$1200 to get a computer fixed? I'm having a lot of difficulty wrapping my mind around that number. I'd find someone else to check that pc for a hidden vnc server or similar if I was that friend.
I have 2 IBM blade servers I need to get busy with when I get back home. I have some scsi hard drives I picked up off of newegg to put in them. The fun part is getting the bios to see them properly and having them jumpered correctly. Boxes of memory sticks, even a few matching sets of rambus and a Gateway server that uses it. Two 6 foot long shelves in the shop with AT and ATX cases, power supplies I need to open and replace bad capacitors in, LCD monitors I already rescued. Someday I'll get a Beowulf cluster together and running. I need to run network cable out to one detached garage and up the hill to the shop.
Fedora is definitely a preferred Linux distro, hats off for choosing that one pardon the pun. Sometimes in real life I will make a request out loud like "Sudo give me a winning lottery ticket". I guess I need to get the password for super user right though.
Pardon me for carrying on. Sort of making a list of things to do, to get me motivated to get this job done and get back home.