Mother-In-Law Computer

This post is directed at nani_ka.

So we have this computer, supposedly it worked until the guy who owned it put in a new CD burner. Now it won't boot. He seems to be at the Technical Level of "If I can reguild a Chevy Engine then this lil' computer should be a snap" with computers. Right below the one that I'm at, which is the "I'm so proud! I know where the RAM goes!" level.

So most likely it all works an everything, it just needs to be coaxed back in to the land of the living!

However, khristle would like the answers to a few questions before hand, all of which I tried to tell her are really unknown elements stuff like "How Much Will It Cost" and "How Long Will It Take". This is akin, of course, to our customers asking "Well when is the outage going to be over", but let's try and figure this out.

See, she wants to know all the unknowns ahead of time. Because computery-type people know, they just don't like to share.

So in short, what would Messr. Freak want in exchange to just *look* at this computer and then give an estimate of how much it would cost to get'er running?