Is Your Computer Up To Par?

[Frank_H_Smith]

As Salamu 'Alaykum,

One of my brothers-in-law told me that he had just spent "good money" to have his computer worked on and it was still slow.

I asked him if he would like me to see if I could speed it up.

First I ran a disk clean and it seemed like it may have been the first time it was run. Then a clicked on start again, moved the highlight up to accessories, then over to system tools, and down to defragment, again I think it might have been the first time it was run. After that I downloaded and installed Spybot and showed him how to press F8 after restart to enter safe mode. I ran Spybot and it found 14 infections that Malwarebyte had missed. After that I downloaded and installed Sandboxie
in which to run his Firefox so that any future malware couldn't access his computer unless he moved it from the sandbox. I showed him that he could press and hold the Ctrl key and then tap the + sign and the text would enlarge or the - sign and the text would strink. I installed truecrypt on his computer so he could create some encrypted files that would make it hard to access the files and that he could keep his financial records in the file.
And, I recommended that he put window washer and/or Evidence Eliminated and that he download Avast freeware. And that he should install one of the free firewalls. I use to recommend Zonealarm; however, it was bought by an Israeli Company and I thought that it would be prudent to pick another company. Short of loading Linux on his system, I thought this would help secure his system. When we finished his computer was over twice as fast.

 

[arzafar]

ok ill have to try that. How long did it take?

 

[Frank_H_Smith]

As Salamu 'Alaykum,

Well, we were visiting and I would do one thing and than if it was taking long, we would sit at the table and chat while it work.

The first thing I did was a disc clean. I clicked on the start/ all programs/ accessories/ system tools/ and disc clean. That probably took less than 10 minutes to run. (When you click the first box you have to make sure that all the lines are checked-recycle, temp files, etc.) Then I followed the first four steps but clicked disc defragmentation instead of disc clean. Next, I downloaded spybot. It can either be free or charged; so you have to use one of the freelinks. I also highly recommend McAfee Site Advisor because it warns you with colored circle if a site is safe or has given viruses to their test computers or customers. Also, Spybot is run in safe mode. You access safe mode by clicking start/ turn off computer/ restart/ and once windows shuts down you immediately start to tap the F8 key on the top row of your keyboard. use your keyboard arrows under the special keys and between the letter and number groups to navigate up to Safe Mode with Networking and hit the enter key]/ update it and immune it twice once on the side list and once on the top list. Then, you are ready to click find problems and after it finishes running (20-30 minutes normally, you click remove problems). Don't be surprised if you have quite a few viruses, adware, spyware, etc. The good news is spybot removes everything it finds.

In addition to the above, I recommend Sandboxie. It prevents maleware from getting to your computer by isolating it to a specific section of your computer. I also like truecrypt because even if I am hacked I have a good chance of finding them before they can crack my encryption. I use an encryption file, but you can encrypt an entire section or even an entire disc.

My brother-in-law has the slowest DSL. I think he said it is 1MB. My is 7MB on the phone and even more on the cable. And here are a few site that can help you tweak your computer:

I also like to run Eusing Registry Cleaner but that is a personal choice. Some like it, some hate it, some prefer other free or paid programs.

And, I have always used Window Washer because my heathen son uses my computer sometimes and just to be safe, I want to over-write (remove) his content permanently. It may be harmless Biker sites but I prefer to keep my computer spic and span.

Many people don't use third party anti-virus and firewall. That is risky behavior. You should always protect yourself from viruses and hackers and much as possible. Whenever you enter the world of virtual interaction you risk the possibility of infections. As my Granny used to say, "an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure."

(Speaking of my Grandmother, I remember my Grandfather saying to her, "put another log on the fire, cook me up some bacon and some beans, go out to the car and change the tire, wash and iron and mend my old blue jeans, won't you put another log on the fire and come and sit down close to me, oh put another log on the fire, Babe, and come and tell me why you're leaving me." My Pappy liked country music. lol )

So, I hope this benefits ya'll. Was Sallem

 

[Abu Talib]

Linux is cool safe from virus most of the virus cannot run on it as it does not execute .exe files

 

[weakslave]

Brother Frank, I appreciate the time you spent writing these posts. My procedure is a bit more refined

Comodo Personal Internet Security - Firewall + AV (free)
CCleaner (free)

Spybot is a bit outdated, the scan engine is very slow and it hasn't seen a great deal of updates. I scan with comodo then run all of ccleaner options - it has a registry cleaner too. If there are things comodo doesn't catch, I use Spywareterminator.

The safest form of browsing is Firefox + Adblock + Noscript. The only annoying thing about Noscript is you must manually allow every site you visit, not recommended for average computer users of course.

 

[Frank_H_Smith]

As Salamu 'Alaykum,

Bother Weakslave,

Thanks so much for your post. I have used comodo in the past and was very pleased with it. SpywareTerminator I hadn't heard is one of which I hadn't heard. I will download and run it after this post. The reason I like spybot is because my brother-in-law paid a computer shop $35.00 to clean up his computer. The next day I ran spybot on his computer and found 14 problems which spybot repaired. I also use Malwarebyte and it seems like spybot finds things that Malwarebyte missed and vice versa. I have Identity Patrol vIndentity Patrol on my computer as well as Registry Patrol. Identity Patrol often finds problems missed by both Malwarebyte and Spybot; however, it has a major flaw. It also identifies itself as malware and after removing the other problems it removes its own signature files which then requires re-download and installation.

I like Evidence Eliminator which I run alternatively with Window Washer. Truecrypt is basically on my computer to irritate those who would hack me. If they do un-encrypt my code, all they will find is AL Qur'aan and The King James Bible along with my son's tax papers.

And, I really like sandboxie which prevents programs for installing themselves. Everything first goes into a quarantine box and can only be transferred to the main computer by the user.

If you know of any other things that I missed, please list them. I have to take my computer to have the dust blown out. My fan started making a vibrating sound. I took the cover off and it was clogged with dust balls and sheets. I was able to remove most of it, but it and my keyboard need a good cleaning.

I have 750 GBs of storage and over a 1000 MB of physical memory. I plan on raising the 1000MB to 4000 with my dual processor, Insha Allah, and perhaps upgrade to a faster processor. My ISP gives me 700MB of download speed. I am also saving for a new computer because this one is three or four years old. When I purchased this one I gave my previous computer to a neighbor who went to our church. She is middle-aged and finishing her college education online. I have never been really attached to possessions because they are just things. Having my mom burnt to death by a butane lighter, my house burn down because of coal cinders, and my van catch fire and explode, among other things, I learned that nothing maters in the loss of property. But we need to appreciate each other because that is our loss. I know now not to complain about the weather, economic situations, and all other things out of my control as that is the Dominion of Allaah and He knows best. My father and mother's lawsuit went all the way to the supreme court on three different issues. My mom's name was Ethel and my father's name was Francis.

I do wish my dad's girl friend would have left some of my inheritance for a new state of the art computer. But...:angryred:

 

[Tru3m0sl3m]

try ubuntu linux the speed stays the same no matter how many applications you have to install. No worries with respect to viruses, bots and malwares.

 

[Frank_H_Smith]

As Salamu 'Alakum,

I had thought about switching to linux, but I have several hundred books and four language courses, after investing so much money into the language course, I would hate to lose them or have them not work. I have plenty of free space, but I don't know how to reformat and partition the drive. I guess I could move everything on my external drive and than create a dual system. One to surf the web and windows to view my books and listen to my audio courses. In the mean time, I do like sandboxie

 

[Dr.Khan]

Waleikum Asalam

Frank, I never had the chance to congratulate you on your conversion to Islam. I hope things work out for the best Insha'Allah. Have you told us how and why you converted?

back to topic:
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

In all my years, this has NEVER failed me. Absolutely free, make sure to do a full scan, it detects everything and deletes and is almost failure-free.

 

[BrotherInIslam7]

As Salamu 'Alakum,

I had thought about switching to linux, but I have several hundred books and four language courses, after investing so much money into the language course, I would hate to lose them or have them not work. I have plenty of free space, but I don't know how to reformat and partition the drive. I guess I could move everything on my external drive and than create a dual system. One to surf the web and windows to view my books and listen to my audio courses. In the mean time, I do like sandboxie

Walaykumsalaam brother Frank,

That's interesting. Which languages are your learning (or have already learned) ?

I am very impressed by the tech related knowledge of all you brothers. I have only heard of Ccleaner and Malwarebytes of all that are mentioned above. Btw, I never really liked any of McAfee's products. I usually stick to AVG and I had NOD 32 before. I prefer them both over McAfee.


I would probably refer back to this thread someday Insha'Allah if I need to sort my computer out.

Wasalaamalaykum

 

[Frank_H_Smith]

As Salamu 'Alaykum,

I am currently concentrating on Egyptian Arabic and have bought Pimselur and Michael Thomas. Plus I go to LiveMocha which is like the Rosetta Stone I had but free online.

I was relatively fluent in Spanish as my boss had hired 6 Illegal Mexican and I was the supervisor. None of them spoke English; so, I would fumble my way through Spanish. Gradually, I was thinking in Spanish and actually had difficult understanding English when I was in Spanish Mode. Whenever I spoke Spanish to a Mexican ie:" lo siento, mi Espanol es muy malo, necessito praticar. They would respond with "No Esta muy bueno. " If I would say the exact same words to a Puerto Rican, he would reply, "What language is that, Man? Is that Canadian?"
Once when I was in the home of some Mexicans, I wanted to tell them they had a big kitchen. I slowly moved my arm across the room as I said, "El Cocino es grande." Everybody stopped smile and suddenly I was looking at several individuals wearing Cara Dura. My partner asked what I was trying to say. I told him I was telling them they had a big kitchen. He explained what I wanted to say and all the smiles returned with some giggles from the women. I should have said La Cocina. What I actually said was "The Pigsty is very big."

In the past I have learned Spanish, German, Japanese, and Russian; unfortunately, Spanish is the only one I still remember some. I tried Chinese, but I couldn't get use to the tonal system where the same word with a different tone meant something completely different. I learn to read a little Biblical Hebrew, but just enough to learn some prayers and blessings. I had a mentor for nearly ten years who spoke all of the above languages plus several others fluently. He was a chaplain at Vale and a full professor at Chicago School of Theology. Had I listen to him when I was in my first or second year at Penn State, I would know several languages by now. I knew many mantras in Sanskrit and the first page of The Guru Granth Sahib Ji in Punjabi. I told the joke here before about polylingual, bilingual, American.

I had to go to special classes in the fifth grade to learn to enunciate properly because of a speech impediment. So, I tend to speak with a haughty tone without meaning to do so. My youngest brother never had the advantages that I had; consequently, he looks and sounds like Larry The Cable Guy while eating. He is strong as an ox and has a bull's temper so it is usually better to just say "Yep" than to let him know that you didn't understand him. When I had just finished college and when to spent a summer with my biological family, I had him raging a few times. Fortunately, he was only 15 than and still respected my martial arts. Now, I would worry that he would either break me or shoot me. lol

The McAfee Site Advisor is a free Firefox add-on that places colored circles after the items found in a search as to the safety of a site: red-stay away,
yellow-be careful, green-safe. It also puts a small rectangular box on your browser that shows the same colors when on a site. It will turn red and my anti-spyware will go off with bells and whistles if it detects a program trying to load a virus. Sandboxie is either free or purchased software that "creates a small box on your hard drive. Anything downloaded goes into the "box" and can not access your computer. So, if you do get a virus it is trapped in the box and theoretically can harm your computer. And, finally, Vidalia Bundle and Tor are proxi-programs that encrypts your internet traffic from your computer to a Tor Server where it is un-encrypted and sent to the site. If you are being monitored it makes it appear like you are in another country. It slows down your transmission quite a bit, but is worth it just to stand up for your right to privacy. Muhammad forbid listening in on private conversation, but most of the governments are not run by Islamic Principles

Was Sallam

 

[Tru3m0sl3m]

Jazaaka Allaahu Khayran, brother, for this great link! I used it today, and after it spent 8 hours scanning my computer, it found 17 malware that eluded SpyBot! Maybe my computer will now work like it used to? Nah! If it's Windows, it will always have problems and never be secure.

lol spot on

 

[Frank_H_Smith]

My Conversion to Islam can be read on my blog. I am not trying to increase traffic to my blog as was suggested once before because of a remark I made in jest. But, because of the length even with much detail omitted it was long and I felt it would be more appropriate to have people read it there. A MUSLIM AMERICAN

 

[arzafar]

Waleikum Asalam

Frank, I never had the chance to congratulate you on your conversion to Islam. I hope things work out for the best Insha'Allah. Have you told us how and why you converted?

back to topic:
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

In all my years, this has NEVER failed me. Absolutely free, make sure to do a full scan, it detects everything and deletes and is almost failure-free.

yep that's the one. best in the business imo.

 

[Frank_H_Smith]

As Salamu 'Alaykum,

Among other security, I have Identity Patrol. It was rather expensive and it does find infections the others miss, but the worse part is it identifies its signature files as spyware and removes them as well which requires you to reinstall them.

One of the safest methods that I found for browsing is sandboxie. It prevents spyware and malware from installing itself by locking anything that loads unto your computer into the "sandbox" and then asks if it should be exported to you computer.

 

[Frank_H_Smith]

As Salamu 'Alaykum,

Sandboxie allows both free and purchased versions to be run. The only thing that I don't like about sandboxie is when you click on the sandboxie icon it brings up firefox with a # sign on the top in the blue, but it seems to disable the McAfee Site Advisor since it is always gray. So, one of the disadvantages is you don't get the warning about malware on a site before you go there, but since it is in a contained "box" on the hard drive it can' do any damage.

Was Salam

 

[Aisya al-Humaira]

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

Assalamualaykum wa rahmatullah,

I tried to download from the above link a few times but it says that "Extraction failed - File is corrupt".

Well my laptop has been running quite slow nowadays and I'm guessing there's a lot of virus that even the anti-virus aren't able to detect it completely (that's possible, right?)

Anyways, does anyone has any recommendation on how to clean up my laptop? Yeah, I did disk clean up a few times already.

Thanks.

Wassalam.

 

[Tru3m0sl3m]

Assalamualaykum wa rahmatullah,

I tried to download from the above link a few times but it says that "Extraction failed - File is corrupt".

Well my laptop has been running quite slow nowadays and I'm guessing there's a lot of virus that even the anti-virus aren't able to detect it completely (that's possible, right?)

Anyways, does anyone has any recommendation on how to clean up my laptop? Yeah, I did disk clean up a few times already.

Thanks.

Wassalam.

Wa 'Alaikum us salaam sister you could install ubuntu on one partition and install clam antivirus on it and then scan your windows partition

 

[muslimaislam]

As Salam Alikum

We created computers. We programe computers. We buy computers. We damage computers. We design virus,trojans,worms. We pay money for anti-virus, anti-malware & the alike. We get angry at computers. We pay money to fix computers. We hate slow computers. We want the best computers. We want the fastest computers. We study computers. We like computers.

So from this, WE are the ones that do the damage to computers but we blame to computers. We pay for the computer but then we are not happy. We learn how to use computers but they change so quickly. We waste so much time on computers.

I beleive that computers can be good but they can lead you to so much harram in this world, that they are worth very little. A computer will also test you paitence & your anger levels.

By the way the basis of the computer system & todays technological world came from muslims. That is the current days number system. What you see on the screen is just a bunch of numbers in a certain order.

As Salam Alikum

 

[Frank_H_Smith]

As Salamu 'Alaykum,

I was lead to ALLAAH, AL Qur'aan, and Islam through Turn to Islam.com. Every week someone comes here wanting to know about Allaah, Islam, or Al Qur'aan. There is not a technology or an activity that when incorrectly used, done, or applied can not lead to Haraam. For longer that I care to remember, in the early stages of my last injury when I was confined to a wheelchair the only connection to the outside world was the computer, doctors and nurses, and one friend who visited me on a weekly basis. So, I am bias in favor of computers.