At both of my jobs, I constantly find myself being talked into housecalls and upgrades for personal PC help. I've done several dozen of these in the past 2-3 months, and i've gotten a bit of an arsenal set up as a result. Of course, I have so many spare PC parts lying around, my list may seem a bit excessive.
You're going to want to have parts on hand. Hard drives, CDRW's, Sdram/DDR/etc.., PSU, video/sound, mice/keyboard, NIC, modem, and most importantly...fans & CDR's. Canned air and some alcohol variant for cleaning are also a must. You can easily enough find some good deals here in the forums for them, and then just sell them to your house calls for a marginal profit (which will stil be cheaper then retail 9/10 times...have current local ads with you just in case, for proof). Make sure you have a diverse tool kit set up....power screwdriver is a must, as is flat/phillips/star, pliars, extra screws/jumpers, ethernet/usb/phone/AC/audio/extensions cables...and perhaps adaptors for AT/serial input devices.
MAKE SURE, you set up limitations. Say you'll work on any PC (mac ruh roh) faster then 333 mhz, win98+, etc...this eliminates all kinds of hardware dilemnas (mb's with 30 jumpers, parity ram, etc..), currently unsupported software, and driver hunts that will make your $40/hour seem sacrificial. The cost of getting a machine in this range back up to spec is in the cheap range of a new PC, with warranty. However, you may have some customers who just want a simple upgrade, so it may be quick $$. Then again some will have been hit by lightning and have blown MB/PSU caps, intermittent cdrom, and so on. A contract isn't a bad idea...make sure you specifiy that you are NOT tech support. GET A PAGER and only give that number out just in case.
Of all the silly things I've done for people and their computers, it seems the thing they all appreciate the most is cable management. Make it neater then when you got there, and they'll think you're a pro even if their computer is MIA. Velcro ties, Elec tape, etc....color coded.
As far as the factory warranty goes, it depends on the brand. I've checked with Dell, Micron, IBM, HP/compaq, Sony, Emachine, etc...only one who has upgrade quirks is gateway, as they want you to be on the phone with them while you do the upgrade? So long as you're not disassembling platters in hard drives (which is a parts warranty issue not machine warranty), i doubt voiding the warranty will be an issue.
Software is the only real problem IMO. Viruses abound....you will need copies of Norton (have their most current intelligent updater handy just in case as well.). Most people don't have their restore CD's for their PC's, and of the ones that do have the CDs only a few will work. Before making the housecall, find out what version of windows, if they have a COA/key and what model PC/type of clone. That way you can have the drivers all set to go before arrival,the service packs burned, the OS cd's if need be, boot disks, etc...
As far as the "undo" type of software goes....Windows xp has the rollback feature but it's unlikely you'll see too many machines with xp for anything beyond OS tutorials or simple installs. You can get Undelete utilities or the like...but i'd just suggest ghosting their drive and playing around with the duped one if you're truly worried. Or make an image on CD's (depending on the HD size...lotsa CDs.). I find that most people have small small hard drives. So it's usually better for me to just clean install a new hard drive and transfer the files from the old to the new. And then reinstall any programs they want.
Alright, i'm too danged long winded...hope some of this helps you out.
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