Cleaning up a neighbor's PC-What to bring?

So, this is my first time fixing someone else's pc. They just want me to make it "faster". Should i burn the programs like Spybot and stuff to a cd? Any tools? I am used to just grabbing stuff from around the house.

Thanks.

Spybot, SpywareBlaster, HijackThis!, a reg cleaner, AVG antivirus...that should get a lot of it.

1. Most of the junk is going to be internet junk. I'd scan with AVG even if they have something like Norton installed...the last computer I checked had 4 trojans that Norton was oblivious to. Clean out Internet cache/history, kill everything with Spybot, immunize with Spybot and Spywareblaster (booting into safe mode after installing updates is good) and clean up with HijackThis.

2. I'd also turn off the majority of the Windows display enhancements...get rid of menus that fade out and such. I pretty much turn off everything but the last four in that list. Decreasing menushowdelay in the registry to about 150 also makes the PC "feel" faster.

3. After all that, run the Windows Disk Cleanup thing, maybe manually delete some temp files, and defrag it. If it's a single user, disable the Terminal Services service...that gets rid of a lot of pointless (for a single user) services. I usually defrag last and ask them to just let it finish defragging because it takes a while.

4. Collect money. $50 is nice, I charged $60 when I found 32 virii.

You know, i have NEVER used Hijackthis. A)Becuase i never needed to. B)I heard it is complicated with the logs. Is there anywhere i can figure out how to use it? Or wiill i be able to interpete the log?

jack222 said:

You know, i have NEVER used Hijackthis. A)Becuase i never needed to. B)I heard it is complicated with the logs. Is there anywhere i can figure out how to use it? Or wiill i be able to interpete the log?

Click to expand...

You should be able to interpret it if you dont know what the program is/does. look for it on there computer first to see if they actually use it ect... But most have pretty suspicous names so they will sort of jump out at you, Id suggest only use it if you cant get rid of something with the other tools.

AVG Antivirus, Spybot, Crap Cleaner, alot of time, and some asprin.

Prepare for the worst, if you're out of your element with a limited amount of tools, if it can break and it requires a tool you don't have, it will break. (at least for me anyway).

Make sure you know how to use msconfig and services.msc. But I would imagine if your hanging around the lot of us you would know that.

Don't forget something like Norton Ghost. It's best to make an image of their hard drive just in case something goes wrong. I remember once or twice I cleaned a virus out + ad-ware and my system wouldn't boot so, it's just nice to have something to fall back on, especially when it's not your computer.

You know, i have NEVER used Hijackthis. A)Becuase i never needed to. B)I heard it is complicated with the logs.

Click to expand...

I always find stuff with HijackThis that doesn't get cleaned by Spybot or Adaware. Those cleaners don't seem to cover some of the redirects and extra ads that HijackThis can get rid of. I've seen several systems that I could only completely fix using HijackThis.

Well, I have a CD that I burned with lots of stuff. As much as possible, I run stuff in safe mode so that I don't see the crap that people have to mess up a proper cleaning. However, after that, I still run everything under a regular boot just to make sure.

For clean-up I start with antivirus progs:

Avast and Stinger find the stuff that regular progs that people insist on spending money on seem to be oblivious to.

After that, I go for the spyware:

Spybot, Spyware Sweeper and AdAware all need to be run (sometime several times) to clean out the junk. However, even all three sometimes miss stuff. For that I use

CWShredder and Hijack This! But be careful with Hijack This! As it removes every possible addon to IE. Some of them may be useful.

Once the computer is cleaned of the worst stuff, there are a bunch of different programs for registry cleaning. The easy ones don't take much out but are reasonably safe to use. The power cleaner type of program will get to anything that you can find but can take anything out and that can make your job much more complicated than it has to be.

I have Regedit32 and Regscrub. Between them you can either help or hurt the effort. Be careful which you do.

Then you can do any of the optimizations that are recommended here or in the stickies in the MS/OS and software forums.

If you want to do an even more complete job, you can use a program that will tell you what actual hardware in in the box (I use Sisoft Sandra) and make sure that the customer actually has the correct drivers.

Also, don't close your CD after you burn it as there are sure to be other programs that you will want to add later.

Finally, I would never OC a computer for a customer as I can't know what they do to it down the road. If they ask you to OC, I would tell them that the job you do should make any computer reasonably faster than it was before and pushing it farther is just asking for more trouble.

Also, you can find all the progs in this post and most of what anyone else recommends at www.majorgeeks.com

Bring a can of compressed air, and clean it out (outside) for them.

You can easily take out too much stuff with hijack this. However, if you tale a bit of time to read each line and only remove stuff that you are sure nobody needs, you should be good to go.

Mainly, I leave anything that is site specific (can't really help you on what that will be) and the 5 or 6 lines that are relevant to the google tool bar.

Speaking of which, I forgot to mention the google tool bar. Whatever browser they are using, there should be a version that you can use (google really only has it for IE afaik). If the customer is using any version of mozilla/firefox you can get a compatible tool from www.mozilla.org

I would never leave a computer without that as it has a pop-up blocker and it also gives the customer a great search tool (show them how to use it before you leave).

Just do what you would do on your own comp. like install FF and all Anti-virus proggies (Like the one's already mentioned)

When you leave say something like "If your friends/family have any problems, i'd be glad to help" and make sure to be polite and stuff and teach them how to update and not click pop ups and simple stuff like that

And the compressed air sounds good too.

My Steps:
1. Shut down the computer and start it back up too see how long it takes and what (if anything) pops up to start with.
2. Run Regedit and get rid of this folder: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VolumeCaches\Compress old files (the "Compress old files" folder entirely, not just what is in it). This makes that Windows Disk CleanUp run about 1000% faster!
3. Run MSCONFIG and shut off anything they don't use in the system tray.
4. Run MSCONFIG and shut off some of the services.
5. Spybot, System Mechanic 4 (the registry items) and then AVG.
6. Run Disk CleanUp
7. Turn off all those windows performance features.
8. Defrag and get paid $$~!!

The usual way I fix people's computers is formatting. It is so much easier to either have them drop it off at my house or for me to pick it up and format than it is to try and fix it (above). I have them only bring the tower (and the keyboard/mouse if they are non-standards -Wireless, -Bluetooth, -Multi-media). Most of the ones I fix/make faster are Dells, so the drivers are easily found, as well as BIOS updates.

I also clean out the interior too, organizing cables and such. I then take it back to their house and install the printers and scanners. I usually charge between $75-$150 depending on what I am doing, as well as recommending a RAM upgrade for usually less than $75 since Crucial.com rox!! People are always so much happier when I bring it back and it is like a brand new machine for under $200+/-.

Something I haven't tried before but want to soon is to install those programs to my FlashDrive. That way I can just run them from there. I don't know if it will work, but it is worth a shot. Also, since my FlashDrive is so big (512mb) I usually will backup their MyDocs folder just in case anything happens that I can't get back into Windows and have to format.

EDIT: If a computer is so badly filled with dust, have a vaccum cleaner handy. Turn it on and as you spray the can-o-air, the vaccum will suck all the dust that gets blasted around.

Nope. This is my mother's friends pc. :/

Well, I can tell you what's on my USB stick that I usually use at work (only works with WinME and up though).
Spyware tools:
- Adaware
- Spybot S&D
- Spyware Doctor
- Spy Sweeper
Anti-virus:
- Stinger
- AVG
Other:
- Aida 32
- Driver Cleaner Pro
- TweakNow Reg. Cleaner
- magical jellybean key finder

I also have a bunch of driver updates and Win updates on it, but those change all the time, so they're constantly being updated. In my CD wallet, I have http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/. I also have OEM versions of Windows, from 98 first edition to XP (Home and Pro), in french and english. I really don't think you'll have all those but, what ever you have bring with you. Client's tend to put things away and bury them under years of junk, and sometimes it'll take forever for them to find it while you sit around twiddling your thumbs. Screwdriver with interchangeable bits is also a good idea.

Well, i fixed up her pc's today. There were 2 cheap, 2 year old dell's. They were decent P-4's but both only had 256 ram. One machine even used RIMM.

But i basiclly did Malpine's routine, i put a norton antivirus 2005 on both machines and got 75$ for 2 easy hours of work.

Yodums said:

Don't forget something like Norton Ghost. It's best to make an image of their hard drive just in case something goes wrong. I remember once or twice I cleaned a virus out + ad-ware and my system wouldn't boot so, it's just nice to have something to fall back on, especially when it's not your computer.

Click to expand...

It's a licensed program,,,,not good

My favorite choices are all free, and all work very well.

1.CCleaner
2.Learn this, it helps. (http://www.compu-docs.com/indexdat.htm)
3.Tweak UI

There is another system/index.file cleaner, that is better than the above mentioned, just can't think of the name right off hand. It's starts with a "D", and I will update this once I get home to let you know exactly what it is.

Here ya go...

http://www.burzurq.com/forum/delindex.html

Delindex

badazz?

easy money rocks...

I got someone else in NY who wants me.

How do these fee's sound? 50$ for the first hour and 30$ for every hour after that.