[Philip Herlihy]

A friend has Word 2007 on a dual-core laptop running Vista. If he
double-clicks a *.docx file, it opens right away. However, if he
double-clicks a *.doc file, he can wait anything up to 45 minutes (!) for it
to open. I've watched an 850K document take 3 or 4 minutes to open from the
C: drive on his system.

I ran Process Explorer (sysinternals.com). It's clear that throughout this
delay there are spare CPU cycles and unallocated physical memory. I ran
Process Monitor (I find it harder to interpret the sheets of output
generated, I must say). I did identify that there was a process OICE.exe
(Microsoft Office Isolated Converter Environment) which seemed to be busily
enumerating very large numbers of apparently irrelevant files. Beyond that
I couldn't see anything which I recognised as unusual. Virtual size
(memory) and working set size both seemed unexceptional.

I've searched the web in increasingly creative ways but I haven't seen
anything like a solution. Any advice will be gratefully received.

Phil, London