Set it and forget it

I'm looking for suggestions on good "set it and forget it" security software.

I work at a local mom-n-pop electronics store. I'm the guy that does all the pc/laptop repair, be it Windows or Apple (my boss is also the only licensed apple dealer in the state).

Anyways, I've been finding ways of making my life easier when working on customer pc's. One of those ways was the fortunate discovery of Offline Updater discs thanks to CTUPDATE. The other was more recent in the discovery of the DRIVERPACKS software, which has eased a lot of headaches for me.

However, when it comes to antiviral and anti-malware, aside from what the customer pays for/provides themself, all I have is free/trialware to use on the systems brought into the shop. I try to avoid the trialware when at all possible. For Free, I've settled on a handful of programs and little 'gadget softwares' to help me out.

1. I have a hosts file updater to block hundreds of thousands of adware/spyware/malware servers.

2. Antivirus: Microsoft Security Essentials (i use this myself and trust it), AVG, Avira, and if they want to give me an e-mail address for a registration code, Avast!.

3. AntiMalware/Spyware: IOBit Security 360 (i use this myself and trust it), Malwarebytes Anti-malware, Lavasoft Ad-Aware, Spybot Search & Destroy

There are also various other 'gadget' softwares, anti-rootkit, etc, that I use for cleaning/optimizing/general-upkeep, but those i listed are the main ones I use when getting a customer PC setup for protection.

The reasons I went with the 3 choices are easy... Hosts file is set-and-forget... customer never has to worry about it as their pc auto-blocks thousands of nasties without their knowledge (and it saves me a lot of hassle in the future). Microsoft Security Essentials never pops up and never bothers the user. It just works and kills the nasty little buggers that get on the system and you never know till you on a whim go and check the logs of what it has found. The same with IOBit 360.... it catches and kills without bugging the user.

So anyways, my question is this. While I would use (and have used) and trust any of the software solutions I listed, are there any that are better and/or alternative choices for "set-and-forget" for customers, no matter whether it is that way out of the box or me doing the setting so the customer can get to forgetting?

Are there any other 'tricks' I can use to make my customer's lives easier when it comes to securing their PC's? I'm willing to try and learn (will use on my own PC's first before subjecting a customer PC to something I don't have a feel for/trust yet). I may already know what trick you post (and will let you know), but thanks ahead for any and all suggestions!

 

1 OLD program that I install on all my machines is SpywareGuard.
Hasn't had any updates in a lot of years, but a good behaviour based program.
Once installed, there is one update you can get, but after that,just delete the desktop icons and never even know its there working in the background.

 

i'll hafta check that out. thanks for the tip!

 

I can't seem to find a link to SpywareGuard that isn't some new software that's actually malware. Is there a place to download the 'good' version that isn't someone's kiddie-script toy?

 

Tollhouse,

I basically follow the guides here for computers I setup.

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/forumdisplay.php?f=48

I figure these have been tested and tweaked by some of the best in the business so why reinvent the wheel?

 

http://www.majorgeeks.com/SpywareGuard_d3045.html

 

I've followed those guides and various other guides in the past.

What i'm looking for is a way to keep the 'better idiots' that seem to live around here from breaking the fixes i make for them..... which until recently, i didn't take too seriously.... but it's coming back to bite me in the rear-end so i'm trying to 'better-idiot proof' my troubleshooting techniques....

stuff that is normal and obvious to me ain't so normal and obvious to the average customer... "What do you mean I shouldn't surf porn and download stuff from limewire and shouldn't click on antivirus 2010 when it pops up? Isn't that meaning i'm infected and need antivirus 2010 to clean my system up?"

THen I have to spend time educating them about stealth malware and fake 'goodware' as i call it.

 

Tell them $50 per hour to clean their machine up and see how fast they get interested.