[Ken L]

The problem is sporadic. You can open several word documents without issue
then suddenly when trying to open one it delays for nearly a minute. It is
not any specific document or document type (2003 vs. 2007)

I ran the MS Office diagnostic tool and it reported that there are no
problems.

I ran process explorer and watched the system tasks as Word opened and there
is no difference in when a document opens quickly as opposed to slowly. No
different processes start, just the time delay.

I updated MS Office 2007 to SP1 and applied security patches, problem
persists.

There is nothing in the users
\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Word
or
\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Word\Startup
folders

The system is a Dell XPS laptop with CoreDuo processors and 3.5GB of RAM