Idiot resistant antivirus

I am looking for an antivirus program that even the biggest idiot cant screw up.

features I am hoping for:
self updating
self scanning
ability to scan silently.
Ability to stop users from stopping the scan
free...

Here is the issue:

I am doing some repair work for a family member that insist that taking 2 minutes to finish update installs and a half hour a week is too much time to run a virus scan. Unfortunately, I have to claim these people as family rolleyes and they are non paying customers:cry, so I am hoping to make my job easier and find something that they cant disable, avoid the scans with, etc.

I am leaning very heavily towards using Avast Home 4 (free) (with scans set either daily or weekly in task manager) combined with spybot: search and destroy.

I have found some very stupid security problems on this computer so far, and am working to remove them. I have also discussed with the owner the risks of some of these problems in hopes that they will not repeat them. However the owner is a chronic offender when it comes to violating most common sense security rules.

examples:

-Non-Passworded administrator level accounts
-Running a P2P and sharing the entire start menu including run prompt, among other program files.
-Wide open unprotected wireless access
-no antivirus, windows firewall disabled.

As you can see from the above examples, it is difficult for me to even begin to remove malware when there are so many problems to patch up and they have admin rights to complicate things. (Currently attempting to resolving that.)

Any malware removal progams that you may find suitible to this type of people, please feel free to suggest. I am open to any suggestions. I am not quite sure how to keep the computer secured when they are not updating it and doing scans.

 

Well, I learned the hardway with people like that and decided after cleaning their machines twice for the same idiocy that it's enough! The next time they came with the same crap, I pretended to look at the machine, I tsk tsked and went wow a few times and told them I'd have to restore their machine to factory condition!:-D Also told them they'd have to re-install all the updates etc from scratch. I said maybe a real tech can help you save what you have as it's beyond me. He took the machine in a huff and has never talked about it again! I wonder how much he spent? roflmao

You can't idiot proof a machine if the owner does not uphold their end in being safe surfers/users etc. You know the old adage: You can lead a horse to water...rolleyes

 

Same situation with a friend. Says it takes too much time.Always seems to find the time to hit the porn sites from checking the installed cookies he lets get placed.
Tried to teach him security, but too much time,too busy.
After several times, I told him that I was too busy, other things to do.Then I just lay back in the chaise lounge and worked on my tan.
Boy,did he get hot.
After a short time, he asked again. I told him that it wasn't going to be free anymore. $50 to get it cleaned and he would have to pay better attention to his security programs.
Next time I heard from him, machine was VERY clean compared to the other times. Pretty much just needed a cleanup of the Startup list and a good defrag.
Some people do learn.

 

what you need depends a lot on your surfing habits and the amount of time you want to spend on initial setup (you only have to do it once). i can only tell you what i HAVE used (and got rid of because it wasn't very good, AND with 3 months left on my subscription) and what i now use.

i HAD McAfee Total Security which, among a whole host of other problems, gave me a lot of false/positive trojan/virus alerts. alerting on things that were absolutely safe & legitimate. don't know if it has a "password" for changes as i was the only one on my pc, at the time. their customer service isn't very good, at all, btw...and this is based on my personal experience and may be different for others.

i now HAVE KIS 2010 (Kaspersky security suite) and it did have a learning curve, because i chose a custom install and picked what i wanted it to do. it DOES have a regular install for users like you and you can set permissions (child, teenager, adult) AND set a password so only you can change things. i got mine at a discount, for only 1 pc through element5; i think it was by clicking on the "buy" button at toptenreviews.com. you can set it to do as much for you as you want, set it to ask you everything so you can choose, and everything in between.

i chose it after checking security suite reviews at toptenreviews.com and trying the top 3 (Kaspersky was #3). i found BitDefender too clumsy and Zone Alarm Extreme horribly buggy (may be fixed now, but wasn't at the time). i chose Kaspersky which ended up having some system & browser slowness/freezing issues but they're fixed now and their customer service and forums are absolutely outstanding.

you can also just get their Anti-Virus or Firewall, but the complete suite is much more feature rich & powerful AND idiot proof/resistant.

it has the following features (i actually have no other anti-malware because of those):
http://i33.tinypic.com/zm1vo5.jpg
ultimately, the decision will be yours and what works best for you. my best recommendation is to go to toptenreviews and try the top rated ones, via trial installs, to see which one you like best.

if you're using something else right now, you may need to do more than just uninstall through the program or Add/Remove. i know that McAfee & Norton won't completely uninstall unless you also use their specific, separate, remover. there are others and i think that info is in one of the "stickies" at the top of the malware forum.

 

Some people just don't get it. They disable their firewalls because "it kept popping up stuff" and they turn off the antivirus because "it wouldn't let me download these keygens I needed for Photoshop". If this is how they act, they deserve all the problems they get. Some people are incapable of understanding and learning anything about PC security, and no program in the world will help them. Even if they don't disable the protection, if they invite the infections in, they will bypass the protection, and most people can't tell the difference between the new generation of rogue-ware programs and a legit antivirus program. If I had a dollar for every person I have personally met that has actually given their credit card number to "WinAntiVirus Pro 2010" to remove the hundreds of fake infections they don't have, I'd be a rich man. Seriously.

Sorry for the rant.

We're getting off topic here. To answer your question: No. There is no idiot proof antivirus program. End of story.

(BTW- the quotes I posted are the exact words I have heard from people with infected systems)

 

very true, dlb. i was, maybe wrongly, assuming that's not the case except maybe others on Nibblesdacat's pc were doing those exact things because she couldn't prevent it by "passwording" her security from unauthorized changes.

your "rant" is very understandable.

 

Actually, the anti-malware that I personally use does allow password protection. I use the avast home 4 (free) suite. It contains email, network, p2p, download, real time, and a couple other protections for free. It does work well, but there are a number of times that I have found that it will keep something clean after, but for actually digging out the nasties, it falls a bit flat. I had to actively attempt to infect my computer when I first started using it to actually get it to become infected. This is no longer the case. Their definitions simply dont do as good of a job as they used to anymore though it does offer decent protection for the cost.

I cant help but agree with the your rant there are alot of people out there that do deserve the trouble they get. It was actually not my computer but my cousin's. If mine got that bad, I would have just ran a utility like wipe disk (writes 1s and 0s across entire disk) and reinstalled. I keep regular backups to an external hard drive for my computer so it isn't an issue.

I did not have this luxury for them, as they did not have an actual key sticker, and I was not inclined to give them one of mine for nothing. I couldn't do this option mostly because they can not afford to buy a legit serial key. I have tried getting them to at least use backup utilities, windows or third party programs to back up and they do not do this. So wiping it was kinda hard to do at this point and return something functional to them

On a side note, though it is a common mistake, NibblesDaCat is a GUY:-D not a gal... But the origin of the screen name is a discussion for another thread and kind of an inside joke...

As to the reply to check the XP cleaning instructions posted in the malware section, I have used that, and software from there and it has worked very well in the past as well. It was malware bytes that finally did the job and got it cleaned out. Further scans after with House call (trend) and active scan (panda) as well as the kasperki one, showed it to be clean again... at least as clean as possible. (Last 3 scans were on line scans).

Was just hoping that there were a few programs out there that might be a little more idiot proofed than the rest. I agree it is time consuming to make repairs like that, and flat out told them the first one the labor is a family discount, the second one costs you if you return it to me like that again.

I finally ended up wiping all accounts on there and creating newer ones, that were password protected, and deleting the old ones. I removed their admin rights:-D and updated anything I could find updates for. Hopefully next time it will be better but I cant help be doubtful...

It is people like this that get tech responses like one I read a while back that got a tech fired... He was so fed up with the idiocy of the user after diagnosing the issue, he inquired if they still had the receipt for the computer. After finding out they did, he told them to return it... When they asked if it was that bad, he replied, "no, some people dont deserve to own a computer and you happen to be one of them..." Turned out the user couldn't turn on computer because of a power outage... Now while my idiots are bad, it just goes to show things could be a bit worse...

 

mea culpa, SIR. won't happen again. LOL

 

It is ok. It is a common mistake. To give a hint about the names orgin, it is a play on the word cat...

look up slang uses of the word "cat". Now let your mind run with that...

It may explain the origin of the the name for a guy.

I cant explain further than that because of the nature of it. Besides this response is kinda off topic