Windows 11 Installation & System Repair

Windows 11 installation and system repair

Two jobs, one bench process. Either there is no working system on the machine - a new drive, a new build, or a Windows that will not start - or there is one that still starts and cannot be trusted. Both end with Windows 11 installed clean, every driver in, your account set up and the machine tested before it goes back.

£90 for the installation. Bring the machine to us in London, or post it in and we send it back - either way we confirm the price and what you want on it before we start.

What the £90 covers

• Windows 11 installed and activated. Where the machine has no licence of its own, we supply one and the key is in the price - no separate charge
• Every driver the machine needs: graphics, audio, network, Wi‑Fi, Bluetooth, touchpad, fingerprint reader
• Current Windows updates applied
• Your user account created and signed in
• A few applications of your choice - a browser, Adobe Reader, ChatGPT, whatever you actually use
• Testing before you collect it

How the job runs

• Before we take it in - you tell us which of the two jobs it is, and whether anything on the drive matters. We check the hardware first: a failing drive or bad memory is a different job, and installing over it wastes your money.
• Agreed upfront - the price, the applications you want, and whether we are moving your files across. Nothing beyond that happens without asking.
• On the bench - the drive is formatted, Windows 11 goes on, drivers, updates, account, your applications.
• Before it goes back - we run it, check the hardware is all recognised and working, and hand it over with the licence active.

Reinstalling over a system that still starts

Crashes, blue screens, errors that come back after every fix, a machine that has slowed to a crawl over the years. We do not patch around it - the drive is formatted and Windows goes on from scratch. Repairing a degraded install in place takes unpredictable time, cannot be priced honestly, and the fault usually returns.

Formatting erases the drive. Documents, photos, applications and settings all go, with nothing to go back to. Read the next section before you book.

Your files are not included

Moving data across from the old installation is separate work: either a fixed quote for a scope you set, or £85 an hour. Most transfers run one to three hours depending on how much there is.

Tell us before we start, not after. And if the machine will not boot and the files matter more than the machine does, say so when you book - we check whether the drive can still be read before anything is erased, and price that separately.

Extra setup, priced separately

Quoted against a defined scope, or £85 an hour:

• Microsoft 365 and other licensed software installed against your own subscriptions
• Email and cloud storage signed in and syncing
• Development environments - Git, Node, Python, Docker, WSL2 - and a review of your terminal configuration
• Printert, VPN and network configuration
• Startup, notification and privacy settings set rather than left at defaults

Licences and subscription credentials are yours to provide; we install and activate against them.

Software or hardware?

Blue screens, freezes, sudden shutdowns and boot failures are as often hardware as Windows. A failing drive, overheating, faulty memory or a tired battery all read like a software fault from the outside. We check before we install anything and tell you what we find.

Another operating system, or a new drive

Not everyone wants Windows. If you would rather run Linux, or want a machine set up to boot both, we can do that - tell us the distribution you have in mind and we will quote it. The same goes for macOS where the hardware supports it.

And if the drive itself is the problem, or you want more space or more speed while the machine is open anyway, we can change the drive at the same time on any machine where the storage is not soldered to the board. Installing a fresh system onto a new SSD is the cheapest thing you can do to an ageing laptop.