Computer Tech advice for Windows

Also beer, you may want to try and get you a cheap machine, from somewhere, so you can practice on it. I have found some pretty good deals on ebay, but if there may be other sources near you, then look there too.

Don't let these guys razz you, about Dell, just do the best you can, and best wishes to you.

you can BUILD a 3Ghz Celeron D machine with an 80GB drive and a 128MB 8x AGP card, onboard sound, Pioneer 110 DVD RW, and NIC for about £210-£230 (I suspect even less than that if you know where to look). The only thing that leaves is a monitor, which can be picked up for abot £15-20 second hand.

I've always felt that the worst thing about starting a computer business properly is the thought of having one working part of each type of hardware for testing/troubleshooting purposes - that's where things start getting expensive if you're just starting out.

It's an hourly rate there is no commission so as long as I work 40 hours I should be ok. Since the computers I will be repairing are Dell's, work should be plentiful. Also after 6 months I wont be servicing I will just be running the operation. But before I get to that point I will need to do some servicing my self.

I'm talkin an old junker for around $75 to $100 w/monitor, something you don't care if it goes up in smoke, or not....lol.

That's where ebay comes in handy, I bought 27 Nic cards for $15, on ebay, and 7 PCI video cards for $16.

Thank you just a nobody for some actual encouragement. I have a dell with an intel 2ghz and 512 ram that I mess around with. I just built my own comp with an amd 3800 and a gig of ram and I have a 3.2 ghz laptop with 512 ram so I have some toys to play with. The reason I joined this site is to read as much as I can, I may not know as much as everyone else but I am spending about 50 hours a week trying to learn. I am studying for my a+, I am taking classes at Devry and I am spending almost all of my free time playing around on the programs you guys have told me about.

Well, you sound devoted, so you will go far. I got most of my experience, in the Army, as a Dial Telephone Exchange (Central Office) Repairman, and later ran an electronics (mostly radio) repair shop, where we had to fix everything electric that was painted green or black...lol. When I went to my first electronics repair shop, I had to read the tech manulas for every type of equipment, and if you have ever read an Army tech manual, it is no small feat...lol.

Well, I'll certainly agree with that! Beerabuser, if you are doing all you say, just make sure that you don't read too much at the expense of trying things out and gaining experience. If I were you also, I'd put a lot of time into the security and the web forum (even if just reading it). It's probably going to be the lion share of your work, especially with dells coming with Norton pre-installed. Also, know that there comes a time where backing up data and documents to cd/dvd or another drive and just completely re-installing really is the best way - other than that, I think you're on the right track for home repair with Dell if that's what you really want to do, provided you do get the work in before you start doing it for real.

Geez. If the money is that good I'm putting in an application myself

I have spent 9 hours today reading and trying things out. I got the everest program that is pretty sweet. I got hijackthis and ran that to see what a log looks like now I need to understand exactly what everything means. Still working on memtest that one requires a little more work. I got this program that shows you every single IE and Outlook password on your computer that was interesting. I surfed that majorgeeks website and that was fun. I am also looking into the 2600 meetings in the area.

Also I have been looking at a program called erd commander. Anyone of you guys used that before?

Try this sight: http://www.winternals.com/products/repairandrecovery/erdcommander2002.asp

I have never used it, so I can't comment on it, sounds interesting though.

Says that it is 149 for a single workstation. I am not paying that for a new program that I may or may not like.

I agree.

It sounds like you will be mostly concerned with WinXP, so I would look around on google and find all the repair and tweak sites for XP.

I don't know what tools Dell will give you, but you should at least have an XP boot disk, however, being it's Dell, it may not work on a Dell.

Has Dell told you anything about the tools that you will have?

Nothing. The guy I currently work for is a huge distributor of Dell's so he has this warranty contract. He is going to subcontract it to me so I will never even contact Dell. I am not sure whether or not they will give me anything or not. That is why I like playing with this stuff before hand in case I need all the tools because Dell doesn' provide any. It will be a bunch of housewives with problems it's not like I am writing code but I really want to be prepared.

The biggest problem that you will find is virus and spyware problems. If I were you, I would load all those free tools on each computer, that you service. Show the people how to use them, as this will cut down on the number of calls that you will have, and I mean stress to them how important it is to keep them updated, and used on a regular basis.

I am going to keep adding to this post, so I don't run up my post numbers, so keep watching this post.

Sounds good

I carry an ERD Commander disk around in my laptop bag with me. It's a fantastic resource worth every penny. It's main advantage is the ability to reset the local admin password of a windows install. It's got a host of other features also.