What would be the fastest way for restoring a PC?

As many of you, I am often called by friends to repair or clean their PC's.
I was doing it on a case by case basis, but now I feel I should make a bundled CD/DVD for that purpose.
Sure, if there are no lot of applications, the best way is to reinstall everything and protect the system, but in case of no application software, licences, etc., the hard work is a must.

So, what would be your recommendation of bundled programs which would automate as much as possible the fastest repair?
Also please try to divide it to technician and client side, e.g. a technician must have IObit Toolbox and so on.
For the client side, I would like to have one program of the kind (fw, av, etc.) preferably free, like IObit Advanced System Care, Avira, Comodo Personal Firewall ...

P.S. Also, does anyone know what should NOT run together with MS Security Essentials?

 

best bet is to make system images. you can use a tool to create images of hard drives using xp or vista. Windows 7 has the ability built into the OS. Just make an image of each computer and when you need to remove a virus or try to restore a pc, you just boot to the image that you made. here is the image making tool,which is free!

http://download.cnet.com/Easeus-Todo-Backup/3000-2242_4-10964460.html

 

Greetings, bihon...

It is a good idea to have a comprehensive 'toolkit' onhand when repairing machines, but I personally just use a small number of programs (with the current updates), along with the procedures posted in the Malware forums here and at other specialized sites...

@JonBoyFishhead: agreed with your image route, but MajorGeeks lists the same program here - as time goes by, I think you'll find that the MG moderators frown upon linking to other file repositories, and rightly so...

 

Thanks for the replies so far.

@JonBoyFishhead
Sure, everyone should use backup/images, but this is about other people's computers with many different applications, where my image couldn't do anything good.

@caliban
What programs do you use?