- Everyone has been there.
You're minding your own business
and suddenly your computer starts acting up.
Programs are crashing, it's running slow.
You get a blue screen, what do you do?
Not everyone has that cousin that knows
about computers and such, and many of the specialty chains
and (indistinct) shops that we enjoyed in the nineties
and the two thousands have either been bought out
or have gone out of business.
I mean, you could take a chance
on that random duded of Craigslist
but even that might not be an option for you
if you happen to live in Billings instead of Boston.
That is where the Best Buy Geek Squad comes in.
They have so many locations in the U.S.
that over 70% of the population lives
within just 15 minutes of one of their stores
but just because they're your only option
doesn't mean that they're a good option.
Can a bunch of secret agent cosplay enthusiasts
really fix your computer?
We had to know.
So we obtained a three year old machine
from one of Jake's friends, complete with an SSD loaded up
with real world software and data and carted
it to our local Geek Squad precinct.
I know, I know, we keep on sending people
to Best Buy expecting a better result,
definition of insanity, et cetera, et cetera,
but as it turns out we're not crazy
because this time was completely different.
We brought in a slow computer to the store
and got back a measurably faster one.
What did they do?
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After a brief interview wherein we explained
that our system was slow and we needed to do our taxes
the Geek Squad agent at the counter recommended
a system tuneup along with their software installation
service to get us all set up with a copy of TurboTax.
She gave us a quick pitch
of their monthly subscription plan
but we naturally chose to pay only a one-time service fee,
signed the paperwork, and then went on our merry way.
Just under 48 hours later, we got a text notifying us
that the machine was ready for pickup.
Now, according to the Best Buy website
the system tuneup includes reviewing the startup processes,
updating windows, updating anti-malware,
repairing the registry,
and removing all temporary files to free up drive space.
To complete these tasks
Geek Squad agents use an internal collection
of tools and scripts called MRI,
along with a handful of other tools that either automate
or streamline typical troubleshooting.
There's nothing wrong with
that on the surface but only apps approved
by Best Buy corporate are allowed to be used in store
and from what an insider told us
the approved list is quite old.
With the last useful piece of software apparently being
added almost 10 years ago.
Through our source,
we got a copy of a recent version of MRI,
but even without that we can tell from the logs
that MRI left behind
that the first things they did were automated scans
for hardware problems and malware infections.
This actually makes a lot of sense because,
A, they could easily upsell hardware repairs
or virus removals if they did find anything,
and B, it prevents them from wasting time on a tuneup
that ultimately wouldn't solve the problem, anyway.
In our case though, these scans came up negative
so they proceeded with our system tuneup
and tune it up, they did.
When we dropped it off our machine took 26 seconds to hit
the desktop and a little over half a minute to launch all
of our startup apps.
When we got it back those numbers were down
to just 20 seconds and 25 seconds, respectively.
That's 22% faster.
We're off to a pretty good start here, but hold on.
After Geek Squad's tuning, the largest contributor
to our load time was iCUE, which some of you will recognize
as Corsair's RGB Control and System Monitoring app.
While this is a Corsair case with Corsair fans
there's no RGB and no sensors
that iCUE can use so all it's doing is wasting resources
and it should have been removed from startup
that would've shaved another second off of our time.
Now, to be clear, we're not advocating
for Geek Squad to just start willy-nilly removing software
from a user's computer but what I would've expected is
for them to at least mention this potential savings
when they returned the PC to me.
That was our first clue that our agent
might have been just, you know, following the script
though that might not be their fault.
In the U.S. agents don't need to have any sort
of certifications to work for the Geek Squad
and our source tells us that the quality of service provided
by a given location is largely dependent on the supervisor.
A by the book supervisor will demand
that agents strictly follow standard procedures
and stick to the approved tools,
even if that means doing a slower subpar job
for the customer.
A more progressive supervisor though might tend
to run things more like an actual repair shop,
encouraging their agents to learn outside
of the Geek Squad bubble and turning a blind eye
to the use of more effective, albeit unapproved tools.
We're told that which one you get
is pretty much a coin toss.
Let's turn our attention back to our machine though,
as advertised, all of the required Windows updates
were applied and Windows Defender is fully up to date now.
Very nice, I mean, neither of those tasks is hard
but they can eat up time on the bench making them the kind
of thing that a rushed technician could easily skip
whether on purpose or by accident in their hurry.
Best Buy and by extension, Geek Squad is heavily focused
on metrics for their employees
so the more repairs you can get out the door, the better.
And with limited staff, it wouldn't be a surprise
if one of them missed one of those,
hey, I know you just updated
but how about another update, updates?
Moving on to registry cleanup, though, the technical
among you will know that the Windows registry is a database
of settings for the hardware and software on your PC
and there are a ton of programs out there
that claim to speed up your computer
by repairing that registry.
Microsoft does not support the use of registry cleaners
and warns that at best they are needlessly
deleting unused registry entries, which take
up negligible amounts of space, and at worst
they can cause irreparable harm to your operating system.
That doesn't seem to stop some repair shops,
Geek Squad included, from contributing to the FUD
around the registry and promising to repair it
as part of their product offering.
Our best guess is that their motivation for this is
that these programs are guaranteed to find a huge number
of problems, presumably making the customer feel
like they got a lot for their money.
Out of curiosity, we used another tool,
a different one than what they used on our system
but from Best Buy's approved list to scan our system
for registry and other issues
both before and after our tuneup.
And what's funny is it actually found more problems
in the registry after our service
than before we brought it in.
So maybe Microsoft is right about their own software.
According to our insider, the locations run
by more enlightened supervisors are less likely
to use registry cleaners
and more likely to spend that time clearing
out unneeded programs, optimizing system settings,
or just punting more tuned up systems out the door.
They didn't tell us that last one, I added that
but I'm pretty sure it's a thing.
Bringing us to temp files.
While there are several common folders
that these files are supposed to live in,
temp files can be found in all kinds of random places
all over your file system.
An approved system cleaner found almost a thousand
temp files on our machine before service and just 35 after.
With that said, there were still plenty of random temporary
and cache files that we found in places
that the cleaner didn't look, including more
than four gigabytes of unneeded windows update downloads.
So what we suspect is that Geek Squad got things
a little bit out of order and cleared out temp files first
before they started applying updates
and installing our tax software.
I mean, it's not like the after state isn't better
but it could have been more better-er
if they had taken a moment to consider all of
the different tasks that they would be doing on our machine.
Of course, if this was all scripted
then it's not really the techs fault
and it's more of a systemic one.
Right, I guess the last thing
for us to evaluate is the software installation.
They installed the software, all right?
I mean I'm, what more can I say?
That's 20 U.S. dollars well spent
plus the cost of the software.
I mean, I'm satisfied, I guess
but you might prefer to press next a couple of times
for yourself and pick up a high quality printed t-shirt
from lttstore.com with the money that you saved.
Oh, on the subject of cost,
the tuneup cost us 60 U.S. dollars.
That covered someone pretty inexpertly tweaking
our startup programs, running a temp file cleaner,
babysitting a handful of Windows updates,
and then running some software
that Microsoft advised them not to run.
They did perform the tasks that they advertised
but I feel they could have done a couple of things better
and the whole charade of registry cleaning needs to go away.
Was it worth it though?
I mean, ah, this is a tough one.
For me, obviously not,
but if know literally nothing about computers
and you just need that little bit of help to
get things running smoothly, again, it could be a lot better
than wasting two days of your own time doing it.
Then again on the other hand,
with a short trip to the LTT Forum
and the same software that's included in MRI,
most of which is either available free or as a trial
that you can just download.
I suspect that you could accomplish pretty much
the same thing without your PC being out of commission
for two days.
Just like our Segway machine was out of commission,
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If you wanna see some more chaotic PC repair,
you can watch as LTT viewer, Calvin, races against the clock
trying to win a new PC that we deliberately sabotaged.