What are the must have computer repair items

[coollll068]

Hello! I am starting to piece together a computer repair business focusing solely on house calls. I wanted to know what I should include in my kit or if anyone here does PC repair as a buisness waht do you include?

 

Should I take Assortments or ram? 

Blank HD?

A Flash with OS on them ?

Laptop Power Cables ?

 

Any help at all would be greatly appreciated

[SeanAngelo]

1 minute ago, coollll068 said:

Hello! I am starting to piece together a computer repair business focusing solely on house calls. I wanted to know what I should include in my kit or if anyone here does PC repair as a buisness waht do you include?

 

Should I take Assortments or ram? 

Blank HD?

A Flash with OS on them ?

Laptop Power Cables ?

 

Any help at all would be greatly appreciated

spare ram, ddr3 and ddr4 or ddr2 depending how old their system is.

a usb stick with OS (charge them for it lul)

[8-Bit Ninja]

cheap gpu like a gtx 610 is a good idea, for pc's that don't have on board video and your unsure if the graphics card is dead 

[Xizerz]

a screwdriver

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Xizerz said:

a screwdriver

 

[DocSwag]

Screwdriver, probably some adapters, usb stick (probably should get one with ubuntu on it, useful for helping clean out virus infected computers), maybe an external cd drive, perhaps a prier thing of sorts, and perhaps one of those usb sticks that can remove the password from a windows account.

[Guest]

Magnetic screwdriver.

this:

http://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html
 

I agree with a potential linux os on USB. Maybe if you can get windows on a flash drive as well. 

 

Whatever link in the description of this video corresponds with the product associated:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_JIhn3vJVI

 

[SCHISCHKA]

get some ex lease pc for renting out

[tlink]

a usb stick with usefull programs such as a good antivirus and malwarebytes, preferably a read only one so you don't go spreading a virus to all your customers. another usb stick with a bootable linux distro. a disk with hitman pro on it, a disk with kaspersky TDSS kiler on it. some laptop HDD's they are easy to carry and work on laptops and desktops. something that can clone a drive to another so you don't have to deal with it. laptop and desktop ram, ddr 2 and up lpddr2 and up. maybe a spare laptop power brick.

[Daniel644]

External USB optical disc drive incase the internal drive is dead or non-existant, a stack of discs with different utilities (it may be possible to load these to flash drives but I have them on disc so I don't bother) like memtest86 and trinity rescue disc also various versions of Windows for reloading the OS if need be, and a screw driver for removing, installing parts. i've also got a 2.5" hdd enclosure to convert internal sata drives to an external for data recovery when the old PC is dead and transitioning to a new one.

[Xizerz]

in all honesty though, I interned for a computer repair shop, and 89% of my time was spent on upgrading old people's antiviruses

when you do need to actually repair stuff, we mostly used a screwdriver, but when troubleshooting we had 2 pc's that we knew all the parts worked for and we would swap parts out of it with the parts we were testing

also canned air or an air pressurizer is a must, every pc you work on will have dust in it

we also clean off people's keyboards and screens mostly because we didn't want to touch it, but also because it got them to come back

a list of things I reccomend:

thermal paste

multiple usb sticks with OS installers on them

ide>sata and sata>ide converters

spare system(s)

easy access to ethernet

usb hard drive connectors (ide & sata)

spare ram

spare hard drives

external cd drive

cd's with useful bootable programs duch as disk testing and stuff

these are thenings that I used multiple times when I interned for a summer, and you may find them useful as well

[Xizerz]

1 minute ago, Xizerz said:

"89% of my time"

I could've sworn I typed 90%

[Guest]

Duct Tape. You never know

[XenosTech]

Have spares for everything. (I literally have a box with spares, accumulated over the years)

[SpaceGhostC2C]

PSU tester. Save time troubleshooting non-working systems without carrying an expensive and heavy spare. 

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, Xizerz said:

 

also canned air or an air pressurizer is a must, every pc you work on will have dust in it

 

spare system(s)

 

for first line JayZTwoCents fixed a PC by just cleaning out the dust,

And for the second line, a Raspberry Pi with a wall adaptor might not be a bad idea. Assuming you know how to utilize it. 

[mariushm]

A CD or bootable usb stick with memtest86 to test memory modules for errors, an IDE hard drive with an OS in it, maybe an optical drive (ide/sata) because older computers may not boot from usb, maybe an ide to sata bridge adapter thingie (can convert ide to sata or the other way around) which can help if you want to plug your sata hard drive into a system that has only ide (maybe to save users' files before formatting and reinstalling the operating system)

A laptop, maybe an usb to sata/ide  ... sometimes it helps to remove the hard drive and plug it into your laptop where you have an antivirus, makes it easier to scan and get rid of viruses.

A crossover cable for older computers that have only 100mbps network cards. A regular network cable can be used if both computers have 1 gbps ports.

Sometimes you need to transfer important files user  has to a hard drive and maybe it only has usb 2 ports or it's just not possible to install a hard drive in that computer. You can set up a ftp server on your laptop , make a connection between laptop and old computer and transfer with at least 12 MB/s (100mbps) or ~ 120 MB/s ... usb 2.0 ports may only give you 10-30 MB/s

Spare DDR3 and DDR4 memory sticks, maybe a ps2 keyboard, maybe a PCI video card which could be useful in case user screwed up a bios update (in some extreme cases, only the PCI and ps2 keyboard connectors work and ide/sata so you (you can quickly burn a cd/dvd-rw on your laptop with the bios file and make the cd bootable with a freedos image or something like that)

A good digital multimeter, maybe a couple of 92 or 120 mm fans to replace broken fans in power supplies.  Some thermal paste, maybe a can of compressed air.

Lots of the typical screws  found in computers (us 6/32 , metric m3 ) , sata cables (sometimes the contacts oxidize) , isopropyl alcohol and some cotton tips, cotton, whatever basically stuff to clean contacts with)

 

[TheMidnightNarwhal]

22 minutes ago, mariushm said:

A CD or bootable usb stick with memtest86 to test memory modules for errors,

I don't think you got time for that when you're at a client's house IMO

[TetraSky]

-2 or 3 universal laptop power adapter. Never know when one dies, good to have spares, especially if you have multiple clients at once.

-PSU testers, because being able to say the PSU is dead in 5 seconds can save you a few precious minutes that you would've wasted trying to see if the cables were all plugged properly.

-Motherboard testers, the kind that essentially show you a POST code so you can know why it's not booting.

-Spare RAM.

-Spare HDD.

-Spare parts really, all the parts. Except maybe motherboard and CPU. Can't have a client wait 3 weeks until you get that newegg order of a PSU for them.

-Spare cables (HDMI/VGA/DVI), a cable can die, good to have extras.

-Bootable USBs of the various Windows installs. You can get those AIO type of ISOs if you don't want to have 50 USB drives. Activate them with the key provided by the client. (often found on the side of the case, under, or in the bios... some softwares can fetch the key from an existing install)

-External optical drives. 2 or 3 of them.

-High capacity backup storage, so you can backup the install discs of the various HP/ACER/etc.. laptops/desktops that are bought over to you. This allow you to quickly and easily reinstall an OS for regular clients. (You shouldn't always just do a fresh install of Windows, since that's technically considered bad as you prevent your clients from potentially being able to restore their PCs themselves)

-Blank CDs/DVDs to burn said backups for client (for a fee!)

-Softwares to test the computers.

 

 

And more... This is basically what I got from my time at FutureShop (essentially BestBuy really...). For softwares we used something called "MRI", which runs outside of windows and did everything from testing every components, virus scans, cleaning temp files, fixing registry, etc etc...  There really need to be an open source software that can do all that... unfortunately, last I checked, that wasn't a thing, because that was VERY useful and saved a ton of time.

[Spookshow]

1 hour ago, tlink said:

. a disk with hitman pro on it,

Lol

[tlink]

3 minutes ago, Spookshow said:

Lol

not the game lol, this one

https://www.hitmanpro.com/en-us/hmp.aspx

[Spookshow]

5 hours ago, tlink said:

not the game lol, this one

https://www.hitmanpro.com/en-us/hmp.aspx

Well I thought you were slipping the game into there.  I am going to continue thinking you ment the game for more lols

[mad dudy]

get this https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00TDJ4BJU/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

pop a SSD in it, then put all your ISO, on it. then chose which ISO you want to install. no need for 5 flash drives.

also condoms just in case someone is horny.

[Spookshow]

Ohhhhhhh I likey

7 hours ago, mad dudy said:

get this https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00TDJ4BJU/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

pop a SSD in it, then put all your ISO, on it. then chose which ISO you want to install. no need for 5 flash drives.

also condoms just in case someone is horny.

 

[Rambo3456]

Get a lot of different versions of windows cds like 8.1 and 7 and 10 that's all I would get also you can charge people for you to activate windows with your product key if you want to do so also get a lot of thermal paste you will use it a lot