Check out the CPU cooler fan to see if it is still going. Symptoms could be massive overheat of CPU.
Had that problem with father-in-laws 'puter..heatsink came off during transit and system would start then randomly freeze and not reboot. Leave for 5 mins and it would start again only to repeat the cycle.
The hard drive msg is probably a function of all the reboots/freezes
Re Outlook Express ..Do a google search on export or backup of OE. There are ways to do it, just make sure that the current version is the latest version (updating retains the data) before exporting.
Max