MS Word takes forever to load

I am using MS Word 2000. It use to load fast, but now it takes over a minute to load. I am not sure what the problem is. I can tell that when I start Word up that it causes network activity as if it is trying to find something on the Internet or on my home network. Normal.dot is in the right place, but even if I try to load normal.dot by double clicking it in the directory, it takes forever to load up. Now this problem only occurs when I load Word by click on the application icon or try to open the Normal.dot template directly. If I open any other document that I created directly, Word starts up fine. I think the problem is with the normal.dot template, but I am not sure how to fix it.

Thanks for the help.

Do you have Office 2000 Service packs 3 and 4 installed? Do you have at least 512 mb of memory?

I have Microsoft Update set to auto, so I am sure I have the latest service pack. I have 2gb of ram. Check my system specs, my system is fast.

It must be a "Word" thing! I have Word 2002 and notice the same slow load when I open it. If you look in Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel, you will see that it is a huge program! I can't solve your problem because I haven't been able to solve my own. I have tried unchecking as much as I know I don't need to load, bu the time difference isn't significant.

"I have Microsoft Update set to auto," I'm going to make a suggestion and you can follow-or not:
STOP the Automatic Updates! Choose instead either 'download but don't install' or 'don't download or install, notify me' You're going to find yourself in a fix when one of the 'problem updates' installs on your system! Example: you have an AMD processor> SP3 caused constant reboot on these processors.

And the latest update for the DNS vulnerability trashed the internet connection for those who also had ZoneAlarm on their system.

By using the Custom install feature for the updates, you can check each update, see if you want it, need it and act accordingly. YOU are the one who should be in charge of your system- not Microsoft!

If you did not read it already, I fixed the problem by deleting the normal.dot template. You should try doing this if you are still having trouble with word 2002. If you don't know where the normal.dot tempate is located, you can simply do a search of your C: drive to find it. Make sure you have set your file options to show hidden system files though.

Thanks for the advice about auto updates. I have never ran into a problem with auto updates in 13 years, but I hear that some people do. I just have to much other stuff going on in my life to worry about it, so I leave it to set to auto up dates. I figure the time I would spend doing updates manually would be greater then the time it would take me to fix the rare glitch, if one should ever occur. But that's just me.

If you are addressing me, I delete the normal.dot template on a regular basis. That's the first suggestion in Word problems.