I will give that a try. I have Symantec Corporate Edition Anti Virus. I even
tried to disable & uninstall it to see if it was the culprit. No change.

If it runs ok in Windows safe mode, do you have any suggestions where to
look for the comflicting software? What, other than anti virus, is a known
troublemaker?

I was also wondering if it could in any way be hardware related. Both are
fairly new Gateway machines. I was thinking about calling Gateway about it.

"Cindy M -WordMVP-" wrote:

Hi ?B?S2F0aHl0ZWNo?=,

One thing I did was to delete the COM add-in registry key per the support
template. Did not help. I also had looked in Word Tools-Templates and
Add-ins to check what add-ins were being used. None were listed.
Two other things I did not mention in orginal post-I uninstalled Office
2003, reinstalled her previous version of Office 2000 and had the same
results. Also, have just discovered another person who, after putting clipart
on her document had the same results. She saved the document and then when
reopening it the hourglass twirls and twirls. If you click on the page it
will go totally white except for the title bar . Does this tell you anything?

Not really sigh, if you've already tried the rename Normal.dot route...

You've said starting Word in Safe Mode works? How about starting Windows in Safe
Mode, but letting Word run normally? If the problem still occurs, it's certain
it's in Word. If it doesn't, we may well be looking at something else on the
machine (like third-party software).

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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