My seven year old PC, has stopped working correctly. I have done all I can with my limited knowledge and now I’m considering having an expert look at it.
However there is private information on the hard-drive that I wouldn’t want anyone else to have access to. Is there any means to provide the PC for the expert to have a look at without them potentially having access to my private data? I can’t just remove the hard-drive because surely they’d need that to operate the PC?
Thanks in advance. 
If you are able - back it up to another drive and delete it. You could password protect the folder but that is not very secure.
Depends on how private private is, you obviously are concerned but that does not equate that they are interested in it.
My first consideration in something like this to consider a new computer. Your computer is 7 years old, and may have additional life, however computers are not that expensive and instead of spending money on repairing a old computer, it may be better to put that towards a new computer. Also realize the time you may spend preparing it for repair (considering your request), perhaps taking it there, perhaps needing to take it back if something was not fixed right, and resetting it up and then dealing with whatever method you used to secure your data.
Another aspect is getting someone you trust. Typically you can bring it somewhere to a company, such as Staples, and hand it over for their experts to do whatever they do. You can also most likely find some people in the neighborhood that will come to your home to fix it, usually word of mouth or a ad somewhere will let you know of them. Which one is more trustworthy, that’s your call, having the computer at your home does give you more of a degree of control.
The final comment is perhaps it’s time to look at your methods of storing your data to remove this problem in the future. Change the method, perhaps store sensitive data on a USB external hard drive that can be disconnected if the computer needs servicing is just one of many suggestions. Something like this is made easier with the new computer option as you can set it up as you mean to go forward.
It’s a seven year old PC. Buy a new PC, buy a removable hard drive case, pull the hard drive out of the old one, put it in the case, mount it in the new one, copy off all the files you need, then throw out the old PC.
A thought just occurred to me: try renaming your private files to something innocuous.
A criminally-minded technician might be tempted to open your excell file labelled “Bank info.xls”.
He probably won’t glance twice at it if you re-name it to “file12j.dat”.
And in the future–use an external disk for private stuff.
Thanks for the suggestions everyone. Yes, its mostly financial details and things like that, not stuff that the person repairing it would come across unless they were specifically looking for it I suppose.
The PC is seven years old but I’ve stuck quite a few new components in it over time and thought there might be a bit of life in it yet. A new PC is probably the way to go and keeping sensitive information on external drives in future.
Lesson learned, and thanks again.
it’s seven years old, which means the tech is at least eight. I’d probably recommend buying a new one, depending your needs and finances.
FWIW, I’ve been fixing computers for people for 20+ years and I honestly don’t give a crap what they’ve got on there. In my experience, people usually only get paranoid over their financial info, which is pretty useless to most others, or personally embarrassing porn. Assuming your system works at all, or that you can boot it with a live CD or thumb drive, copy off your worrisome files, securely delete them and then send out the machine for repair.
there is nothing wrong with keeping a computer running for as long as you want it to, if you accept the performance and cost. you can also do things like reinstall the operating system, after saying all your data and installed stuff, to get some improvement some of the time.
keeping an external copy of all important data is important all the time. computer hard drives can fail at any time.
Don’t buy a new computer unless you need a new computer (or, of course, want something new).
Do you game? Need to run GTA V on its highest settings? Do lots of video or other editing that needs a lot more processing power than you have? Or are you using it for relatively mundane tasks like web browsing and video streaming? If the latter, good tech from five to seven years ago with a few upgrades (which it sounds like you’ve done) does everything you need and upgrading to a new machine will have low marginal benefits.
Can you move from a regular HDD to a solid state drive? Vast improvement there. Have you dropped in 12+ GB of RAM? Another large improvement, especially if you tend to open a lot of tabs. There’s a time and a place for all new hardware, but the days of *needing *to upgrade every three to four years have long been over.
It was slowing down and freezing on me regularly for a while now, then one morning it just wouldn’t boot up at all. After some attempts at self repair it now gives one long and three short beeps on power on and a blank screen, the internet says thats a memory problem but I’ve hit a brick wall trying to fix it. So unfortunately that’s not an option.
I mostly use it just for normal online activities, I don’t stream videos though. The mood for gaming tends to strike me, lasts for a while, then disappears (usually coinciding with summer and winter oddly enough), but it doesn’t have to be a ninja gaming machine.
Thanks for the ideas, but I can’t consider a SSD or more RAM until I get it working unfortunately. A new PC sounds better and better, I have an OK laptop to keep me online in the meantime.
Staples and experts are two words I would studiously avoid using in the same sentence.
Your average computer tech could care less about the content of your files. We are far more focused on your startup list and the integrity of your boot processes.
I have access to mountains of sensitive financial data in the line of doing business. We occasionally stumble upon some home porn, but in the grand scheme of things its nothing to worry about we really dont care, and we usually charge less. 
The only time anything would be discussed is if my staff stumbled upon evidence of something major (child abuse/porn, murder, kidnapping, other epic felony grade stuff)
Some of the worst criminals imaginable could have given his pc to your average computer tech with every scrap of evidence needed to convict him and 99.9% it would slide right by us without notice.
We work in your doctors office, your CPA, your therapist, etc. Our record as a profession, though far from spotless, is pretty solid.
If it’s a memory problem, they’re going to replace the memory, and memory for older computers tends to be more expensive. Plus you have to pay for their time. I could see it being $75 or so, at least. Is that enough for you to consider looking getting into a new computer?
As for your question about private data–it’s not going to be a problem if you go somewhere remotely reputable. But, if you’re worried, you could always get one of those USB cases for internal hard drives, pull it out, hook it up to your laptop, and backup and then securely delete the files with a free program like Eraser.
I agree with this. There is no point into putting money into a 7 year old computer. A new computer that will function much better than a 7 year old computer can be had for around $250. A refurbished one can be had for less.
But if things still work that way then new tech is at least one more year old than when you buy it.
So since the store tech is a year out of date forever he is the same amount out of date, not extra out of date.
The rules dont go bisexual, just one sexual. year older both ways or not year older both ways.
Men or Women, you can’t liek both.
WTF? If he buys a new PC, the tech is only a year old at most. If he fixes his computer, which is seven years old, then the tech is eight years out of date. One of these things is not like the other.
8 years for the old one years for the new. 8-1=7.
He will be seven years behind market, not 8.
It is ARTHIMITIEKC
Sorry, I flunked ARTHIMITIEKC. Maths is too hard.
Now you know. GI JOE!!!
No POST or BIOS messages? Pull the memory chips and see if you get different results. If not, it’s not a memory issue and more likely a motherboard or power supply problem.