Installed software freezes laptop

I have a Toshiba Tecra A3 cel-M 360 laptop and it was all working perfectly fine until recently. I use Microsoft Office 2003 and lately it has stopped working. T tried uninstalling it and re-installing office but it just wont work. If i click “Microsoft Word” the start up screen appears and it just freezes on that screen. I can run other programs and applications but that start up screen for Microsoft word remains frozen on top of my wallpaper. I was told that the hard drive could possibly be faulty but I’m not sure. Any help please?

I think they are right, you might have a problem with the hard drive. Turn on the laptop and listen for the hard drive sounds. Is it loud? Can you hear grinding or clicking noises? If you can, probably your hard drive is dying. You can test the hard drive with Hitachi’s drive fitness test. Download this utility, create a bootable CD, start the laptop from this CD and run the test. Also, you can find this utility in the Ultimate Boot CD.
I would recommend to back up all personal data as soon as possible because the hard drive can stop working any moment.