Thanks people, particularly Lotus - This problem was caused for me by a WinFax Pro 10.0.02 macro which was trying to load on startup of Word 2000. I proved it by moving all macros from .../office/startup to a temp folder and finding Word would start. Moving them back into the folder until I found that one that caused the crash. Then on to Symantec which had a new macro to dowload which does work. Keep up the good work!!