It is proved undecidable in ZFC + GCH whether every Z-module has a {Z}-precover. Let F be a class of R-modules of the form C = {A : Ext(A,C) = 0 for all C ∈ C} for some class C. The first author and Jan Trlifaj proved [7] that a sufficient condition for every module M to have an F -precover is that there is a module B such that F = {B} (= {A : Ext(B,A) = 0}). In [8], generalizing a method used ...