Just to make this a little clearer, are you saying that playing Shockwave games is causing your machine to lock up?

I'm a little skeptical as to whether these games are the cause of a hard drive failure, though browser windows locking up now and again whilst playing games is not uncommon. Occasionally it's bad programming on the game maker's part, though by and large restarting your browser and trying again is enough. Have you tried using a different browser (Such as using FireFox if you usually use IE or vice versa)? If so, does this create the same problems or not?

Are you running the most up to date versions of both your browser and the plugins to run these games?

Let us know and we might be able to help you out.