So you've just been to a "Big Box Store" or talked to the Geeks and you can't believe what they want to charge you to look at, let alone fix your PC!   I'll give you a free evaluation of your problem and a best guess estimate of what it will cost to have it repaired.   If you choose to have me repair your PC, I charge $40 per hour labor!   A typical reload of Windows XP costs around $40.   If you want to save your pictures, music and data files and restore them back to your PC after it's reloaded, it would be an additional $20 for a single user profile.   Each additional user (e.g. mom, dad, children) has a profile and Windows treats them as if they were all seperate machines.   So backing up data for a family using 4 profiles would involve backing up 4 sets of My Document folders - in other words, the more profiles you have, the more time it takes and in this case, time is money.   A reload consists of completely erasing your hard drive and installing a new copy of your version of Windows along with whatever Service Packs are needed, all the hardware drivers for your PC, all the Microsoft Critical Updates that apply, Microsoft Office 2003 with the 2007 patches, Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash Player, Java, Microsoft Security and Microsoft Essentials Antivirus.   Windows Vista and Windows 7 take a lot longer to rebuild and require much more hands-on time, so for a typical reload for a Vista or Windows 7 PC, it usually requires an additional 1/2 hour of labor.   I only charge for the time I actually "work" on the PC, not the time the software takes to load.   For most PC repairs and/or Windows reloads, I have a 24 hour turn around.

I offer low-cost, convenient hardware & software repair services, as well as advice and assistance with system upgrades, preventive maintenance and other non-repair services.   This discount pricing is based on you delivering the broken equipment to my home shop.  I do not charge for diagnosis or problem determination prior to the start of the repair process.   This is helpful to determine if the equipment is worth repairing or should just be replaced.   I do not sell PC's, but can advise you where and what to buy if you choose not to have your equipment repaired.   Up to this point, there would be no charges for my service.   A lot of folks just want to save their files and have them installed on their new PC.   As long as the hard drive is still readable, I can do the file transfers for you and take care of disposing of the eWaste for you.