Computer repairing

[Mafishioso]

Hi i was thinking of starting repairing computers for people other than friends, i was wondering where i can get hold of software to help me out .
I know there are programs ect that the shops use but i don't know how to get hold of them.

Thanks!

 

[mooshue]

thats the most vague question i could think of seeing from someone wanting to start a repair business.
Nothing erks me more than idiots bringing their computer in to the office and saying its broken, but can not tell me what it's doing to act broken. This is what your question sounds like to me. Its like taking your car to the mechanic and telling him its broken but no idea what its doing to be broken.

What exactly are you looking for? Tools for spyware, virus, malware etc.. tools for hardware tests? memory block testers? etc...
There aren't any magic one program that fixes all solutions for you.

That question alone makes me have to say to you , think twice before starting a business that you don't seem to know much about.

 

[jimboslice]

I'm baffled also, but I'll try and be a little helpful. How old are you? I'll say your a long ways from opening your own repair shop. My first suggestion would be get A+ for Dummies. I'm not sayin your dumb by any means but its a good start from the sounds of it.

 

[VanR__]

Those of us that do it for a living are baffled at your post.

echo;

 

[notsobig32]

I think you may want to reconsider going into the computer repair business right away. A great place for you to start would be to look at local colleges or adult education centers and find a place that offers A+ certification classes or general computer classes. I would even eccommend getting an associate's degree in computer science if you are that into computers.

If you would like to talk more about it, feel free to pm me. I am a programmer(i have a fancy title but it equals computer programmer) and dba so i can provide you with an opinion on these two paths in IT>

 

[BiggerGeek]

Hi i was thinking of starting repairing computers for people other than friends, i was wondering where i can get hold of software to help me out .
I know there are programs ect that the shops use but i don't know how to get hold of them.

Thanks!

I would try looking on the internet...,

 

[Nssca]

If I were going start a business I had no experience in like computer repair, Id get a job at a computer repair shop and lean how they do things. Then after a few years branch out on your own.

 

[Kaiser]

thats the most vague question i could think of seeing from someone wanting to start a repair business.
Nothing erks me more than idiots bringing their computer in to the office and saying its broken, but can not tell me what it's doing to act broken. This is what your question sounds like to me. Its like taking your car to the mechanic and telling him its broken but no idea what its doing to be broken.

What exactly are you looking for? Tools for spyware, virus, malware etc.. tools for hardware tests? memory block testers? etc...
There aren't any magic one program that fixes all solutions for you.

That question alone makes me have to say to you , think twice before starting a business that you don't seem to know much about.

I gotta agree. You might want to do what DaRooster recommended, and that is to work a shop first. If you dont know what kind of software to use to fix problems, then honestly you need more education on the subject.

 

[AN3M4L]

I got my A+ a few months ago. Thats the first step and thing you need to do.

 

[Beerado4u]

i worked at a well known pc repair shop for years before they went under in the tech shop. there is no "fixing computers" . there is only backing up all information and reloading the os (operating system). there is no magic spyware remover. ad aware works but is only temp. and especially doing it for friends and neighboors is sooo very annoying with all the questions.

 

[J4CKT]

i worked at a well known pc repair shop for years before they went under in the tech shop. there is no "fixing computers" . there is only backing up all information and reloading the os (operating system). there is no magic spyware remover. ad aware works but is only temp. and especially doing it for friends and neighboors is sooo very annoying with all the questions.

LOL! +1 on that!

When I worked at a shop this was the deal there aswell, and its actually the fastest and most cost effective solution to just about any problem with the only annoyance being the reinstallation and reconfiguration of all your old programs and settings.

If all the little issues that people encountered were to be actually 'fixed' (and usually they can if customers protest formatting) customers would be up for so much $$$$ on just the time alone that would be taken to investigate and troubleshoot the issue. Its so much easier simply to format, once you format and everything works once reinstalled, you can generally say its faulty software, if there is still a problem after the format, you can start looking at hardware...

 

[Kaiser]

i worked at a well known pc repair shop for years before they went under in the tech shop. there is no "fixing computers" . there is only backing up all information and reloading the os (operating system). there is no magic spyware remover. ad aware works but is only temp. and especially doing it for friends and neighboors is sooo very annoying with all the questions.

LOL! +1 on that!

When I worked at a shop this was the deal there aswell, and its actually the fastest and most cost effective solution to just about any problem with the only annoyance being the reinstallation and reconfiguration of all your old programs and settings.

If all the little issues that people encountered were to be actually 'fixed' (and usually they can if customers protest formatting) customers would be up for so much $$$$ on just the time alone that would be taken to investigate and troubleshoot the issue. Its so much easier simply to format, once you format and everything works once reinstalled, you can generally say its faulty software, if there is still a problem after the format, you can start looking at hardware...

I have to say, I just don't agree with this. If you start off with this mindset, you will resort to reloading all the time. There truly is a science behind the system as it is not magic. Once you spend the time, and IF you have the talent, you will move on to be able to fix these problems without reloading. These kinds of statements are very limiting to me. They basically say "I will be a desktop admin for life" type of outlook. If you learn the derivative and you have logic, because you CANNOT learn logic, you will be able to diagnose these problems correctly and make real money. I can honestly say there is not much that will stun me after all of these years. Those of you who know my name can google it with the word "Windows" or a couple of other key words and come up with hundreds of pages of information. My question to you is simple: Do you want to repair desktops for $65 an hour at best or do you want to do corporate infrastructure and make much more? The difference here is, do I walk into a 100 node/80 user company (extremely small network) and say, well, I think the best way is to format and reload your domain controller/exchange server and sharepoint server? Then we can recreate all 80 users, restore their mailboxes and reconnect them manually. THEN we can join all 100 nodes in and set up all 80 user profiles? If this is the answer for you then get out of the business now. If this is not the answer for you and you still thought that a format and reload will be good for your career because of time spent, then you should also get out of the business as it just isn't for you. My advice to people who want to succeed in this business is to take the time to break it down and learn why it broke in the first place. You do need to be honest with yourself and ask yourself if you have the will and the mindset to learn from it, for if you find yourself breaking down the same problem in different variations all the time and not recognizing the logic behind this same problem at hand, you will never be successful doing the technical end. Management maybe, but not the engineering side because you cannot learn logic. You either have it and your logic grows or you dont have it at all. Just some thoughts, keep your head up.

 

[J4CKT]

I have to say, I just don't agree with this. If you start off with this mindset, you will resort to reloading all the time. There truly is a science behind the system as it is not magic. Once you spend the time, and IF you have the talent, you will move on to be able to fix these problems without reloading. These kinds of statements are very limiting to me. They basically say "I will be a desktop admin for life" type of outlook. If you learn the derivative and you have logic, because you CANNOT learn logic, you will be able to diagnose these problems correctly and make real money. I can honestly say there is not much that will stun me after all of these years. Those of you who know my name can google it with the word "Windows" or a couple of other key words and come up with hundreds of pages of information. My question to you is simple: Do you want to repair desktops for $65 an hour at best or do you want to do corporate infrastructure and make much more? The difference here is, do I walk into a 100 node/80 user company (extremely small network) and say, well, I think the best way is to format and reload your domain controller/exchange server and sharepoint server? Then we can recreate all 80 users, restore their mailboxes and reconnect them manually. THEN we can join all 100 nodes in and set up all 80 user profiles? If this is the answer for you then get out of the business now. If this is not the answer for you and you still thought that a format and reload will be good for your career because of time spent, then you should also get out of the business as it just isn't for you. My advice to people who want to succeed in this business is to take the time to break it down and learn why it broke in the first place. You do need to be honest with yourself and ask yourself if you have the will and the mindset to learn from it, for if you find yourself breaking down the same problem in different variations all the time and not recognizing the logic behind this same problem at hand, you will never be successful doing the technical end. Management maybe, but not the engineering side because you cannot learn logic. You either have it and your logic grows or you dont have it at all. Just some thoughts, keep your head up.

Completely agree with you kaiser, but your comparing 2 different things, i was simply stating what happened in small "Pc Repair" and generally it is the quickest, easiest and most cost effective path to resolution for a home user aswell as a user pc in your type of setting aswell. If you were a tech in a PC Repair Shop and a customer brings in a pc and all the info you get out of them is that all of a sudden a program stops working, or their pc crashes every now and then. After all the initial testing (AV/Spyware scans, RAM, PSU etc) are you going to tell them that you can fix it which of course you generally CAN given enough time and testing or would you tell the customer "Look we cant really tell what is causing these problems, we can keep troubleshooting further at our $66/hr rate and hope to find a solution 'soon' OR we can simply backup your data for $55 and reinstall windows/drivers/(and any software you have the disks for) for $77 and you will have ure pc back like new within a day or 2 with all your data and programs for $132?

Maybe this is not the correct approach but from my experience this worked for the shop i was at.

In your example of a corporate setting, its definitely not quick or easy and the time taken to resolve the issue would definitely NOT be financially viable with all the resulting core system downtime aswell.

In answer to your question: i didnt want to repair desktops for the rest of my life After 1.5yrs working in the same shop for $12/hr ($65/hr would have been a fortune ) i left to work for an isp (albeit a different role, i was a customer tech support agent on the phones and then became a Call centre sup) where i saw the type of setting that you refer to and ofcourse the NSRs couldnt just format n reload the servers BUT all the user pc's WOULD generally be formatted n reloaded simply because the time required to diagnose and assess a software problem is so great when you can simply reload an image of the OS within 30minutes since all the agents needed was IE as the CMS, intranet and all other resources were web-based.

Sorry for the long ass post i kinda lost track lol... hope it makes sense lol.

 

[Kaiser]

My point is that if you want to move up in the business, you will need to learn the business. The only way to learn is to take a hands on approach. As for reloading; I do that as a last resort. I am very certain I can fix 99.999% of problems without reloading in a much shorter time frame than backing up data and reloading. Why can I do this? Because I initially spent the time to find the answer to the problem instead of the quick way out. Once the companies that I worked for saw that they moved me right up the ladder, and before you know it I was lead infrastructure engineer and one of the top 5 guys for a 486,000 node, 137,000 user infrastructure. I took time to find an answer to the problem. I spent numerous hours on my own, duplicating problems just to see if I could resolve the problem quicker. That is the kind of mindset that will take you places. As for the $65 an hour, I was talking about if you were in your own business, that is what you would charge. For corporate, you would charge anywhere from $125 to $250 in this area. If you plan on being good at infrastructure to allow these fees you need to know servers and the core of them. The core of them is basically the same as a desktop. How can you move up to being a server admin if you do not have the underlying technology diagnostics? You simply can't. So, I guess there is just two lines of thinking. I automatically want to be the best and at the top of my game, which of course would be server enterprise infrastructure as desktops now bore me to death and are too easy. I guess its a matter of if you want to be complacent in your career, or if you want to strive for the best you can be. As I said, two different lines of thinking.
I have schooled myself for years from the kernel on up. I have torn Windows and pre windows down to the core to find the answer to a problem, much like Mark Russinovich. Mark's Blog
But for that time I spent, I am now able to walk in, diagnose a problem and not reload, and restore peoples data. Now that brings up another situation. Do you make an image of their drive prior to reloading? There are so many places that do not do this. Then the user comes back, and says, oh shit, I know I told you that I dont use Quicken when you asked me as you were looking at my computern that failed to boot, but I do use Quickbooks. You then find out that that was under the Intuit directory as well. How many times does a format lose valuable data? I'd bet you the numbers are higher than what you expect. Companies like Intuit store their data in areas that should not be stored. They store it in Program Files directory. How many other thrid party applications do you think have the same practices? I have seen this a million times. Now add in the imaging software that you would need to use and the and time it takes to make a FULL backup, and I just dont see the sense. Then as I mentioned lets add in the eliment of surprise which is that OH shit factor if you didn't make a full backup of the drive and the client comes in and asks where their Peachtree database is because they just re-installed peachtree and they cannot find it. All of this adds up to me just wanting to know the sport I am in at the deepest level I can, so that I can fix the problem at hand in a matter of minutes, charge out an hour and a half and move on to the next problem.

Knowledge of the sport... I never want to be just satisfactory at anything.

 

[Kaiser]

Also, another thing to look at. If you do enjoy working on desktops and not servers, that is fine. BUT do you want to work in a large environment? Do you want to be the goto guy for major problems across a network? Do you want to break down a problem on one node that is affecting 11,000 nodes so that you can push a fix out via SMS, reboot and be done? Or is the approach to hand touch all 11,000 nodes, back up data and reload the OS? I guess it all depends if you want to work for a large enterprise environment as a tech making $28-$35 an hour plus crazy benefits or if you want to work in a Best Buy, where you know the isle that sells CDRs and you also have training on TVs and BluRay for $12 an hour. Either way, whatever makes you happy, but I think you know what my decision would be.

 

[J4CKT]

White Flag!

I think i bit off more then i can chew trying to debate with you kaiser I never approached troubleshooting with your kind of mindset and it definitely is a different way of thinking that i never considered.

You illustrate the difference between a wanna be technician and a real tech.

Thanks for that link btw. I had a quick skim through it and it looks really interesting, will def be reading that.

You will definitely be hearing from me next time im stuck on something lol

 

[Kaiser]

You got it buddy. Even if you cannot fix it, try and try again. You will learn so much while doing it. I use all of Mark's utilities because they are the absolute best. they hit at such a very low level that once you learn how to use them there is nothing you cannot diagnose. Even viral. Yes it does take time to break things down, but once you get in the mindset, you will love just knowing that nothing can pull a fast on on you again. It instills confidence.

 

[BOOMSHAKER]

Kaiser, are IT jobs looking up or down during these past years? Meaning are they still hiring for these positions?

 

[Kaiser]

Well, that depends on where you look. Defense was up, but now that Obama is in you may find that it starts to drop as they cut spending and we get pulled out of the Iraq. Its hard to tell actually where our shitful economy is headed. I woulsd say that there are a number of places hiring, especially banks right now since there is a lot of consolidation and banks buying others out right now. This causes a desparate need for IT personel to port the bought out bank's databases and/or import into the father bank. It also allows for more support as well. IT is a funny thing. It will always thrive. It's the next thing paid after the electric bill because they cannot survive without it. It's all a matter of how good you are and your past experience. I do not see many openning level positions at this point however because they usually want experience since the support they need takes experience. If you do have 3-5 years under your belt however, you should have no problem staying employed. It's the beginners that are going to find a hard time in this economy because companies do not have money to waste on just warm bodies. Companies are steering more towards the 1 really good guy for $85-90k, then 2 new guys at $45k because health benefits for 1 person is way better than two and that is becoming a real problem. In essence they want someone who can come in as a seasoned vet and support their systems with little downtime, and that takes experience.

 

[Pekkerwood]

Kaiser speaks the truth. Listen, pay heed, and get paid. Ignore at your financial peril.

I absolutely suck at computers.... Today.

I made an absolute mint in the computer business because I followed Kaisers' mindset thirty years ago.

I learned the how it works and why. When we were first running multiuser, and/or multitaksing on these new fangled "PC's" nothing was easy. Trying to run DOS while also having 5152 emulation while also needing to function as a terminal on a VAX while also maintaingin a connection to a Novell lan with that stupid "IPX" protocol, and fit all the drivers in upper memory without conflicting, blah, blah, blah. Hell, learning to use the cascading hardware interrupts blew most technicians away.

I made a mint by understanding how the operating system and the various drivers worked. Hell, Kaiser may or may not remember a hardware product called Periscope that when the computer froze you could push a button and it would dump all the registers to help you debug. Hell with just a little knowledge we made money by jumping 6mhz AT's to 8mhz by changing the timing crystals. We made money by buying a hundred 8 mhz processors and testing which ones would function at 10mhz and 12 mhz and 16 mhz and reselling them. Do you really think Intel had different lines for each? The lower chips were either 16 mhz chips that failed or were merely labeled because of demand. The point being a little knowledge, a case of beer and a few hours of testing and we would make three to five grand in a weekend with chip arbitrage.

My simple tech knoledge from studying how to keep computers operating in a group, multisystem environment, allowed me to create custom use systems for the cell phone industry using off the shelf components. Little if any competition. I didn't manufacture anything, but add technical knowledge and create applications, and you had a product you could sell with little competition.

Having superior knowledge also allowed me to sell contracts and develop systems that competed with Fortune 500 companies and win. I did nothing, and I mean nothing, but follow the mindset that Kaiser is espousing.

Learn your craft well people. Dig in. It is not a guarantee it will pay, but it puts you in the best position to be paid.