Mike,

My absolute "last" resort in fixing someone else's computer is to
totally "nuke" it (as some of my customers put it). If I can't find the
so called "silver bullet", then I'm just overlooking something. The
better idea, in most cases is to just re-install Windows right over the
top of itself. This will replace anything that's missing, but will also
give you a chance to go through and "Tweak" the computer from a newly
installed point-of-view. This is also better, because all of the
information that was on the hard drive will still be there, thus,
happier customers!

One thing that I will point out, though, before re-installing Windows I
always remove any unnecessary programs.

   Tom

PS - Selling customers more RAM always seems to make them happy, and in
most cases helps out the "sluggish" PC.



Mike Whalen wrote:
>
> Question for the professionals out there:
>
> I'm wondering what do you guys do to prepare yourself for the scenario
> in which you can't easily find the silver bullet for a customer's
> "sluggish" Win9x computer.
>
> I know folks that do a "Standards" sheet that lists what they will and
> won't do that gives the customer several options that may or may not
> cost a lot of money, depending on what the tech finds, but it will
> also contain the cut-to-the-quick Fdisk/Format/Reinstall (doo dah, doo
> dah).
>
> What do you guys do?
>
> Mike...
>
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