CNX software revert to older version

Hello,

Something very strange happened and I can't find what could have caused the issue.

I have a software on my MBP with 10.6.8 OS X on it and it was version 2.3.5 untl last night. The software is Nikon Capture NX.

I use the software basically every day and there is a feature that was new to the latest version. This afternoon I launched the software and upon trying to use that feature I noticed the feature was gone. Then I checked the software version and it was the previous version (2.3.4). I was very surprized. I restarted the computer and saw something even more interesting. The restart process was haulted by the hard disk symbol on the display minotor. The computer launed properly after I selected that disk.

The CNX still reported being the older version so I uninstalled the entire CNX and reinstalled it back to where it was yesterday. But that feature is not available anymore.

Is my hard drive dying?

Note that when this was happening I had an external drive attached to the MBP first gen althugh I was not reading or writing to it myself. It was static.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts on what may be going on.

Farzad