I'd usually start with my suite of cleanup tools, do some manual cleanup if needed, apply all the software and security updates, and then give it a day with some light test usage. Then I'd re-run the tools to see if they picked anything back up. If not, I released it back to the customer. If anything at all came back, I'd backup their data, pull all the product keys I could (Office, Photoshop, etc), nuke the OS, and reinstall what I could as close to the original as possible.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Lol yep sounds a lot like my process! Took time to get it down and settle on tools (though those always changed anyway) but once you did, could make a buncha money for sure. With KVMs I could do a lotta volume on those kinda jobs and get some of my engineering homework done in between. Hardware repairs were more fun but way more time consuming and hit or miss depending on overall condition.

Not a bad gig overall but certainly did come with some downsides. Like, desktop computer filled with insect carcasses, brown everywhere with tar from cigarette smoke, stinking up the shop, customer somehow oblivious to the gnar-bomb that is their daily life intersecting with "ordinary" society.