Already open

I have two machines with the same problem. Both have W2K with Office 97. When a user, let’s say JohnD opens a file ( .doc or .xls etc ) he gets the following message:
A document with the name “documentname” is already open. You cannot open two documents with the same name even if the documents are in different folders.
If JohnD opens a file on a network drive he gets “file is in use by JohnD – open read only?”

Thanks folks.