I've seen this before. My aunt's husbands laptop would not boot up to the OS, and after going to three shops none of them was able to fix it (still charged for looking at it though), so she gave it to me to see if I could fix it.
I was able to boot up into safe mode and see that the windows folder was corrupt so I took my Windows XP CD and ran a "fix it" install. After that is was running fine and all his files were saved.
I guess there are two reasons for things not being done right, greed and lack of training. They want your money so like the auto mechanic they say your engine is blown and it will cost lots of money when it's just a plugged up fuel filter.
Or they are just some guy off the street who knows how to run windows defragmenter and has two hours of watching a training video that they were asleep during half of it and daydreaming the other half.
$60 and $70 is funny to me as I can fix most problems in about 20-30 minutes and charge $20 or so, but many people just give me more than that saying I'm asking too little.
Repair prices are stupid now days. I needed to just install an EGR valve for my truck but I did not have the tools because something happened, so I went to a repair shop to see how much they would charge.
All that was needed was the removal of two bolts and unscrew one line then put the new valve in, about a 10 minute job. The first shop said it would take 45 minutes labor to install it and they would charge $75. I went to a second shop and they said it would take 30 minutes labor and they would charge $60.
I went to my uncles house and did it my self. It took me 14 minutes and 5 minutes of that was looking for the metric socket.
A simple BIOS setting change that takes just 2 or 3 minutes to do should cost like $5. May not sound like much but that still more than a dollar a minute.
