An update from MSFT this week has made Word crash 50% of the time.

[hauss5]

I installed an update that the MSFT auto-update wizard recommended this week.
Since then, Word crashes 50% of the time I open it. It does send and error
report and recover what I've been doing (the crash occurs after I've done a
small amount of activity in the application), but it's incredibly annoying.
Word had never crashed on this computer, with Office XP/Windows XP (the only
OS this computer has ever had), before the install. The Word crash affects
Outlook, as well, since I use Word as my editor in that app.

 

[garfield-n-odie]

See http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/ProbsOpeningWord.htm.