Starting Word locks up PC

Have you tried reinstalling windows? What I might try is booting under DOS, deleting the windows folder, then completely reinstalling windows. Of course, you would want to move any important non-system files you want to save from the windows folder to another folder. In my experience, merely reinstalling windows without wiping the old install first does almost nothing. Of course, if you do wipe and reinstall, you'll also have to re-install all your drivers, which could mean some downloading andfrustrations as well.

The solution was to either rename or delete normal.dot (Word will create a new one next time it launches). You lose any Word macros or styles you created but weigh that loss against an unusable word-processing app. You would think re-installing Word2000 would write a fresh copy of normal.dot, but it must not (because I tried re-installing before I found out about normal.dot).