Whe I do the same thing
open excel, open the VBE and hit ctrl-r to view the project explorer, I see a
few things open.

funcres(FUNCRES.XLA)
Personal(Personal.xla)
VBAProject(book1)

The first is the analysis toolpak addin.
The second is my set of personal macros.
The third is the new workbook that excel created when I opened excel.

If you only see the bottom one, check under each object (Sheet1, Sheet2, ...,
ThisWorkbook and any Modules) to see if you have code that could be doing the
damage.

If there is code in any of those objects in book1, then you probably have a
book.xlt file in your XLStart folder that has that code in it.

If you don't see code under any of those objects, then it isn't book.xlt's
fault.  (In fact, this book.xlt may not even exist.  It's used for setting up
defaults (margins, headers, ...) for new workbooks.  But most people wouldn't
put any macros in this (at least I don't).)

But there are other types of Addins that do get loaded when excel starts.  MS
makes it kind of difficult to locate them--that's why you have to add that COM
Addins option to your favorite toolbar--so you can find them easier.

You can also specify that excel open all workbooks in a folder when excel
starts.
Tools|Options|General Tab|At startup, open all files in:

For most people, this box should be empty.  You may want to check.

And one other location that could be loading files when excel starts is in the
windows registry.  But that's pretty unusual.  I only remember seeing a couple
of people's post who had this problem in the last few years.

If nothing else works, you may want to look in the registry...

I saved this from a previous post.

In xl2002, the registry key is:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Excel\Options
(look for OPEN, OPEN1, OPEN2, etc.)

I think that these have to be in nice consecutive order.  So you might have to
rename some to make them consecutive again (after you delete the offending one).

And since you're working in the registry, make sure you back it up before you
start.

========
It was for xl2002, so you'll have to look for your version (not necessarily
10.0).

Good luck and if you find the culprit, post back.  It'll be good if Google has
your findings (for other victims, er, users.)