Guide to Computer repair

In hiring a contractor to repair computers, just as in any industry you should look for someone with experience.
Usually by talking with someone over the phone you can tell how professional they are, and a real professional will be truthful about their experience.
You should also make sure they are certified or at least have some schooling in the subject.
Ask them what the minimum charge is if any, many people have a minimum of 1 hour, or a set amount. It does cost gas and time to look at your computer, so it costs the technician, even if he cant fix it.
Sometimes viruses and spyware can make a computer totally useless, and the QUICKEST way is to reformat and re-install windows on the machine.
The problem with this is that you will LOOSE all of you old data, unless you back it up.
Since its not always easy to back it up after the computer has a virus, the technician should be able to take your hard drive out and put it on another computer (i have a test machine at my shop just for this) and retrieve your data.
This is one reason you should always do backups.
Once or twice a month (depending on how important your data is too you) you should back up your data.
There are several ways to do this, one is simply to burn a CDROM. Another is to use a company like MOZY
http://mozy.com/
Its a very user friendly service that costs nothing for small backups and are very cheap to  backup lots of info.
Here are some tips on general computer maintenance.

1) Do NOT just install any software that says it is good for spyware removal. Many of these are hoaxes and can harm you computer, some make you pay to be able to remove them.
Use only well known products.
Here is a list i trust, and LIKE, by no means is it complete, but many anti-virus programs like MCAFEE are good, but certainly are NOT my first choice.

computer maintenance.
Perform a file cleaning once a week.
Perform a registry cleaning once a month
defrag once a month
Perform a virus scan once a week.
Perform a spyware scan once a week.

recommended anti virus and anti-spyware programs...
all are FREE

SPYBOT
ADAWARE
AVG (anti-virus)
PC-tools (anti-virus)

Brad
Computers by Brad
Computer Repair $40 an hour.
Kenner, Metairie, Luling, Norco, New Orleans