sorry.. didn't think that that info would help much.
i can't connect the laptop thru a cable cause the router is to damn far away and it involves floors (the rooter is in one floor, i'm one below) so i guess i'll just have to look for diferent live cd's then!
i'm not sure what is wrong with the hard drive. maybe its overheating or something like that the only thing i know is that suddenly one day the computer froze and when i restarted it didn't recognize the hard drive as a partition to boot from. and after cooling down (a few hours later) i can start the computer again but i never know how long will it last till the next time the HD freezes!
thks for your help!