when opening a .doc it says its not available

[JOHN]

when i try to open a word file .doc it refuses to open.
word 2003 starts up then a box appears stating the name
of the file..was not available. If i try to open it from
word itself it does the same thing.
i am using win xp pro sp1 with office XP then upgraded to
office 2003.
first problem i noticed is every time i close out word
2003 it wants to save a file normal.dot
I've tried renaming but no use.
I installed the toubleshoot utility and made a shortcut
to to the template file. however when i launch the
shortcut it simply says it could not load support.dot,
even though the path is correct.

i tried unisntalling office xp but the problem persists.
i can't open word docs and everytime i close word 2003 i
get this normal.dot thing.

can anyone help? the knowledgebase was unable to helpme.

 

[JOHN]

i did a test. i installed winxp pro sp1 on a clean hdd,
then installed office 2003 pro and there error does not
appear.
someone else here had winxp pro, installed office 2k3
ontop of office xp and they not get this problem with
normal.dot everytime they go to close word.