Well, I have had this computer for 2-4 weeks and I have had it freeze on me about 4 weeks and funcation very very slow

ASUS nForce2 Ultra 400 A7N8X-E Deluxe
with 120hd ata winxp

I am thinking it might be my HDD because there were quite a few times when I would hear something click as if my floppy drive was being accessed initially or something and the computer would start lagging and the HDD would be accessing like crazy then my computer would just freeze right where it was at on the screen. No mouse response, keyboard, ctrl+alt+del, nothing. Also the HDD light would be on steady after the freeze; however, I am not sure if it was being accessed. I don't remember.

What do you all think? Could a hard drive going bad cause the machine to freeze when a lot of applications are opened? One more thing to note about the HDD. When I am browsing through folders on my computer in the windows explorer every now and then when I request a folder to be opened it will take a substantial amount of time to load in which time my HDD is being accessed profusely.

I hope this information helps.

Please, if anyone has an idea as to what the culprit may be, let me know.

All the problems you are experiencing can be caused by the hd being faulty.
You may also want to check the memory is ok, is the pagefile set at user defined or let computer define ?
Have you got plenty of space left on the hd that can be used for the pagefile (virtual memory)

I was wondering if I got a new hard drive say a (40hd) and use the 120hd as just my back up would I still have issue with that drive running very slow.