Chicago Computer Repair

Choose a Chicago Computer Repair Company

Computer repair techs can either come to your home or business to repair the computer or have you bring the computer to their shop. If you are a busy person, you may want to drop your computer off at a repair shop and then pick it up when it is convienent for you. Some companies will charge a small fee if you want them to pick up the computer from your home or business and bring it back once it is repaired. If they do this then they will unplug everything and plug it back in for you so you will not have to worry about doing something wrong. You can save yourself some time and money by doing this yourself and I will explain how.

Preparation:

Prepairing your computer to take to the shop is easy. If you have a laptop or notebook, then it is even easier. All you will need to take is the laptop/notebook and the power cord. Now if you have a desktop computer, you will need to unplug it. You do not need to take anything but the computer box! The computer box is the box that you put your CDs into and it has a button to turn the computer on. To unplug this, make sure the computer is completley turned off by clicking your "Start" button, in Windows,  and then go to "Shut Down". Once the computer is completely shut down, you can start unplugging things from it. You will need to turn it around or slide it out so you can get to the back side of it. Now, grab each plug individually and and pull them out. DO NOT grab them by the wire and yank them out because you are liable to break something. Some plugs will have 2 finger screws on each side of them, you are going to want to unscrew them, counter-clockwise, and then unplug them. There is no need to write down where each plug goes because I will tell you a couple of tricks to determine where each one goes when plugging them back in. The main trick you should know is, they can only go in one way and will only fit into one place. The only ones that you can get swapped by accident is, swapping the keyboard with the mouse or swapping the mic jack with the headphone/speaker jack. These will be color coded on the computer and on the plug. A trick with plugging in a mouse and keyboard is, the flat side on the plug will go toward the inside of the computer. All plugs should slide in relatively easy and shouldn't be forced because you could be putting them in backwards and end up bending the prongs.

Pricing:

In this economy, money usually is a factor and computer repair companies can be very expensive. To over come this, you may want to seek out an individual, working for him or her self. They usually run about 50% cheaper than a company because there isn't much overhead involved in them running their own business.

Determine if the tech or company is right for you:

You are going to want to talk to the technician in person or over the phone. Assuming, since you are seeking a computer repair tech, you know very little or nothing at all about computers. If the technician really confuses you during the conversation by using computer lingo and technical names, they may be knowledgeable in the computer repair field but it is going to be really hard for you to determine if the person is trying to charge you for things that you do not need. A real computer professional will try and explain things to you in a language that you can understand which may confuse you a little bit, but you will not be totally lost during the entire conversation. When talking to the computer repair tech, it is best if you do not leave anything out. What I mean is, tell them exactly what you were doing when the problem happened. This isn't going to make them think that you are an idoit. What this is going to do is provide the technician with more information about the problem and end up saving you money because the tech will not need to spend time troubleshooting the problem, or need very little time to troubleshoot and determine the root of the problem.

Locating a computer repair professional:

Now with the information you have obtained from above, it's time to find a tech and use your new found knowledge to see if they are right for you. Yellowpages is a great start and by clicking the link you will be automatically taken to a list of techs in your area.  Another good place to find cheap services is Craigslist, this is a good source becuase most techs will list their price so you can start picking from something in your price range. Below I will list a few other web sites that you can use to help locate the right tech for you.

The Chicago Classifieds
BackPage
Kijiji