welo

Cutting off the power cannot really harm the computer hardware, but it might cause troubles with the file system and corrupt files that are opened and being written to at the moment the power cuts off. Windows will recognize such events (when the file system is not unmounted properly) and trigger a file system check on next boot during which affected files should be fixed.

During system startup most file IO is reading and no sensitive data is written to (mostly log files and stuff).

Do I understand correctly that the situation is still unchanged, Vista not starting without your unplugging trick? (Did you try this only once or repeatingly?)

Did you install any software during the last session before the problem occurred for the first time. Did Windows install any system updates?

How long did you wait for Windows to start up until turning off?

Can you boot into safe mode?

welo

Repeating what others have said on this forum, the Maxnet Premier package offers indeed a lower share ratio between users and therefore usually offers better international speeds. Furthermore it offers a higher upload (1MBit). But there are also some reports, probably location-specific, that service quality after upgrading has NOT improved significantly.

A view things that might help in decision finding (or maybe on the contrary confuse you even more):

Maxnet is being restructured into 3BB. Read more on this here. I'm not sure whether this makes any difference on a technical level, some reports imply that but I kind of doubt it without being able to back this up with any information.

Not sure service reliability will improve with the upgrade to Premier, since I assume that technicians, employees and hardware used is more or less the same for both services.

A lot depends on what is the source of your Internet problems. If the Internet breaks down due to 'overload', e.g. all the kids coming home from school and turning on their computers or going to the internet cafes, Premier might help since you will share your network only with other Premier users (very simply spoken).

If it is due to nationwide problems or a general bandwidth problem in your province/region, it might not change anything at all.

Same applies if there is problems because some government agency goes crazy on trying to control the internet (conspiracy theory) in those days.

Btw I don't think changing from phone-line based ADSL services to mobile phone based 3G services is a good move (in Thailand, in your situation/location, yet). I doubt it is a available outside of greater Bangkok area, and GPRS/EDGE will give you only a fraction of the line speed that ADSL does.

Btw, did you see whether there the faster 3BB packages (10-16 MBit) are offered in Sa Kaeo? Many users give very good feedback on those new package, but I don't now if Maxnet/3BB can offer those packages outside of the cities yet.

welo

8.8.8.8 is Google's public DNS server, they don't trust their own anymore I guess.

Haha, interesting to hear that it was actually the provider changing the DNS server entry. A guy on a recent thread actually suspected a malware/virus infection when the entry had changed without his doing.

welo

if I want to end my subsciption and refuse to pay for this month,what will happen? Would they sue me?

Just read the story of another guy here on TV in a similar situation who canceled the contract and refused to pay the cancellation fee. He resorted to a behavior that some might consider rough, but finally made his way to the manager and got the OK, also due to the extensive record of complaints he had filed during the months of service.

Additonally Windows startup time might be longer if Skype is set to start automatically. And often this is what makes a user 'feel' a slow computer, waiting for the system to be ready for action...

Of course this applies to every program running on startup.

welo

seeing your result it seems upgrading to 4MBit only gives you better maximum speeds, but during crowded hours it will still crank down to being unusable for international sites. Skype quality still sucks too.

I had opportunity to check out 3bb, true and TOT in greater Bangkok area during the last days. The first two both 4MBit, TOT was 3 MBit. 3bb and true rocked (the latter full 4MBit internationally!), TOT was average at best. Was not an extensive test though.

I will not renew my TOT contract for sure.

Does anybody know if the transition from Maxnet to 3bb is only for Bangkok area or nationwide? I still not really know what I can expect in the province (and as we all know it always depends on the region anyway)

welo

I guess it depends on which search terms you are competing for. Especially if you try to sell something you will have a hard time competing against major and established web sites since your ranking will be much lower than theirs.

Never was involved directly with search engine optimizations other than technical (URL rewriting and html optimization), but I'm sure it is pretty tough nowadays to fool Google into boosting your ranking when your website is not really popular.

Loved the spammers' comments on a blog I found the other day, they would write English prosa about just anything before posting the actual link. Not sure this is to fool Google or to bore the moderators enough so the stop reading before exposing the comment as SPAM.

welo

Blimey! Didn't know that there is a Windows XP version in Thai (other than the support for Thai input). Downloaded the Office MUI edition with Thai once, but for the OS... All the Thai computers I've seen run the english XP version.

I wonder why people don't use it. I'm all for training English but honestly, I consider it more important to get a glimpse of what's happening on the computer than to pick up 5 or 10 English IT terms

I know that some people won't read it anyway no matter what language, and Windows messages sometimes don't make sense at all even for me , still...

welo

@filingaccount

I agree. Never really looked at the package offers since the price usually is not very competitive if you only require a bare enclosure without any fancy (or not) 'hot backup' button or packaged software.

Just to clarify, my 'bad' (well, maybe sub-optimal) experience was with COM7, not with DCOM. Will go with SYNNEX or DCOM then.

@Tywais

thanks for the link

welo

So in short 'short stroking' is trying to minimize access times by using only a fraction of the harddisk's capacity and reducing movement paths for the heads. Transfer speeds will increase as well since outer tracks of a platter have a longer track length at constant rpms.

This is well known for years now and taken into account by some defraggers (moving frequently used files to the beginning) and partitioning strategies (first partition for performance, second partition for data storage).

The new idea here is to actually apply this concept radically to achieve similar performance patterns as SSDs do, for high performance / server setups.

The article was published in 5/2009, I wonder whether the idea is widely accepted and applied nowadays.

For home use I don't really see the point in wasting 3/4th of the harddisk capacity. One can always use rest of the harddisk as infrequently used data storage without affecting the performance of the high-performance partition much (assuming partitioning yields the same result as the described method of restricting the available tracks on firmware level).

welo

admin / tot

Thanks for all the replies.

Guess no problem with going for a Samsung then.

F1-F3 are different generations with F3 being the latest, I guess, EcoGreen only 5400rpm, hence the Spinpoint F3.

Unfortunately the JIB website is not available for me right now (TRUE problem?), can't remember which Samsung model I had looked at yesterday.

Anybody knows whether the Spinpoint F3 doesn't get too hot in an external enclosure, due to the 7200rpm? I'm not too worried though...

What about all this talking about different harddisk series optimized for different use-cases? I understand the difference between server and desktop usage (number of start cycles), but is there anything else to consider?

@filingaccount

Thanks for the reminder. I forgot that in Thailand harddrive warranties are not necessarily provided by the manufacturer but by various service centers. Had a warranty issue with Synnex (Seagate drive) and it was top-notch! Only 30 minutes and I had a brand new replacement drive.

Had yet another warranty issue with 7COM and they made me 'upgrade' to a bigger model for 400THB. Said they didn't have the smaller model in stock - but the harddisk was not that old and the size still everywhere on sale - talked to one other person who had the same experience. Whatever, the offer was still OK so I didn't bother to argue with them.

So which service centers one should go for?

DCOM

SYNNEX

@ACER D110 1TB

At Thanni the price difference between the bare Spinpoint F3 1TB drive and the Acer 1TB external drive is only 300 THB, not bad for the enclosure plus software. However, the harddrive used inside might be an older model or only 5400rpm.

Did anybody who owns the drive have a look at the harddisk model used?

I also wonder whether the warranty only applies to the harddrive or includes the enclosure. If it applies to the whole package not a bad deal.

I usually just leave the enclosure open and switch harddrives, so don't necessarily need another enclosure

welo

I am running out of disk storage and get annoyed having to decide what movies/series to delete

I need as much GB's per Baht that I can get! Performance is of no concern since it will serve as data tank only, built into a USB external enclosure (hopefully switching to eSATA in the future). Reliability and maybe low temperature should be considered.

Samsung would be the best price, and while not making the fastest harddisks the quality should be OK... right?

Has been a while since I digged into hardware reviews and if anybody can spare me hours of internet research I would really appreciate it

welo

I see it like this:

Money matters, go for an upgrade. Money doesn't matter, go buy a new one.

IMHO some questions should have been asked before giving advise:

How much RAM does the laptop have now?

What software does he use?

How long since Windows XP has been installed from scratch?

If the same software ran fast enough two years ago, why should the laptop be underpowered now? Re-installing Windows XP and a memory upgrade to satisfy service pack 2 and risen demands due to larger image resolutions might have done wonders.

But again, we don't know enough details.

Anyway, if money is not much of an issue, buying a new laptop might be less hassle with the further benefit of upgrading to state-of-the-art hardware and software.

OP might still upgrade the old laptop (memory only) and give to his kids or a friend or sell it. Please don't let it rot in a corner, that's a waste of resources.

welo

nice find. I guess the webmaster is in serious troubles now.

I think they're crazy

zincalume_msds.pdf

Aluminium_sheet_msds.pdf

Well, I can read English but I am lacking specific knowledge to deduce any clear statement from those documents on whether the shown usage is a health risk or not. Are the outside panels heating up enough to set free chemicals? Is the heat produced from the coal enough to melt the aluminium structure?

welo

Sorry to bring up this old thread, but I just stumbled across this article and it reminded me of the OP's question.

It is basically a very techie and rather small improvement from Vista to Windows 7 how the Windows Console (command prompt) works. In older Windows versions (XP and Vista) the software design was fundamentally flawed and even posing a security risk. In Windows 7 Microsoft fixed the basic concept making it less vulnerable and more flexible.

I guess it's those small things that nobody talks about that add to Windows 7 good reputation. Of course for the ordinary user this would never be reason enough to switch to Windows 7. A number of rather small improvements might not trigger the 'Wow!' effect but can still improve an OS significantly.

welo

Tracking cookies are relatively harmless and cannot harm your computer. They cannot spy passwords or any files from your PC. Think of it like a membership card in your favorite department store which is used to collect information on your shopping habits. As in real life this information can be shared with other companies or sold to obtain a more detailed profile on your consuming patterns, same happens on the internet.

Just delete your cookies every now and then, or if you are paranoid at the end of every browser session.

If you use Firefox you can automate this (don't know about other browsers)

1. Goto Tools / Options / Privacy

2. Find the entry 'Accept Cookies from Sites' (which is checked by default) and select 'Keep until I close Firefox'.

However, this way all cookies will be deleted on exit, no matter whether 'good' or 'bad'. Websites will not be able to 'remember' you until the next time you visit. For instance you will have to log in again any time you come to the Thaivisa forum.

Add thaivisa.com and other 'trusted' websites to the exception list to make it work again.

welo

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

Any assistance is appreciated

Any outcome yet?

You can also try the free Word Viewer from Microsoft in case OpenOffice has compatibility issues and you only need to view or print the file. Otherwise OpenOffice is surely a good option.

However, I guess you still want to fix your MS Word problem. It will require some effort on your part though, especially answering a lot of questions so we can pin down your problem.

1. Does Word only crash ('not responding') when you open specific documents, or does it crash with all documents?

2. If only specific documents crash Word, can they be opened on other computers? Warning: If you haven't tried before, I DO NOT recommend copying the Word files to other PCs. There is the slight possibility of a virus infection (Word macro viruses) that you could spread that way.

3. Does the problem only occur when opening documents that have been created on this computer or also with other documents, that have not been opened/edited on said computer before. (Reason: if Word crashes only with documents created on this computer, something goes seriously wrong when writing the file).

Download the following document (from microsoft.com, virus free) and save it to your harddrive (right click / save as...): http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/2...grade_chart.doc. Then open it with word and see if Word crashes.

4. Did you try to open Word from the start menu, then open the file using the File / Open dialog? Chances are low it makes a difference, but IF, then this would point to a specific kind of problem.

5. Did the problem only start after uninstalling Avira and trying to install McAfee, or already before?

I checked and I found no information that Avira or McAfee have modules that install into MS Office and could cause Word to crash. However, both offer real-time protection, meaning any file will be scanned when a program tries to read or write to it. This might be a reason for issues, especially since Avira might not have uninstalled cleanly or McAfee not installed correctly.

6. Did you suspect a virus infection, or did or does your PC 'act weird' other than your Word problem?

Depending on your answers I will recommend some of the following options:

For now I cannot recommend where to start, hence the listing is in no particular order. It is however never wrong to make sure your Computer is virus free (E. Run A Virus Check)

A. Repair your MS Office install.

* This procedure detects and repairs problems such as missing files and registry settings associated with all installed Microsoft Office programs. It will not repair personal files, such as spreadsheets or documents.

* If the Detect and Repair command does not fix the problem, you might need to reinstall Microsoft Office.

Here are the instructions how to repair your MS Office install from the official Microsoft website: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HP052372001033.aspx

B.

Run the Office Diagnostics tool.

Microsoft Office Diagnostics in the 2007 Microsoft Office system is a series of diagnostic tests that can help you discover why your computer is crashing (closing abnormally). The diagnostic tests can inform you about problems and might identify ways that you can solve other problems.

Instructions: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA012340761033.aspx

C.

If you have the original MS Office install packages (DVD or files) you can completely uninstall and reinstall MS Office.

D.

Fixing your Antivirus installation, especially if you answered question 5. with YES

I see two options.

• using System Restore to rollback to a state BEFORE you uninstalled Avira.
  
• running special removal tools from Avira and McAfee that are built for exactly those situations where install or uninstall messes up.
  Download and run Avira Registry Cleaner: http://www.avira.com/en/support/support_downloads.html
  McAfee Removal tool http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=TS100507
  

Unfortunately it is not uncommon for Antivirus software to mess up the system during install/uninstall. This is why there are tools like the two above. From my experience McAfee causes more problems than Avira, but all Antivirus products cause issues from time to time since the drivers the install for real-time protection are very low-level.

E. Run a virus check

I am not sure why you wanted to switch to McAfee. But if it was because your PC acted weird it might as well be due to a virus/malware infection that the install of McAfee failed.

In any case I recommend running Hitman Pro since it is very easy to use and very fast. If anything shows up or you suspect a virus infection anyway, I would recommend going for the other options as well.

Run Hitman Pro

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/Popu...itman-Pro.shtml

Hitman Pro is a cloud-based virus scanner which is only targeted at malware removal, not at prevention/protection. It uses a completely new approach to scan a PC fast and efficiently and uploads suspicious files to a computer network (cloud) where the file is scanned by 5 major antivirus engines. It offers a 30-day trial period (easily activated by a single click of a button) which is sufficient to clean an infected PC.

Kaspersky Removal Tool

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Antivirus/Kas...oval-Tool.shtml

Malwarebytes (very complete malware detection)

MalwareBytes' Anti-Malware

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Antivirus/Mal...i-Malware.shtml

All those solutions are so-called 'On-Demand' scanners, and do not install any real-time component that might cause further installation issues. If you have any troubles downloading the tools or running the update afterwards this might point to a virus infection.

welo

Can you open somebody else's Word documents?

If you start Word from the Start Menu, then open the document using the File/Open.. dialog, what is the behavior?

When does Word crash exactly, do you see any status messages? Just descibe in more detail what is happening.

Get more ideas here...

http://www.tech-archive.net/Archive/Word/m...2/msg00197.html

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsg...f973342&p=1

http://word.mvps.org/FAQS/AppErrors/ProblemsStartingWord.htm

Check your printer drivers, change the default printer to XPS Printer and see if the problem persists?

There seem to have been issues with Norton Antivirus, which AV do you use? Does it have a special MS Office real-time protection?

welo

Just for the record, I finally had a chance to have a closer look at the laptop (it took some time 'cause a hardware issue had to be fixed before) and it was heavily infected with trojans and viruses.

welo

Checkout SQLYog, not sure if all features are available in the GPL licensed 'Community Edition'.

Before using a web programming language (PHP) to do data mining I recommend you check out other options:

There are several Mysql Desktop Clients available that you can use to view the database structure, tables, etc and run SQL queries. Mysql used to offer MysqlAdministrator and MySQL Query Browser. The tools were not awesome but did the job. I think the still might ship with the Windows Mysql installation package, not sure. Of course there should be quite a view 3rd party tools, too.

You can also go for any ODBC or JDBC (java) based program, for instance this or this.

The market is huge and it might take some time to find a tool that fits your needs. And of course only some are freeware.

welo

You might want to have a look at Cassandra (http://incubator.apache.org/cassandra/). It uses the BigTable data model. Developed by Facebook, used by large sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Digg.

Jambla

Had a quick look at this interesting project.

Not sure the software has a use-case scenario in mind that fits the OP's project. Cassandra was developed for multi-user applications with 'active' data and heavy load. I might be wrong but the OP's descriptions seems more like a data mining project to me where only one user is working on the data and no extensive write operations take place. Of course I might be wrong (again)

welo