea, however, to know whether you should bring a graphics card with you.

Like peter said tho, try and gather as much info as you can first before going to the place totry and fix it.

Hey, one question, unless the chipsets are the same, would there be any point in having a preloaded hard drive with an OS!?

 

[MrCoffee]

Hey, one question, unless the chipsets are the same, would there be any point in having a preloaded hard drive with an OS!?

XP sp2 doesn't mind too much, plenty of times I've replaced a blown mobo (or upgraded) and just swapped the hard drive over, it usually works just fine.

 

[pokernod]

I also do alot of fixing for freinds and neighbors, but for a living....Most the time you find some 7yr old piece of junk, (like mine, lol) and before you even look at it, weighing the cost of charging them an hourly rate against just telling them the truth, its always the truth. "For what I would have to charge you to get that thing working good and fast like you WANT, you can buy a new computer." Im not going to rip anyone off. Just not worth it.

 

[Trotter]

I talk to the person first and try to get all the info I can. I very seldom run into a true hardware problem... the closest is usually a bad driver.

Most of the time I deal with a crapload of adware/spyware, maybe so viruses.

If I can get the make and model of the computer, I try to download the drivers and put them on a flash drive. I also take Spybot (and the update), Ad Aware (and update), SpywareBlaster, Nod32, O&O Defrag, CCleaner. I also bring a XP Home SP2, as 95% of the computers I deal with are running Home.

The one I worked on last night was running MCE, but it was so screwed I had to restore it to factory default. It was so bad I scanned my flash drive when I got home.

But I am pretty cheap. I ended up with $30 and three dozen fresh eggs. I mainly help out co-workers and friends, so I'm not out for all I can get.

 

[helix2301]

I been a service tech for a while and I carry a lot of materials with me Cat5 Cables / RJ45 / jacks exc I also do networking as well. But I find that most of my repair at the home usually I need my jump drive with utilizes like spybot / AVG / Winsock fix exc. All the years I been doing this I usually get maybe few hardware problems a week most problems are spyware / viruses and setting up peoples routers / Printers / Cameras stuff of that nature. Talk to the user so you get a very ruff idea of what you need and try to bring materials with you as you go a long and get to know your customer base you will get a better feel for what you need to bring. Defiantly a jump drive and tool kit to start.