off topic: hardware advice

[Kenny Hitt]

Hi, my laptop is having intermitent hardware failure.  When I used windows,
I thought it could be a bad driver.  Now that I have Linux installed, I know
for sure it is hardware.  Specifically, my hard drive.  My question is:
since I always hear the drive power up, is it more likely to be the controler,
or could it just be the hard drive.

When it happened this morning, I didn't have a DOS floppy with ASAP to varify
what message it displayed.  I've got one now for the next time it happens.

One other thing, after trying to boot 4 or 5 times, it came up with no
problem.  This behavior is consistant any time it happens.

          Kenny