Thank you for the quick reply. I always hope for an easy solution but experience has taught me that it is rarely the case. I am afraid you may be correct about the bad sectors - but I still need to try SOMETHING. I can at least hook up the "LP fix" setup and see what it reads on HyperTerminal. That should be harmless, correct? Now, as I understand it, ALL hard drives - even brand new ones - have at least some bad sectors. So, there must be a way to reload the firmware even with bad sectors. Otherwise, how do they build brand new (blank) drives and load the firmware?