What is a fair price to tune up a pc?
Question by : What is a fair price to tune up a pc?
I’ve gotten several prices for having a pc cleanup, and i’m interested in what others think.
Price 1 for a person to come to my home is a flat fee of $ 50.00 (cheapest I found for inperson)
Price 2 is for a remote (online) cleaning for around $ 35 1hr min.
The other prices were way above this, they were by the hour, which was about $ 90/hr.
the tune-up is to clean my pc looking for reg problems and or viruses/spyware
Best answer:
Answer by smartass
Do it yourself , they are obviously using freeware to save costs that you could download yourself from www.download.com
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Comments
wow that is rediculous. you can get registry mechanic and it does a really good job. that is what i use. it is a paid version. it can be run on your system but to fix over a certain amout of problem you’ll have to pay for it. on one system i worked on, i found 848 problems with the registry. i redone a few system totaly and founr like 54 problem before even using it. ig you have DSL or Cable internet, i recommend using prevx1 for your scanning. you can get it free for a trial time that is the full version not a partial. shoot me an email and i can help you out with the registered version of regisrty mechanic. links below for both downloads..
The online cleaning will likely take far longer than one hour and probably won’t actually help much. Someone really has to actually be sitting at the computer to fully diagnose whatever problems it might be having. I’m not sure what these things are generally priced at, but if I didn’t know how to do it myself, I would probably pay the $50, although it’s a bit of a ripoff. All the tech is going to do is run a regular virus scanner (that you can download), run a spyware scanner (again, there are free ones out there), and run a registry scanner (plenty of free ones to be found).
If you want, you can do it yourself. For viruses, try either:
Antivir Personal Edition http://www.free-av.com/ or
AVG http://www.grisoft.com/doc/1/lng/us/tpl/tpl01 (there’s a free version somewhere on the site)
For spyware:
AdAware SE Personal http://www.lavasoftusa.com/products/ad-aware_se_personal.php
For registry:
CCleaner http://www.ccleaner.com/
If you do all that and still have problems, you may have something more serious like a rootkit. In that case, you would want to hire a tech and tell them specifically to check for rootkits if they weren’t going to do it anyway.
im not trying to advertise this product in any way, i just think that it will help with your problem and will be free 
you shouldnt have to pay anything… just install and run ccleaner. it should get rid of some viruses, spyware/malware and anyother junk. if you dont have anti-virus software, download it from comcast.net if you have comcast cable becuase it comes free when you have comcast. if you dont the comcast, i would suggest buying norton anti-virus (symantec)
download ccleaner from http://www.ccleaner.com
go into safe mode before you scan.. i would suggest printing these instructions out…. to go into safe mode you have to restart your computer and hit f8 a couple of times when your computer is starting up. then pick safe mode from the list using the arrow keys and enter, then once you log on, run the scan as instructed below.
how to run a scan of your computer using ccleaner
1) open ccleaner (from the icon on your desktop)
2) click the little link on the bottom right labeled “check for updates now…” and download the newest version if you dont already have it.
3) there are 3 scans you can do. 2 of them are to free up disk space and the other one is used to fix issues on your computer in what is called a registry
4) for the 2 that free up disk space click cleaner on the left. then click windows (on the top of the list) then click run cleaner (bottom right)
5) for the other scan that cleans disk space click applications (above the list in cleaner) then click run cleaner at the bottom right
6) to fix issues,the most important one, that should be done regularly. click issues on the left, and click scan for issues on the bottom right. After it is done scanning, it will ask you if you want to back up your registry. Click yes and save it to a place that you will remember where it is (i would suggest making a new folder in my documents called “ccleaner backup”) Then puting all of your backups in there. Then click fix all selected issues
I disagree with the people above, I don’t think you should do it yourself. I also don’t recommend spending any money unless you are sure it is spyware/viruses. Now if you where just trying to get the speed up and having no problems then doing it yourself is an option. There is absolutely no way to get rid of viruses and spyware today unless you know what you are doing, they are too complicated and too deeply rooted. I personally don’t think cleaning up your registry will do anything but again, do not do this yourself or using a tool you downloaded. It is very easy to completely destroy your operating system by playing around with the registry and not knowing what you are doing.
The best thing you can do is back up your data and reformat/reinstall windows. Not only is this solution free but the results are guaranteed.
Don’t waste money on them. PC is not a car, you can easily do it yourself!!
ccleaner, ieprivacy
Registry seeker
spybot search & destroy
you can also defragment pc yourself.
Even you let people touch your pc, there is no guarantee you will no problem again.
don’t waste your money