Outlook 2003 Mircosoft Word Resetting Problem

I'm currently experiencing a problem with Outlook 2003 that I'm using with Windows XP Pro Operating System. When ever I send a new Email or respond to one it locks ups and I have to restart it. I get the following message. "Microsoft Office Word encountered a problem and needs to be closed. We are sorry for the inconvenience." I lose every thing I have been typing. This started having this issue about a month ago. Before that I never had a problem like this. I uninstalled Microsoft Office 2003 Pro Edition and reinstalled and still had the same problem. The only thing I can tie the problem to is when I started using External Drives to save various data.

Can somebody give some suggestion on how solve this problem?

Thanks,
ADubin