What Can I Do For a PC Job? (Prefferably Tech)

[Chazell29]

Originally Posted by nocturnx Just an idea for getting your name out there. Theres a kid here that does the same thing and I saw his flyer posted on the tack board at the laundromat with his number printed along the sides and snipped so you could tear it off easily. I haven't heard much about his service but there is always tags ripped off his flyers so people must be interested in his service. You could also post an ad in the local newspaper or on craigslist.org for your area. You could also offer "PC Recycling". People are constantly buying PC's and throwing out their old ones. Many people will pay for the peace of mind that their old harddrive has been throughly wiped and pc disposed of properly. You would have to find out the price of pc disposal in your area and tack on your expense. This will also give you a surplus of floppy drives, cd drives, and other components to help troubleshoot pc's with.

Wow! Great idea! Thank you!

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by EzyStvy John Doe brings in his pc for virus removal. You fix it and send him home. He calls back wanting to know what you did with the Novel he’s been writing for the past ten years. You say you never saw it. His attorney starts a lawsuit claiming 8 million in damages. You have a heart attack and find another line of business.

Originally Posted by Chazell29 Yeah...my grandfather took his new and old pc to circuit city firedog to do a data transfer, and they lost everything he had, i think he said a few thousand pictures, they deleted it all

I've never accidentally lost data from the computers I've worked on (I use external HDDs to make backups if necessary) but I've "found" interesting data (naughty pictures) on some computers that the owners should have deleted or moved before they gave their computers to me. People are interesting, that's all I can say.

I've worked on a few computers that lost data when the owners decide to "clean" them...the best one was when my friend's Mom decided to clean the Windows directory and moved everything to the Recycle Bin. The next day the computer wouldn't boot up and she didn't know why. Luckily she didn't know how to empty the Recycle Bin and I was able to install her HDD in my bench system and moved all the folders and files back into the Windows directory and the got the computer working again. I told my friend to tell her Mom not to "clean" her computer anymore.

When I work on my favorite nephew's computer I always check the web brower history and cookies to see what he's up to and then I'd bug him about his browsing habits everytime I saw him. Lately when I work on his computer the history and cookies are empty...he found out how to delete that information before giving me the computer to work on so now I don't know where he's been surfing to...at least he learned something...haha...

Cricket

[HAL9000]

I screwed up once and on a system with multiple drives.. formatted the wrong drive... that became a pile of lost time on my part as I did data recovery to get everything back... oops.

[nocturnx]

We ghost nearly every pc we work on here. Doesn't hurt to be cautious and have an image to fall back on. Just throw in a copy of windows pe, map your network drive, load up ghost, create image, save it to the file server. Also great for backing up possible show-stoppers such as the payroll machine, x-label machine, and other business dependent machines.

You may want to do this with customers machines that require retooling of the registry, virus removal, or such. Usually takes a half-hour to 45 mins. and 3+ gigs to ghost a machine though. And if you got the storage you could also offer that as a service, so if their harddrive fails you can just throw their image on a new one and they are good to go.

[Chazell29]

Originally Posted by nocturnx We ghost nearly every pc we work on here. Doesn't hurt to be cautious and have an image to fall back on. Just throw in a copy of windows pe, map your network drive, load up ghost, create image, save it to the file server. Also great for backing up possible show-stoppers such as the payroll machine, x-label machine, and other business dependent machines. You may want to do this with customers machines that require retooling of the registry, virus removal, or such. Usually takes a half-hour to 45 mins. and 3+ gigs to ghost a machine though. And if you got the storage you could also offer that as a service, so if their harddrive fails you can just throw their image on a new one and they are good to go.

I don't know how to "ghost" a hard drive, is there anywhere that i can look that provides like step by step so i could learn easily?

If anyone can give me any more tips for things like ghosting and what not that could be useful on my journey I'd greatly appreciate it.

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by Chazell29 I don't know how to "ghost" a hard drive, is there anywhere that i can look that provides like step by step so i could learn easily? If anyone can give me any more tips for things like ghosting and what not that could be useful on my journey I'd greatly appreciate it.

"Ghosting a drive" should really be "cloning a drive"...Ghost refers to Norton Ghost, a hard drive cloning program. Most of us here us Acronis True Image instead of Norton Ghost.

Most of the hard drive manufacturer's have a hard drive cloning program as part of their hard drive utilities. You can usually download the package at their web site.

There are tons of tutorials on the net that cover cloning a hard drive. Google is your friend.

Cricket

[nocturnx]

Heres something I found real quick that will give you the general idea of what ghost is. You can google "norton ghost tutorial" for more info.

http://www.trap17.com/index.php/nort...ial_t9684.html
http://www.cyberanswers.org/norton_ghost.php

Basically it creates an image of the PC in its current state and allows you to restore to that exact state at a later time, in case something were to happen to the pc. Think windows xp restore only much more reliable, not to mention you would be surprised how many people that don't know better disable their system restore.

Edit: Like Cricket said there are several cloning programs out there that you can use. I am just using ghost as an example because that is what our comapany makes us use (corporate licensed on our file server). I can say that it is very reliable and easy to use from experience.

[piasabird]

I was copying one hard drive to another once at home and copied the empty drive to the full drive. Poof it was all gone.

[jer888]

Once you turn 18, won't you have to get a business license? Like I mean, you can't do it under the table forever (right?)

[thefultonhow]

Originally Posted by jer888 Once you turn 18, won't you have to get a business license? Like I mean, you can't do it under the table forever (right?)

I'm 21 and still doing it under the table.

[glc]

You can keep doing it under the table till someone reports you or a liability issue appears.

[Chazell29]

Oh wow, I didn't even know you'd have to get a license if it was in home. I guess I should start googling the Legal information so i don't get sued and screwed over =/