Awesome. Bao is very helpful. Be aware, it's a first come, first-served process. I was able to get…read morein after what turned out to be a SSD hard drive crash in my laptop. Bao diagnosed, replaced the drive and reinstalled the OS, all within a couple of hours. It's not the most comfortable place to wait--the chairs are just banquet-hall leftovers and the space is small. More of a drop and go kind of place. In my case, I enjoyed seeing the kind of stuff they handle and asking computer questions in between customers. They'll do advice, resales, sell components and equipment or repair jobs. For deep recovery, they referred me out. Bao is very personable and gives a very honest vibe. Pleasant and informative and doesn't over-promise. Will give options at a couple steps if applicable (ie replacement costs, recovery costs). Gave me the option for reinstall Windows 10 or 11, which was nice. The work is reasonably priced--also if you pay cash, you will save 2.75%. They have a variety of ways to pay, including Bit Coin. Parking lot is incredibly small as mentioned--two spaces, with restricted parking around the building. As another reviewer mentioned, park kitty-corner, off Sherman Ave. A

Such a great community resource for the geek in all of us, with all of the used computer parts…read more Also a great place to go if you need repairs but aren't up to the DIY task. I was able to find a replacement power supply to fix my Mom's aging PC.

When my ASUS Vivobook laptop contracted a virus, I called Mark because he had such good reviews…read more He was very polite and did such a great job. Mark is so knowledgeable. He had my computer fixed in just a couple of days. He not only got rid of the viruses, but he also installed protection for my computer. I highly recommend Mark to anyone who wants great service and affordable pricing. Thank You, Mark Toni Cleasby

Mark is a pro! my wife and I have thought that quality workmanship and affordable prices were a…read morething of the past.Not so when you call mark.THANK YOU MARK!! Fred & Ginny Mroczko

While I back up online and offsite due to a complicated failure I was without a complete image of…read morenearly 6TB data back to 1992. Gillware and their team are true professionals. Did an online intake, received a phone call Christmas Eve morning to confirm everything. Great updates and proposal before providing a method of payment. By 30 Dec my replacement drive with 99.999% of the recovered data was in the way back to me. Do know if they needed clean rooms or the level of effort needed or the time required. Just know they took a inop drive and got the data off. Just like an lawyer, dentist, pilot or doctor sometimes you pay for experience and in my opinion it was worth for 30 years worth of files. While I hope to never need their services again, they are the only ones I would trust my digital footprint too. While not inexpensive you are paying for their knowledge and experience. If is was so simple and fast then you could do it yourself or maybe hire the "neighborhood geek" or you could pay the experts to professionally recover your important data. While my choice may not be the best for everyone glad I paid Gillware to do it. However, we will be installing a RAID 5 NAS as part of our new 3-2-1 back up plan.

Take it from a software engineer, you'll wanna read this review before you go with this company…read more You are about to invest hundreds or thousands of dollars in your repair, its worth your time to spend a few minutes reading this review. I have included email quotes from the company in my review too Summary: Gillware is very good at what they do, but they will take as much of your money as possible even if its an easy fix. I ended up paying them over $550 plus $28 shipping for a 20 minute fix, and I didn't get all the files I expected. The good: -They uploaded the recovered files to their website so I could preview the file NAMES (this does not mean you can open / download the files) before purchase, which was very valuable to me. It was nice seeing exactly what files were recovered before I put my money down -They are protective of your data once they recover it: once they ship your recovered data back to you on an external hard drive, they keep a backup on site in case it gets lost in the mail or if you need to access their backup -They are responsive and reasonable to deal with. The website is fast and easy to use The bad: The file previewer is misleading, to say the least: For me, it showed that there were 5155 photos recovered (.jpg, .png, etc.). I was very excited to hear that they recovered that many of my personal photos, but when I got the drive back, there were really only 900 personal photos that I took with my camera which were recovered. The rest of the 5155 quoted photos were SYSTEM RELATED PHOTOS. What this means is they are images that you don't care about, images that came with your software, operating system, or applications, icons, etc. I recommend you don't let the file previewer fool you, and realize that there are a TON of system generated files (which show up as images: .jpg, .png formats) which will be recovered. When I spent my money, I thought I was getting 5155 photos, or about $0.10 per photo which was worth it to me. When I found out that 4000+ of those photos were system generated, this was slightly annoying. The worst part of this is that Gillware did not warn me about this at all before taking my money. They should have cautioned me saying: "hey, even though it says 5155 photos were recovered, most of those are system generated photos / items that you probably don't care about". But they didn't and the website doesn't warn me of this trap either Once Gillware finished recovering my data, I asked them what was wrong with the drive. I was surprised to find out what a simple fix this was for them. All they had to do was move some of the harddrive heads and reinstall the firmware on the harddrive. Here is what they said: "During the evaluation the engineers have determined that the firmware on the drive (the brain on how the drive works) had died and we had essentially replaced/repaired the firmware to ensure that the drive knew was it was doing. From there we had also released the read/write heads that were stuck to ensure that we can read the data off of your drive successfully." "Some cases are easier for our engineers to complete the recovery during the evaluation process rather than sending it back into the lab for further work if the customer decides to proceed. Essentially we are taking a gamble that you will agree to move forward with purchasing your data by working on it ahead of time. This route saves us and customers on wait time." In english, this means that it took them less than 1 hour to recover my data, and the drive didn't even need professional LAB work to be repaired. They charged me $550 plus $28 shipping for the recovery operation. Meaning, I paid them $550 per hour, and they didn't even need to send the drive to the lab. That is RIDICULOUS! They don't need $550 / hour for non-lab work. And I honestly don't even think it took them 1 hour to fix my drive. Most likely 20 minutes, if that I know that $550 is cheap for data recovery, but if its only a 20 minute repair, you would think that they would provide a discount.

Great computer repair place. Highly recommend. Reasonably priced. I am a former computer analyst…read moreso I know when repair people know what they are doing. Call first before going.

Miles is great to work with, knows his stuff (I also work in IT), and got my PC upgraded to a…read morelarger NVME hard-drive, cloning over all the data, for a nice price.

No stars. They had our laptop for a week with prepay $57. Called multiple times and finally a tech…read moresaid - the battery is bad. We told him the battery is new and was charging fine at home. Oh, then it's the motherboard. Did they even diagnose? Lost our trust right there. Said they would call the next day with price. Did not call. We picked it up and it's worse than when we dropped it off.

Our largely trouble free desktop computer running Window XP for the past 12 years was having start…read moreup issues. I brought the computer in and met Matt and described the problem. Matt said it could be the motherboard and/or the drive. I protested and told him the computer had no inconsistencies on the drive, no malware, no viruses. He replied "you are talking about psychotherapy and the patient needs a liver transplant." Immediately I appreciated his wry dry humor. I shared with him a parts build I had put together for a custom computer which we wanted to go forward with in September of 2017. For now we wanted a fix to tide us over until then. He warned if it was determined the problem was the motherboard there was no solution for us; he could not get another since ours was 8 generations old; not even an OEM version. The next day he called with devastating news. It indeed was the motherboard. He sent via email pictures of four blown capacitors on the board. At that point I was very fearful that we would lose all our data despite having it all backed up onto an external Western Digital drive via Acronis. I shared that our most important desire was to save all personal documents from each of our (my wife and I) respective profiles and twelve years of music on iTunes. I had just spoken with a support technician at Apple who told me since our version of iTunes was old, the music could not be downloaded into their newest version. Matt said that would depend on the condition of the hard drive, something he would know after examining it. He determined that the surface of the drive was damaged but the hardware supporting the drive was intact. He observed it was a good thing we brought it in since he surmised there was about seven days use out of it left. He did not guarantee he could do what we asked but felt confident he could. My parts list totaled $2,900. Matt went over each component and made recommendations for changes. When we were done my parts list was reduced to $2,100. The price reduction did not represent compromised performance; quite the contrary. With the graphics card I had originally listed Matt said it needs to run at 70 to 80 percent of capacity and if I were not using it in that manner I would not see the benefit whereas I would see MORE performance out of a card that cost less but was more accurately matched for intended use; horses for courses, and so it went with each part including the case. Matts reasoning was so clear it inspired confidence. I pulled my parts from Parts Picker. As I was "building" the computer with each addition of a part the site had a pop up that said "there are no incompatibilities" and continued to say so until the end. Matt said he did see where based on his experience there could be some parts that did not play well with one another. He agreed that the Corsair Vengeance series that was recommended to me over the higher level Corsair Domination Series was less troublesome. I told him that my goal was stability and at the same time although we are not gamers, we wanted a machine that was ultra-fast. He did what is called "active listening" and recommended a top of the line component that would meet those needs. HAPPY ENDING. Matt was able to rescue all of our personal documents and our iTunes library put into the latest version; a Miracle and we are so grateful. I knew he was not using hyperbole when he said "you will feel as if you have gone from a Model T to the Jetsons." Experiencing the truth of what he said was something else entirely. Per my request he installed the ESET Internet Security software that I purchased and brought to him. He also installed Microsoft Office Home and Business 2016 as well as Windows 10 Home 64 bit. Matt shared in our excitement and it was palpable. There is something special to be said when someone is excited about building something for you; good energy going into the product. All the above is a very long winded way of describing someone who is adept at what he does and at the same time able to communicate what he does effectively, honestly and compassionately; a rare trifecta of skill sets in any business but especially in the world of technology. That Matt cared about us as people was evident at every point along the way. By that I mean he did not see us as customers only; someone to add to the profit margin. For all intents and purposes, Matt IS Madison Geeks. If he went elsewhere we would follow him. Kahlal Cunningham, CEO of Madison Geeks would do well to make Matt a partner. If we had not had the conversations we had with Matt and the trust he established with us, a $3,000 custom built computer would never have been built. Had we not had the numerous consultative conversations no work order would have been placed with Madison Geeks; it goes without saying that building a custom computer is not the same as putting money in a candy machine and out comes the candy bar.

This past weekend, I was once again very pleased with their great and friendly service.read more

I was referred here as the only place that could perform certain tests on Samsung phones. I…read moredropped my phone off, and was told there was no charge for diagnostics. They said they did not know how long it would take, but to check back in an hour or two. I had lunch at the taqueria next door and checked back. I asked how the progress was on my phone, and they said they hadnt started it yet. They were incorrect, there WAS a diagnostic charge, and I could pay it right then. I said, how much was the charge, they said $40. I said, no thank you, and asked for my phone back. They seemed incredulous that I wanted my phone back. I will not be going back. If Tech Heroes cant do it, it doesnt need to be done.