Word 2000 viewed in Internet Explorer

When a client clicks a link to a Word document and they have Word 2000 and Windows XP, it seems to freeze Internet Explorer when they exit the document, and WINWORD.EXE remains in memore taking up 20MB of memory in the process. Microsofts KB shows a solution for the Japanese version of Office 2000, which might work with the English version. My question is: Does anyone else have this problem? If so, what has been your solution to the problem?