Office 2007 Ultimate Slowing Everything Down

[eyc908]

I recently installed Vista Ultimate. Everything was working great. Then I
installed Office 2007 Ultimate - and as soon as I activated it, specific
actions on my computer began slowing down. In particular, when I open
certain folders (such as "my documents") even if they are empty - it will
take approximately 20 seconds before that window will actually open up.

To test my theory on Office 2007 being the culprit, I clean installed again
with Vista. Everything working fine. Then I installed Office 2007 and did
NOT activate it. Everything still working great (used for entire day). Then
I activated Office this evening - and as soon as I did, I was having problems
again. The biggest problem is simple navigation.

Is there some function I can turn off to speed things back up? Or should I
just revert back to Office 2003? Any help would be tremendously appreciated.

 

[eyc908]

I suppose I should elaborate some more. Here are the specs on my machine:

Winodws Vista Ultimate
Intel Pentirum M prcessor 1.6 GHz
1.5 GB RAM
60 GB HD (35 GB free)
ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9000
McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8.5.0i
All drivers and updates up to date.

I only have about 10 Word Documents on the drive. No other files have been
transfered - no other applications have been installed.

Up to this point, with every driver and update installed, and after
installing McAfee VirusScan, I changed nothing. Only after activating Office
did I experience any sort of problems.

Another unique quirk/problem that I've encountered since activating Office
(on both occasions), is something very strange. When I type URL's into the
address bar of IE7 in this form "www.google.com" it takes a good 20 seconds
before it will actually reach that page. If I type it in this form
"http://www.google.com" I get taken there immediately. -- I verified on both
occasions that prior to the activation of Office, this problem did NOT exist.