PC Maintanence Question

[garyu69]

pologies if this is in the wrong forum. Not sure where to put it.


A friend of mine has had trouble with their PC, lots of problems, Slowdown, extra.
They are not the most computer literate in the world so seeked help.

I offered as much help as i could by giving some programs to get most of the **** out. But there was still problems so i suggested getting someone who is trained properly to give it a good look at.

So she asked around work and this bloke said he would have a look at it.

He has and came to the conclusion that it was a problem with Win XP Home edition that Tiny had installed which they also added a lot of other crap that slowed it down. He also said that he found 13 viruses and that he had spent 11 hours doing all this. These 11 hours will include loading new software back on.

He has got back to her with a price and has said £35 for first hour and then £15 for each hour after.
Thats £185 in total.

Now i don't know how much people would charge for this but that seems rather expensive.

Can anyone tell me if this is over charged and if this would have really taken him 11 hours.

Because i would have thought that could have easily been done in a few hours.
If anyone works in PC repair / Maintanence your thoughts would be appreciated.

[wolfie27]

Hi Gary,

This is clearly far too long to spend on removing viruses, and maybe clearing the startup of the system configuration utility, it would have been quicker to back all data up, fdisk the hard drive and reinstall windows, the drivers and all the other software that is used.
depending on the spec of the machine this would still only take about two hours to do.
As far as removing viruses, companys such as symantec, trend etc write virus removal tools for any viruses that cant be removed by a simple scan to make our jobs easier.

[not important]

11 hours is a lot of time to do what you said. With an online virus scan and some other virus searching and cleaning, I can do a low level format and reinstall XP and all of my required junk in 4 to 5 hrs.

[james8547]

11 hrs. seems a bit too much. Did the guy fell asleep when he was formatting the drive and forgot to wake up?

When I'm diagnosing PCs for friends, I check to see if I can fix his system in 3 hrs. If it's going to take more than that, I ask them if I can re-format the drive. I usually have the drive formatted, OS and drivers installed in 2 hrs. I even re-partitioned the HDs.

[reboot]

After the first 10 minutes of diagnosis, it would be obvious that it's beyond reasonable fixing.
I would then have recommended a wipe and reinstall.
Total about 3 hours or less.
11 hours is total BS. One could purchase another computer for the price of a "fix".

[Panama Red]

First off, welcome to PC Mech! I agree with everyone else that the time charged is excessive. However, I have spent a long time on a machine trying to solve a weird problem when I know I'm going to reformat and install the os over. But if I choose to do that, it's for my own education. I don't ask the owner to pay for my "tinker time". Sounds like that's what is being done to your friend. Either the repair guy isn't as sharp as he promotes himself to be or he's just out to gouge someone less knowledgeable than he. I quote people $50 for a "restoration" whether it involves virus removal, reformattting or whatever. How long I chose to make it is then up to me. Since it's a hobby and not my only source of income, I can tinker if I choose.

[wolfie27]

That sounds fair panama

[mattbell]

Far to long what was the guy doing, iv worked on computers in similar situations and had that lot done within 3 hours!

Matt

[jr.delgiorno]

I can implant a Bi Ventricular Defibrillator, Test it, and follow up with the patient in less time than it took this guy to trouble shoot that computer. Way to long.