Office Apps cause spooler to hang PC

[Jonathan]

When ever we try to open an office application (esp word) the spooler
service (spoolss on NT and Spoolsv onW2K) eats all of the processor time and
does nothing. Other Office applications only seem to do this when a user
selects print.

It doesn't happen on every users PC, it happens on a mix of Office setups
(Office XP or Office 97).

The PC's are running NT4 sp6a, or Windows 2k sp4. The printers are all
networked, controlled by an NT4 sp6a Server.

Any ideas as to what is causing the spooler to behave this way, and how I
can correct it would be good.

Regards

Jonathan