Advise me about my PC repair idea....

In My Humble Opinion
1

Okay, sorry about the insane amount of thread I’ve started lately, but I’ve been thinking of this stuff for a while.

I’ve been working with a friend who repairs computers for a living. He makes a lot of money doing things that I know how to do, and I am really interested in not only helping him out, but finding new ways to do things that would enable me to get a job when I go to Denmark in order to sell my skills.

My idea is this. Luckily computer repair is a local thing in most places, so I know you guys won’t steal my ideas and screw me! But from my friend’s experience, most problems are due to spyware and viruses. Especially among those who are young and download music, etc.

My friend’s method is to remove the disc and scan it as an external drive in order to speed things up. Most people around here do things on the actual computer by installing anti-virus on the actual computer and doing it there. The quickest they offer is one week turnaround or in some cases even a MONTH. Well my friend offers next day turnaround in some (software) cases. He works hard, but he makes a lot of money.

Well, he is my friend, and I visit him a lot, and I know a lot about hardware and software too, so I try to help him think of new ways to improve his business. One day I caught wind of BartPE on Slashdot, and I mentioned it to him. I think this could help a lot. BartPE takes a Windows install disk and makes a bootdisk that is similar to windows with a lot of apps to fix things. Plus it has VNC and you can install custom plugins like Norton antivirus, etc.

My idea was this. Create a BartPE .iso with all of the necessary cleaning progs like antivirus and anti-spyware. Then boot each PC with wireless networking (easily possible with SP2 and cheap USB wireless network antennaes) and work on multiple PCs via VNC. This seems very efficient to me. Firstly you have each PC scanning themselves, being booted to a CD that prevents any spyware or viruses from interfering with the scan (because it is on a CD) and you don’t need one computer to provide any kind of “safe scan” because through this procedure you don’t need to worry.

BTW BartPE is totally configurable. You can add almost any program that you like to the disc that would enable you to do this.

Then I started thinking again… Maybe thinking isn’t a good thing for me :smiley: But why not offer SAME DAY turnaround for those that have only virus and spyware problems. According to my friend this makes up around 90 percent of all problems anyway. I was thinking of this. It could be very lucrative if it works.

Picture this: Random clueless PC user calls in with spyware problems. You tell them, “Well, I can offer a same-day turnaround for spyware and virus if that is the problem. What I’ll do is go by your house and give you a CD. All you have to do is reboot your PC with the CD in and I’ll do the rest. If your problem isn’t fixed, then I’ll have to take it in for further fixing, which will take longer.” You give them your personalized version of BartPE with your apps installed. In this BartPE installation you have a link to a webpage in the startup folder that goes to a webpage that tracks IP addresses among other things. Oh, I forgot, a requirement is that the person has broadband, but where I’m going (denmark) broadband isn’t much of a problem, as almost everyone has it. So anyway, you look on your webpage and you get their IP address. You then see it. You then connect via VNC. Then you can fix their computer remotely, offering the perfect service.

Here are the problems that I have.

IPs. Firstly, not all IP addresses resove correctly. Secondly, what if the person is in a netowork where several computers share the same IP address. Is there any way I can manage to get access to thier computer via VNC? Say I get a client to put in the boot disk and they are on a network for their house which has a single conection to the internet? How can I manage to connect? Anyone have any ideas?

Booting…Obviously not every computer boots to the CD first. I don’t know what portion of new computers boot to the CD first, so I have no clue. Its a good question though.

Thirdly, what do I do about my hard-earned diagnostics and repair CD that I hand out so freely? Obviously I would try to diagnose the problem as software/not software before I gave out the CD, but what could I do to prevent someone from using the CD for their own purposes? Ok obviously the average PC user would have problems figuring all of that out to begin with. I mean why would they be calling someone else to fix it? Ths stuff isn’t that hard, unless you don’t know that much about it. Obviously I could ask for the CD back, but that doesn’t prevent someone from copying it. On the other hand, the virus definitions would be out of date, which would make the CD obsolete after a while. And then they would have to know how to use the apps on the CD which wouldn’t be easy either.

Anyway, what do you think the likelyhood of being able to fix a PC that I earlier diagnosed as spyware-related on the phone? With this system of the boot CD and VNC? If they had fast internet, and only spyware/virus problems, then it could be easy, offereing a very fast turnaround. This would obviously help anybody I worked for.

Any ideas about how my idea is lacking or need improvement?

2

You’re assuming that the end user will follow the instructions, and that you will be able to help them easily.

Unfortunately, many people who cannot deal with spyware and virus problems in the first place are not going to be able to follow your instructions. “All you have to do is reboot your PC” might as well be written in binary for some, and these are the customers who need you the most.

Good luck, however, and those are some good ideas.

3

IMO if someone has enough tech savvy to remote run your disk and config their PC for remote networking they will most likely not need you. Assuming frustrated PC users in Europe are the same as in the US people are generally willing to pay you for hands on “make it go away”, not more (to them) frustating fiddling with the machine.

I’ve played with enough PCs that I would never, ever promise one day turnaround. There’s (in my experience) often some oddball crap or driver issue that takes time to resolve. Your friend has the right idea with the remote disk clean as being time efficient. If you can get proficient at popping hard drives in and out quickly this is an excellent idea.

4

If you’re relying on remote access you’re going to have all sorts of issues with hardware firewalls blocking your VNC ports.

Also, payment could be an issue. People won’t want to pay upfront for the disk/service as you haven’t fixed the problem yet, but getting money from them post-fix is could be a pain in the ass.

Whatever you do, get yourself a lawyer and make up an iron-clad waiver regarding data loss and damage. Some turkey will do something wrong, or their hard drive will choose that minute to die, and you’ll be blamed for the data loss. Protect yourself by getting clients to sign a waiver stating that they are responsible for their own data backups, etc etc.

5

Oh regarding CD loss… if it’s your intention that every user will have internet access, give each CD a unique identifier and have the CD call home and authenticate through the internet. You could easily control the which CDs are active.

Watch out that you make it clear you’re selling the automated service and remote support, and not the applications itself. Most EULAs don’t like it when you charge for freeware.

6

Would giving out that sort of CD be legal? Couldn’t someone make a copy of it and have all those programs plus windows xp? I don’t know what exactly this BartPE does, so this may not be the case.

7

One of the things the customers pay for is not having to mess with their own machine. In many cases the customer is ready to throw the machine out a fourth floor window; asking them to do anything is a bad idea. They want their problems to be solved by someone else with no effort on their part. That’s what they pay the big money for.

If, in the customer’s view, what they get is a disk they have to screw with, then what you’re competing with is an off-the-shelf copy of Symantic AntiVirus – it’s the same to the customer; they get a CD, they have to do some stuff, and it’s supposed to be fixed afterwards. Much better that you give the customer some face time.

Besides, while you’re trying to use VNC on their machine, who knows what the customer is doing to it? He could decide he needs to use the web and start opening browser windows and surfing porn while you’re trying to get him disinfected.

8

well, I suppose I was a little unclear. The idea was to say to the customer: Okay, I’ll drop this CD by your house. Either you can do this or I can do this for your. Just put the CD in the drive and reboot it to my BartPE operating system. Then I’ll fix it remotely.
But yeah, the big problem is users behind firewalls or shared internet connections. That probably won’t work. Its a good idea, but I doubt that it would be feasable.

As far as the difficulty goes? Just tell them to put the cd in the drive and restart the PC. How hard is that? Either that or go to their house and do it for them and tell them not to touch it until I’m done at which point I can put a text message on the screen which explains what to do (eg, take out the CD and restart the PC).

9

There are already businesses that send out engineers to fix the problem without taking the PC away. Some quote averages of less than 2 hours billed time to fix the average PC problem. I was reading recently about a young guy who wants to franchise his home support company. He has tons of techies on his books who visit people at home to fix viruses and adware, recover data, install upgrades and hardware. The guy running the business makes a percentage of every visit he books.

How would you compete with this level of service?

10

This level of immediately available service may be available in some urban US areas, but in a lot of the US it’s still a “bring it in model” for out of warranty service. The OP is in a foreign country.

11

Also, its a little silly to suggest that you can’t top this guy…

By the way, what’s his website? :smiley:

But really, there are at least three different companies that fixed computers in my University town in the US. My friend, whom I helped a lot, gets all the business he can handle. The amount of money he makes is pretty darn good considering how he is working alone. But even his methods are inefficient.

In any case, I’ll be using BartPE to do it anyway. If, for some reason, remote repairing isn’t possible, then I’ll just call them and tell them I need to pick it up. Or I could do an on-site analysis of their network and then either take it with them, or simply boot up BartPE. I could leave and then fix multiple computers at once at my computer.

In either case, I think my technique, would be good. That is the BartPE using VNC idea. The other two businesses in town simply install scanning software on the PC and then remove it when it’s done. But I could bring all of the computers that I wanted to fix in to the base of operations. Then you plug in a wireless USB antenna in and put the BartPE CD in each computer. Then you boot it up. Get on your main computer, and use VNC to switch between each one and start fixing things. It allows you to bypass the problems of trying to fix a computer from its own OS while allowing you to avoid the problems of trying to get every computer hooked up. Its just a way to speed things up.

But the idea I mentioned in this OP wasn’t necessarily meant to be something that would work for everyone. But most people would rather not have a stranger in their house fixing their computer for two plus hours. I could say to them upfront, "A lot of problems are due to spyware and viruses, and I think that is likely the problem with your computer (if I think this is true). It is possible that it can all be fixed today if I repair it remotely. All you have to do is leave your computer alone until a screen comes up saying its done. It will probably be done in x ammount of time.

When I am finished, I would then put a copy of VNC server in the startup folder.

At this point it gets tricky. I can’t think of a way to reboot in to their actual OS because the CD is always in the drive, and if you reboot with an ejected disk, then the computer will put it back in… and then it wold boot bartPE again. This is the only flaw that I can see, because I would need to have the person remove the CD to let me finish.

Then I could go to their OS using VNC and install adaware, and other free stuff to help protect them in the future. I could also install service packs, etc. When I’m all done, I’d display a page with some general computer protection information and then remove VNC server.

As far as someone getting a useable copy of windows, they’d have to somehow hack BartPE, and if they knew how to do that, they wouldn’t be using me.