Old emachines desktop computer freezes, is it a hard drive issue?

The old emachines desktop computer I used to use had some problems, the screen / software could continously freeze on my and I don't know what the problem is. My guess is that the hard disk / drive had some kind of issue, since my dad mentioned that...

older emachines desktops were famous for disk drive failure.

Does that sound this like this is the case, or is there something else wrong with the PC? It'd be great to fix it up to use it again, so any thoughts kindly appreciated. Thanks.

Well you could go out and by a new hard drive there quite simple to install. Although all of your information stored will be lost unless you make a back up disk. If your computer continues to freeze it could be a virus of some sort thats only if u did not replace the hard drive but im not to sure about emachines my last peice of advice is DO NOT GET A DELL there cheap but they are rip offs.
Good Luck

The first thing you want to do when you have issues with your pc is freezing is run a virus scan. Now you can do this by using your anti-virus software installed in your machine (and I hope you have anti-virus software)or you can visit http://housecall.trendmicro.com/ they have free over the internet virus scanning software. Once the scans are completed and no viruses are detected you can then move down to the next level of threat which is spyware.

Spyware (which is software that installs itself into your machine without your knowledge through internet surfing or through some software installation) will cause your machine to slow down and act unstable causing applications to randomly hang or crash. Visit http://www.download.com, search for spybot or adware and download then
install the anti-spyware software.

Now if neither of the two are threats to your pc then we can move down to hardware troubleshooting. Check to see if your emachine came with any diagnostic cds, if it does then you can use the cds to run hardware tests which will test your hard drive to verify all the cylinders within the hard drive are spinning correctly. If this fails then you should go out and buy a new hard drive, they are cheap and easy to install.

if your computer is freezing most likely it is a RAM issue. but if only internet explorer is freezing, then it might be either an internet browser problem, or a virus.

yeah pretty much whats been said above, because its old it might require more ram to be able to handle todays applications, could be a virus affecting your (volume something I can't remember off the top of my head) or it could be the operating system itself just worn down. nothing lasts forever I suggest a fresh start and reinstalling what ever OS youre using to give it new life.