Win2k w/ Office97 Document already open

When opening a microsoft office document (.doc, .xls) I get an error message that reads, "A document with the name "document.doc" is already open. You cannot open two documents with the same name, even if the documents are in different folder. To open the second document, either close the document that is currently open, or rename one of the documents."
Unfortunatly I get this error even when there is Nothing open on the system at all. I have looked all over Microsofts Office and 2k support pages for a patch that would fix this and have come up empty handed.
Anybody know how to fix this?