welo

Please, guys, invest just five minutes to understand what DNS does, it doesn't need extensive technical knowledge to get the basics right! (Plus and Beggar already pointed out the wrong assumptions)

Why DNS?

* Computers communicate using IP addresses (e.g. 212.58.246.160) to identify each other on the internet.

* People don't remember IP addresses so they use words. (e.g. www.bbc.co.uk).

* The Domain Name System brings the two together and maps domain names to IP addresses

What happens when I open a website in my web browser?

* You tell the browser to open a website, usually by domain name, e.g. thaivisa.com

* The browser (resp. the operating system) will ask the configured DNS server to resolve the domain name to the correct IP address, e.g. 203.174.85.146

* Now the browser (resp. the operating system) knows the IP address and will initiate a connection to the destination address identified by IP address, the DNS server is no longer involved

I very much doubt that DNS resolving speeds affect test results from benchmarking tools like speedtest.net. Foremost all DNS lookup results are cached (remembered) for a limited time by both Firefox and the operating system.

Note: you can also enter the IP address directly into the browser, and it will bring you to the desired website. To open thaivisa.com just enter http://203.174.85.146 into the browser's address field. The DNS service will NOT be involved to initiate the connection. However, thaivisa uses name references to a second server (static.thaivisa.com) to load images and stuff, so in that particular case the DNS name resolution will still be triggered during the process of displaying the website. The same applies to servers that host banners and advertisements displayed on a website.

Benefits of changing DNS servers

I am still advocating changing the DNS server to openDNS, Google DNS, or advantageDNS for the single reason that Thai ISP's DNS server seem to mess up things sometimes, and I found that switching to alternative DNS servers brings more stability and reliability in name resolution, preventing the odd '404 Server not found' message.

If lines are congested I still find servers to respond slow or download speeds to suck since it has nothing to do with the DNS system...

Downsides of changing DNS servers

DNS lookups usually don't take much time at all, since the ISP's name server are located on its own network 'close' to your computer. This is why your ISP's DNS server should be the first choice under normal circumstances - meaning if they not tend to be overloaded or misconfigured or whatever...

The problem with openDNS and others is that the servers are located 'somewhere on the internet', not necessarily 'close' to your computer. If your ISP has network problems or suffers from 'line congestion', the alternative DNS servers might be affected, too. Meaning DNS requests to these servers will be slow or even time out, resulting in a '404 Not Found' even though the website actually might be in Thailand, but the IP address could not be resolved since the DNS server was not reachable. This definitely happened to me at least once with Google's DNS servers on a 3BB line.

Btw this is why those companies run a network of servers placed in 'strategic positions' around the world to provide faster respond times, however, openDNS for example is still located nowhere close to Thailand, don't know about the others.

welo

What is it you are trying to do? Most of the things you do installs the services through the package manager and if you just want to stop something temporarily then you just type something like

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 stop

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 start

or whatever you need to do...

Take care

Martin

Well, I ticked a bunch of server apps during the Ubuntu install and don't need all of them yet running all the time. So I thought I just disable automatic startup for now so the Vm boots up faster. No reason to remove the corresponding packages.

Everything works pretty nicely so far, I am using VirtualBox in headless mode and can start the VM via batch script, then open a terminal with putty. I use it as a development server for subversion, mysql, maybe trac and other stuff.

Ubuntu Server seems lightweight enough, starts up pretty fast already, and I want to keep memory consumption low so I don't have to assign a lot of RAM to the VM.

The inconvenience with the service management is not a big deal for me, it is more a continuation of my previous love/hate relationship with Linux.

I just like a simple command to disable/enable automatic startup for a specific service. Something like chkconfig.

chkconfig provides a simple command-line tool for maintaining the

/etc/rc[0-6].d directory hierarchy by relieving system administrators

of the task of directly manipulating the numerous symbolic links in

those directories

chkconfig --list [name]

chkconfig --add name

chkconfig --del name

chkconfig [--level levels] name <on|off|reset>

chkconfig [--level levels] name

Unfortunately those tools have been deprecated with 9.10 and removed from the repository since they don't work with Upstart scripts - at least this is what I understood.

Maybe I just install 9.04... I didn't setup a lot of stuff yet, so this would be an easy move...

welo

Yeah, I'll think about it.

I guess your noob reference was intentionally provocative, wasn't it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux...ns#Ubuntu-based

I remember Suse from my early Linux days, and I actually appreciated the gain in ease-of-use that it provided. The package manager was ahead of its (Linux) time. However, the configuration part of Yast had the problem that it made a mess out of the system's configuration files and you had to use it exclusively. I guess this changed with Yast2?

The Linux guru at my former company (who deeply disliked any kind of UI) swore on debian, maybe that is why I ended up with Ubuntu.

I leave it up to others to start a flamewar on which distro is the best, I go with the crowd, since a popular distro means many resources on the internet on how to do things

If I need a headless server installation and don't want to download 4.7 gigs, how would I do that with Suse?

welo

I'm just coming back to Linux after a 2 year break - mainly used it as development server OS - and Linux already gets on my nerves. I mean how hard can it be to provide an easy way to disable/enable a startup service...?!?

http://ubuntuforums.org/printthread.php?t=1319122&pp=75

Please read the whole thread and you will understand what I mean...

Upstart has been introduced in Ubuntu 6.10, so I've been told, still using SysV style init scripts back then (2006). Recently (with 9.10?) Ubuntu actually introduced 'native' Upstart scripts and everybody now seems to be caught by surprise that existing service manager tools no longer work (on those scripts) and no easy-to-use Upstart compatible tool is provided. Even worse, from what I understand (and I might be wrong here since I'm not a Linux expert) the concept doesn't really seem supported. Furthermore, some of the tools working on SysV init scripts have been removed from the Ubuntu repository (e.g. sysv-rc-conf).

Upstart was first included in Ubuntu in the 6.10 (Edgy Eft) release in late 2006, replacing sysvinit. While the new Upstart daemon is used, most of the services are managed using the old sysvinit scripts. The reason for this has been attributed to missing features that prevent the complete replacement of the existing scripts with native Upstart service descriptions. Since then, Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) introduced native Upstart bootup as of Alpha 6.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upstart

The Services option was removed because services-admin is not compatible with the Upstart jobs.

Some of the services are still managed by SysV style init scripts. You can use BUM to disable this services, but you have to manually disable the ones managed by the new Upstart jobs.

source: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1351501

And again, if you read the thread from my first link again, it seems that the two discussed options to disable an Upstart script are both not really good.

1. Remove/Rename the conf files in /etc/init - this will break mechanism to start the service manually via 'sudo initctl start SERVICENAME'

2. Edit the script directly to NOT start at any runtime level - this is easy enough by changing only one line in the script 'start on. However, what happens the next time the package is updated?

Don't want to rant about Linux, just take my frustration somewhere so I can continue working

And maybe somebody points me to something that I have missed, there is always hope...

welo

Yes as long it is running, whether in the background or not.

It's like asking if another 150 lb passenger in your car will make your car slower or make it work harder. Answer is yes.

The question is whether Skype is more like a 150 lb passenger or rather a 6-month old baby And whether your car is a 1.2l Toyota Yaris or a 4l 4Runner...

I thought the lesson taught was: Don't ignore your antivirus program when it reports a threat!

Sorry, my bad. Confused that with the Express Edition which is free AFAIK.

welo

Can one really get off-topic in a thread like this

@elkangorito

The burden with voluntary and unpaid work is that you still put some responsibility on your shoulders. Just take a voluntary job like school crossing guard. You hardly need any qualification to do that job, but what if a kid gets hit by a car while you are there...

Just recently I bought a laptop at Pantip for our neighbors, 2nd hand, and it broke down after 3 months with a rather severe hardware issue (GPU related). I found out that this model is well-known to develop this kind of issue, so I should have avoided it in the first place. Repair costs of more than half the laptop price were possible. I know quite a bit about computers, but I don't deal with laptops on a regular basis therefore lacking the experience to not buy this model.

I was lucky and the shop did the repair under warranty.

Not sure what I've had done if they had charged me for the repairs...

welo

That's because the Developer Edition is FREE

http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/Developer.aspx

Having a job that you actually enjoy doing is a great blessing. It turns at least parts of your working time into valuable life-time.

That doesn't mean I enjoy my job always, or I love to work for free and 24hrs, but I greatly appreciate that life was favorable to me and gave me the opportunity to choose a profession that I actually like doing.

But maybe somebody can explain what the point of this post is, I don't really get it There are many professions and most of them have to deal with private requests from friends. Btw, can somebody please fix my car!?

I guess this thread is just to out everybody who doesn't have a life LOL

welo

Can you elaborate a bit on the page 'jumping'?

Is the mouse pointer moving or the whole screen picture? Or only the browser window?

welo

Weird.

Try checking the system event log to see what application failed.

I am seriously considering a virus infection now. But didn't find any sources online to undermine this suspicion. If there is something like a virus that infects the vista boot loader you might have wiped it out by running EasyBCD. Otherwise I don't really see a connection between the boot loader and the system hanging during the welcome/login screen. These are two completely different stages during the boot process.

I also don't know where the log file should have been gone. It should be located in C:\windows\ntbtlog.txt. If you hit WIN-R and then type ntbtlog.txt it should pick up the file from any system folder and open notepad.

EDIT: actually there could be a connection between boot loader and startup services related to the windows genuine check...

Since you mentioned the USB drive, I assume you had the USB drive unplugged all the time and ruled this out as a possible reason!

Please not that of course the main point is not that it is connected with the cable but connected AND turned on during the boot process (actually during the POST, this is what happens before you hit F8 when the BIOS detects harddrives and maps USB storage systems to a drive letter.

Anyway, the USB would not explain the application error you see now during login.

If anybody is still following this thread, what do you think?

I think you should focus on finding what application failed during logon, this might indicate what we are dealing with.

You could also try to disable ALL startup services using msconfig.exe. Of course this will temporarily prevent some programs to start automatically, but you can later re-enable them using the same program (just check the checkboxes again).

Btw, did you notice any other strange behavior, like websites getting redirected, or task manager not loading, etc.

EDIT: I still think it might either be a failing harddisk or a virus infection. Checkout comments on this post

EDIT: One more thing. Please keep rebooting 3-4 times and see if the behavior is CONSISTENT! Erratic behavior rather points to hardware problems (harddisk, memory) whereas consistency in behavior indicates a software problem (incl. virus infection)

welo

Many companies have multiple shops in Panthip, hence seem small when they are actually not. I don't know which ones are around for how long but I remember J.I.B., Hardware House, IT Future (or similar), ... Many stores publish price lists which makes me more comfortable as I don't have to worry about being ripped of.

Can't comment on customer service, handling of warranty issues and such.

If you need the feeling of a large sales area go to the top floor - IT City. I found some of the sales personal to be well trained and some even speak good enough English. I personally don't like the second larger store on the 2nd floor (Data IT).

welo

On the matter of Steve Gibson and SpinRite.

After doing (even) more research on the topic I find the following criticism appearing in multiple sources:

1. technical criticism of SpinRite (but certainly not to the extent that it is a bad or non-working product, but that it's use might be dangerous in certain scenarios)
   
2. criticism of marketing claims about features of the product and accomplished results of using SpinRite, and in general of the language used to promote and describe the product ('pseudo science'). Those points are usually attributed to the person of Steve Gibson directly since they were not only published on the website but also repeated by him on other occasions.
   
3. criticism of Steve Gibson accusations against Microsoft that a bug in the Windows Metafile Format handling code was deliberately included to provide a backdoor into a Windows system
   

Details, sources and quotes:

1.

From what I understand SpinRite has two features that stand out: First it tries to recover data very thoroughly (re-reading a sector up to 1000 times), then writing it to another block on the same harddisk, secondly it rewrites every sector on the harddisk in a certain pattern to 'refresh' the harddrive.

The first is disputed since it might stress a failing harddrive too much and push it over the point where it fails completely. Furthermore writing the recovered data back to the failing harddisk might cause further issues.

The latter is criticized for two reasons: First it can lure a user into believing that it is safe to keep using a defective harddisk whereas sometimes bad blocks are signs of worse to come and the harddisk fails soon after.

Secondly the effect of the specific pattern and the magnetic effect of this procedure is doubted. OK, I'll give up on this one. Didn't find solid articles to back this up.

Btw any write operation to a bad block will trigger the harddisk's builtin feature of re-mapping the sector to a good spare sector that is reserved for exactly this purpose (reference).

When it encounters a block which is hard to read, it repeatedly attempts to re-read it, and tries to determine the value of each byte. The data is then saved onto the same disk (after re-allocating the physical block) which is a potentially risky operation if the disk write head is not operating properly. The goal of SpinRite is to get the hard drive working as reliably as possible, for future use, in addition to recovering as much data as possible. In situations where data recovery is the over-riding goal, other tools that passively attempt to recover data and copy it elsewhere might be better.

source: http://en.allexperts.com/e/s/sp/spinrite.htm

Spinrite is not data recovery software.

I get many questions about why I left off Spinrite on my recommendations of recovery software. I specifically leave off Spinrite because under the strictest terms it is not data recovery software. Almost every single data recovery package knows, and will warn you not to write the data back to the original source drive. Data Recovery/Forensics software almost always recover from a source to a destination. Spinrite does not do that, it refreshes the surface and controls reads to get the maximum amount of data from the sectors and then puts it back down on the same drive.

[...]

Another horrific story I have seen with drives sent to me, is that if Spinrite it runs successfully, people are under the impression that the drive is repaired and is usable again and continue to use it. Big mistake and it usually dies again shortly.

source: http://www.myharddrivedied.com/weblog/why_...ot_on_my_d.html

Readings on the 'refreshing' topic

http://library.thinkquest.org/C006208/data...harddrives4.php

http://www.smarthdd.com/en/bad_block.htm

http://serverfault.com/questions/51851/doe...val-deteriorate

http://library.thinkquest.org/C006208/data...harddrives4.php

2.

Note: this comment is from 2000, the website has changed in the meantime.

I suggest that those with a technical bent visit the SpinRite website and

see they can swallow such things as:

* "prevents mass storage systems from crashing" (nothing can do that)

* "sophisticated magnetodynamic physics models" (pseudo science)

* "weakest possible magnetic signals" (not real)

* "we doubt whether anyone but Steve and a handful of aliens would even

know what all this is" (no argument there)

* "Weak Bits" (no such thing)

* "gradual evolution of the drive's storage surfaces through physical and

magnetic stresses" (mumbo jumbo)

* "SpinRite is actually able to lower the amplification of the drive's

internal read-amplifier" (impossible, and after all this time Steve

apparently still does not know that data is recorded on magnetic disks

with flux reversals, not "amplitude")

* "mass storage systems need periodic preventive maintenance" (nonsense)

* "yeah, we know, Steve's a magician with his code" (how modest)

As for all the "exclusive" SpinRite features, many if not all of them are

anything but exclusive; for example, testing disk surfaces with worst-case

data patterns goes back many years before Steve ever thought of SpinRite.

source: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.dcom.x...mp;dmode=source

TBH, the author John Navas does not seem to be free from self-marketing either..

I dare say the person Steve Gibson is at least controversial. Also checkout the (now offline) website grcsucks.com via the wayback engine, the wikipedia article on his person and the associated discussion page.

3.

During one episode of his Security Now! podcast he accused Microsoft of having inentionally introduced a backdoor into a Windows component handling the Windows Metafile Format. Gibson apologized later and modified his statement, though did not completely revoke it.

Unfortunately I didn't find any technically profound article that would provide a conclusion on this issue.

Windows Metafile vulnerability claims

In episode 22 of Security Now! in January 2006, Steve Gibson made an accusation[9] that Microsoft may have intentionally put a backdoor into the Windows Metafile processing code of the Windows 2000 and XP operating systems.

Gibson claimed that while reverse engineering the Windows Metafile format, he could only run arbitrary code if he used a "nonsensical" value in the metafile. His conclusion was that Microsoft had intentionally designed Windows in this way to allow them to use the feature as a backdoor to running code on Windows computers without the knowledge of the user.

Gibson's claim was refuted[10] by Stephen Toulouse of Microsoft in an MSDN blog posting on 13 January 2006, stating that Gibson's observations applied only to metafiles containing one data record, and that the behavior was not intentional. Gibson then apologized for the mistake, but held that the author of that bit of code intended that "feature" to be there, but that that bit of code was not necessarily meant to be in Windows.

Further information: Windows Metafile vulnerability and Transcript of episode 22 of Security Now!

source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_Now!#Windows_Metafile_vulnerability_claims

welo

I don't know anything about Humax PVRs, but since nobody offered advise so far I will try to help with my general IT know how.

The way you describe your problem it is still not absolutely clear whether it is a hardware or a software issue.

Might be some software bug related to video encoding, a problem with the file system, or like you said a failing harddrive.

From what I've read Humax doesn't use a Windows file system (FATxx or NTFS). Found one hint that it is 'Linux based' but not if it is one of the standard file systems.

However, there are 2 tools available that can diagnose and maybe fix corrupted Humax file systems.

http://www.hummy.org.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=470

You will have to connect the harddisk to your PC though. If your device is still under warranty you should check whether this voids the warranty or not.

Either connect it directly to a desktop PC or use an external harddisk enclosure that connects to USB or something similar. Not sure if Humax uses SATA or PATA(IDE) drives. If it is a recent model then probably SATA.

You can then use the Humax tools above and/or run a health check with a low level (file system independent) harddisk diagnosis tool.

Quoting myself from a different thread...

If you don't have data to recover and/or the drive is still accessible I recommend using other software to determine the state of the harddisk - before getting the 'big guns'.

Namely

1. Listen for acoustic signs of a failing harddrive

2. Check the S.M.A.R.T. attributes

3. Run a disk surface test

To hear acoustic signs of a failure you'll have to get your ear close to the harddisk. Laptop drives are often very quiet and noises difficult or even impossible to hear.

HDTune reads SMART attributes and includes a surface scan under the 'Error Scan' tab. Either try the 15-day trial Pro version or the feature limited free version.

All harddisk manufacturers provide free diagnostic tools. Here is a very complete list: http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287

Btw modern harddisks have self-healing capabilities, bad blocks will be marked as such and mapped to spare sectors that are reserved for exactly this purpose. (Interestingly this only happens not until the OS tries to WRITE to those sectors). Check the SMART attributes for a sign of a failing harddrive. Wikipedia offers a list of critical attributes and how to interpret them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.#Kn...R.T._attributes

However, I'm not completely sure how these tools work on an unknown file system. Bad blocks are handled below file system level, but advanced data recovery might require some knowledge of the file system.

If money is not that much of an issue you could just buy a new harddisk (maybe you want to upgrade to a larger drive anyway) and see if the problem persists. If still under warranty you could try to push for a harddisk replacement.

Of course we still don't really know if it is a hardware problem at all

welo

One thing this discussion demonstrates for sure is how much easier it would be if one could actually see the user's setup when troubleshooting. I mean seeing that external USB harddisk connected to the PC, then the PC getting stuck during POST...

Kudos to Lopburi for thinking of that possibility!!

welo

I am experimenting with different DNS as well. One problem I encountered is that when your ISP has serious network troubles and some IPs are not reachable or often timeout, switching to an alternative DNS completely might bring you additional troubles in such cases.

This happened to me just recently on 3BB - had changed to Google DNS but then the ISP had some serious issues and the Google DNS timed out 9 out of 10 times. However, this did not apply to all IPs (websites), and switching back to 3BB's own DNS servers 'fixed' the problem in the sense that since DNS resolving worked again I could at least access those IP ranges/networks that were not affected by the routing problem.

Long story short, I guess it is a good idea to add Google/openDNS/dnsAdvantage as primary DNS, and your ISPs server as backup DNS.

welo

Well, I just noticed that the OP's problem has been fixed, so we might as well keep discussing here... well, later today then

welo

Steve Gibson won't win any awards for website design, but in the computer security world his reputation is steller, and so is Spinrite's. The link you cite as evidence to the contrary is an anonymous forum post by someone who's drive had been failing already. Hardly solid information.

If you are going to give advice responsibly, without needlessly slandering someone's product, you should cite credible sources. I've been using Spinrite both at work and home for five years, and it's brought many disks back to life that normally would have been trashed. No, it can't save them all, but I have never found a product that does the job better, and I look frequently.

I don't want to start a flame-war here, especially since I didn't come to a conclusion yet what to think of this program. And since you seem to have a lot of experience with this program, and I remember you as a knowledgeable person from your other posts, I would very much like to discuss this a bit further, also on a (mildly) technical level. If you'd like to do that we should start a new topic in order not to hijack this thread here.

What I do want to discuss here is that my intention was not to bash the program (sorry for the opening liner about voodoo and last century, was meant as a joke, hence the smiley), but to merely point out[/b]

1. that this program is being questioned by some. The criticism made it into wikipedia, which - as we all know - might not mean too much. In such cases I like to read the associated discussion page. I just noticed now that I didn't post the wikipedia link at all.

Read my post again and you will see that I didn't hide the fact that I didn't find any solid/professional article on SpinRite (either pro or against). The link I posted was NOT meant as proof against SpinRite, but to warn against the problem of stressing hard-drives that are on the verge of failing. I actually pointed out that this applies to other tools as well.

My comment on the website was basically an effort to sum up some unusual aspects on the marketing of the program, namely that both website and program are not actively maintained and pretty old - last release announced was June 2004.

2. that I don't recommend the tool for the OP's problem at this point since there is no data to recover and extensive hard-disk manipulation might actually worsen the problem. Furthermore there are free alternatives that can check whether the hard-drive has any problem in the first place before getting the big (and expensive) guns.

I hope I could demonstrate that I didn't try to bash and flame a well-established product because I dislike it (or for whatever personal reasons), but because there are reasonable enough voices of criticism that make a warning justifiable.

Again, I agree that the lack of citations is irritating, sorry for that, but I did actually try to find articles during my research, and also found quite a view pro and against, but neither of them technically well-enough founded to make it worthy posting.

Like I said, recommend moving a more detailed and technical discussion to a new topic, because it will surely take some time to come to a conclusion. We can link to it for anybody who is interested following up.

welo

Now that we can rule out wifi the issue becomes even more interesting to me!

Read about a maybe related issue discussed just today here or

about what is possible if your ISP lacks skilled technicians here.

Interesting.

Read about a maybe similar issue discussed just today here or

about what is possible if your ISP lacks skilled technicians here.

A virus infection or a harddisk numbering problem (due to a connected USB storage device) are possible explanations. A failing harddisk is another one.

0. Where exactly does the boot process hang? Does the colored screen appear saying 'Loading Windows Vista'?

1. Does Safe Mode always work or only after your 'unplugging trick'. If it works always, we could also consider a software problem (drivers or startup programs).

2. Do you hear any strange noises from the harddrive, especially non-random, repeating noises before the boot process stalls (if there are bad blocks on the harddisk the OS will try several times to read from the damaged block). You will have to get your ear very close to the harddrive (in a laptop it is usually located to the left of the touchpad (or to the right if your DVD drive is located there).

3. Do you have a antivirus software installed, if YES, which one? Does it have current updates?

4. Please make absolutely sure that the laptop does NOT start normally without the unplug trick. Sometimes we suspect a pattern or a connection though there is actually none. It does not absolutely make sense to me that cutting off the power during startup 'fixes' the startup for the next run. Though it could be related since Windows will know that something went wrong and it will try to avoid the problem during the next startup (maybe by disabling the failed driver or whatever).

5. Please enable boot logging during a system startup that fails. Then attach the log file to your next post. Instructions here: http://www.watchingthenet.com/how-to-enabl...in-windows.html

If you provide detailed answers I will recommend actual steps in my next post.

welo

A program named SpinRite by Gibson Research can do a very thorough,and lengthy,scan of your hard drive.This will pinpoint and repair any suspect areas although ,if it finds any you had better get a new one anyway.

Superb program. Money well spent.

This Voodoo Magic software from the last century would not be my first choice to tackle the problem

SpinRite's techniques and claims are questioned by some, though I still need to find a review by a respectable hardware site with a statement on that issue. SpinRite is also criticized for writing to the same harddisk when recovering data, which should be avoided if the harddisk is in the process of failing. Doing intensive disk operation as done by SpinRite (and other recovery tools) might also push the harddrive over the limit and have it fail comletely. The website is kind of old, unprofessional and weird, too.

If you don't have data to recover and/or the drive is still accessible I recommend using other software to determine the state of the harddisk - before getting the 'big guns'.

Namely

1. Listen for acoustic signs of a failing harddrive
   
2. Check the S.M.A.R.T. attributes
   
3. Run a disk surface test
   

To hear acoustic signs of a failure you'll have to get your ear close to the harddisk. Laptop drives are often very quiet and noises difficult or even impossible to hear.

HDTune reads SMART attributes and includes a surface scan under the 'Error Scan' tab. Either try the 15-day trial Pro version or the feature limited free version.

All harddisk manufacturers provide free diagnostic tools. Here is a very complete list: http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287

Btw modern harddisks have self-healing capabilities, bad blocks will be marked as such and mapped to spare sectors that are reserved for exactly this purpose. (Interestingly this only happens not until the OS tries to WRITE to those sectors). Check the SMART attributes for a sign of a failing harddrive. Wikipedia offers a list of critical attributes and how to interpret them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.#Kn...R.T._attributes

Report back with the results.

Remarks:

• An alternative to SpinRite is HDD Regenerator (payware), which is included on Hiren's Boot CD (*cough*).
  
• Most manufacturers will only replace a harddisk under warranty if their own diagnostic tool reports a 'failing' harddisk. A small number of bad blocks will not get your harddrive replaced since they can be re-mapped to those mentioned reserved backup sectors. However, not sure about policies in Thailand since warranty is often provided by service centers like Synnex or DCOM, not by the manufacturer directly.
  

welo

Buyer beware - a new MAC Book Pro for 20k Baht is too good to be true.

But maybe...

Sounds like your router is a wifi router and someone else is logging on to it and using your net connection - my first suggestion would be to lock down the Wifi access with a password.

+1

Better do it soon. You wouldn't want a red-shirt post naughty things on some web board using your internet line