"illegal operation" when I open word

[Pilar]

Hi,

Whenever I try to open word in various ways it always tells
me word has performed an illegal operation and will be
terminated. The tech support at my work told me of a way
to go to:
Start menu
Run
and type in winword.exe but there was a - (minus) or
something like that somewhere. It would work when I did
this, but I lost what it was. Anyone know what this is?

Thanks,
Pilar