I don't know what it is but my computer did something similar this past week. Open up a proggy and bam computer would completely freeze and then finally completely died. The hard drive had dead segments or something like that in a small part of the drive. I ran maxblast utilities and it couldn't even fix it with a low level. Replaced the HD and it's fine now. Old drive wouldn't even let me re-install shit. If you can back up your shit now, if it's the same case as me. I noticed also the drive began makin slight noises a couple weeks back but didn't pay much attention to it since it wasn't too often and didn't seem at the time a problem.
