I took mine to Circuit City for a diagnosis's, the hard drive was shot, so I bought a new one. Circuit City will also clean your PC for around $20. and I plan to do that.

IF the guy is legit and doing a real business he will expect you to ask for references, people doing business out of their homes must expect that, I would check some references. That is not a guarantee of course. You can have dishonest people working at a big box store as easily as you can someone working from home. All the geeksquad horror stories I have read online keep me far far away from that place and those like it, I know people that have worked there and they are told one thing FORMAT it and get it done. In some cases formatting is the best answer but not always.

I would delete completely any links you currently have set up to your bank that way you won't have an easy guide to where you bank on there. Clear out your cache on your browser and you history etc so it won't be as easy to see where you have been going.

When you take it in have him give you a ticket showing that you did give him your pc with your pc info on it so that you have some proof later that you actually did give this guy your pc. I am sure he is legit but it is up to you to protect yourself.

and if it does come down to formatting make some plan as to how your information will be backed up and not just lost.
Just because your pc won't run windows does not mean it won't run, one way to get to a hard drive and salvage the info is to use a free linux live cd, it is put in the cd drawer and the pc is booted to linux from the cd once the pc is up in linux it is possible to use the linux operating system to go into your files and folder on the windows operating system and copy them. One good reason everyone should have at least one free linux cd around. Just in case you should want to discuss that here is a link that might be useful.
backup

ravencajun thanks for the input. My problem is I cant get to the desktop to clear the cache as my system just goes to a blue screen. I have tried to get to safemode and can not. I am just concerned about banking info and wondered if somewhere on the hard drive does my computer store passswords that are accessible to someone with computer knowledge. I know taking your computer anywhere for repair is a crap shoot with honesty and integrity.

Assuming you have the Windows CD or burned a copy of the recovery disks you could always buy a hard drive and start fresh. Installing a new hard drive is simple enough and then installing the Windows too.

Office Max currently offer a 320gig IDE drive for $90 and that might be your total outlay. There may be better deals but I am searching from Canada and only have a modest few US sites bookmarked for reference.

Then you can slave the current drive to copy over all your important data.

Re the guy working from his house, I do that. Probably others here do too. I never charge as I enjoy messing with computers and it is mostly for friends and their friends. He could be as honest, or more honest than a store. Too many techs take the easy road and re-format without making any effort repair or to save personal data. On the other hand too many customers think the job should be done for peanuts.

Any high school kids as neighbours? They would know which store to trust in your area.

What operating system do you use?
You can get a Windows 98se Boot Floppy
and boot into DOS mode. Delete cache from there.
You would need to know some simple DOS commands.
And you would need to know the EXACT location of the cache.

You can download a boot floppy from www.bootdisk.com

As for working on a computer, it is less expensive to just
wipe the hard drive clean and start fresh. Diagnosing and
fixing problems on a per hour basis can get expensive quick.

Of course if you lived close enough to me, I work for chocolate.

Pooh Bear

Here is a link that might be useful: www.bootdisk.com