Months after this post (1/3/06), after updating Office 2003 and Norton
Internet Security, I found that Word 2003 would not fully open at all unless
I either
1) opened it from the command line with add-ins disabled ("winword.exe /a"),
or
2) ran Microsoft Office Application Recovery each time.

With method 2, opening a file from within Word would again cause it to hang.
Sometimes I would eventually get a Help message about a problem with virus
scanning.

I used a suggestion at the MVP site to disable Norton's Office Add-in (on
the Miscellaneous page of Norton Anti-virus options), and now Word opens
properly. I DON'T get the message about files being checked for viruses when
they're opened, but at least they can be opened.

"Kathy" wrote:

Since Tuesday, word has been hanging when trying to open a document.