I have a weird situation opening a 'word' document. If we call this docA and I try to open it by clicking on it with 'Word' already running it will take 40 seconds to open. If I then close docA and open it again, it opens immediately. Similarly if I've previously opened docB then docA will open immediately. docA is only about 50k and other docs of various sizes are OK.
I've uninstalled and reinstalled Office XP which made no difference.
Any ideas very welcome.

Peter

What is the brand and model of computer, and how much memory do you have?
There is a Microsoft Update for Office 2002 and XP that you should install if not already done.
First, I would run the free CCleaner, then consider others to remove congestion. Has your system been defragged? Have you run antispyware, adware, and antivirus scans? Suggest you run: Windows Defender, Adware 2.0.0.7, SpyBot 1.5.2. Or professional paid stuff such as AVG, SpySweeper, Spyware Doctor, Nod32, etc., if for no other reason than to rule out common causes.
Sometimes the problem is exacerbated by an install of a multifunction printer. HP, Lexmark, and Epson are particularly problematic. You would need to uninstall the printer, then reboot, and remove all evidence of it with RegClean, then reboot, defrag, then reinstall the printer.

MS Office gets itself into a bind without the help of infections, even if you have applied
all the updates

FREQUENTLY, the only way to cleanup MS Office is to Uninstall all Office programs,
reboot and reinstall.

(60% of the registry is MS Win/*, 30% is MS Office, and User entries are ~10% )

Thanks to both raybay and jobeard for your advice. raybay hit on the problem with his comment about epson. Uninstall/clean/re-install did the trick. Many thanks.

Peter

i have the same problem.. i will try uninstalling it thanks

Tay4life

A word of warning! I was a little premature saying the problem was cured. When I came to print I found the printer, although installed, was not set as the default printer. Once I did that the problem returned. I am planning to revert to a saved disc image to see what happens. I'm sure at the time the image was made there wasn't a problem. I'll report progress but it's likely to be at least a week before I can find time to do anything.

Peter

in the meantime, give openoffice a try. it's free and better.

It's also a Java implementation and much slower to get started

never noticed a significant difference.