OK, I won't edit the above post, since you asked another question, I will answer both here.

1.  Yes, I am signed up for automatic updates, I believe these problems are related to those updates.

2.  I uninstalled office 2000, and tried to do a clean install of Office 2003.  Since I had originally just installed 2003 Office as an upgrade, I had to re-install Office 2000 before installing Office 2003.  Yes, it could be related, but I cannot do a clean install of O 2003, it seems.

Thanks for you questions, they may yet lead to a solution.  After finding that Paint does the same thing as Office, I wonder if there are any other programs affected that I have not yet found!