but it sounds to me like you got what you paid for. You've apparently taken
hours of their time

WhAAATTT!!! They (incompetents) took hours of MY TIME

and they were able to do a system restore for you.

Did you miss where I said SEVERAL time in this thread that I can do a System
Restore myself!


I did see where you said that, but that's still their job:
To do what they can. If not a fix then a system restore.
I don't know what transpired, of course, but from the
company point of view you took up several hours of
employee time. Whether or not they were incompetent,
they did fulfill their part of the bargain by providing a
tech person for you to talk to. None of us can judge
who was at fault there.

Maybe the whole thing is not a loss, though. You
should have backup sufficient that you can afford
to lose your system. Given that you wanted to avoid
a system restore I'm guessing you had data to lose
and therefore didn't have adequate backup.

Unfortunately, it requires a lot of information to really
manage a PC and do adequate backup. The first thing
I would do in your case now would be to create disk
images -- compressed copies of your C drive that can
be stored on DVDs and reinstalled if necessary. Then
create two external copies of your important data to
store elsewhere in the house and at another location.
Otherwise, next time you run into trouble System Restore
might not work and then you could be faced with buying
a new copy of Windows... and losing all of your data.

But it sounds like you really need to find someone handy
to set that up for you.

Knowing no better, I believed the salesman, and it sounds
like you're blaming me for doing so!

I don't see any value in blame, but I do think you might
have unrealistic expectations. Just like with home repair, it's
not always easy to tell whether a contractor is being honest.
But in computers as in home repair, there are limits to what
can be done.
Rather than blaming them or yourself, I think you should
use the opportunity to figure out a repair and backup plan
for the future. You should be able to lose your computer
tomorrow and not lose family photos, tax records, or anything
else of value that you have on it.