Everyone: Guess what--I just suffered a hard-disk failure. This failure was not complete, but it was to the point where I couldn't boot the system anymore. Fortunately, I had burnt the rescue disk, which I used to sign on, get the network interface working, and issue some vital "scp" commands. And after I rescued my most important files and move them to another machine, I began to wonder about a few things. Ever since I installed Fedora Core 2 on the machine in question, I have never been able to read the list of Samba users even after adding a number of users. Nor has my sound system ever worked as it should have. Now I start to wonder: Could the faulty hard drive have caused all the trouble before it finally failed? That this is the first time I have suffered such a failure tells you how new I am to Linux generally (though I doubt that I would have been able to effect such a comprehensive rescue in Windows!). Would some of you veterans give me some insights as to whether programs and services that somehow refuse to perform as described are signs of incipient hard-drive failure? TAH