Well the good news is that the winword.exe /a does make
it work.

The bad new is that I still cannot run Word & I appear to
have 7 Normal*.dots

6 are in Documents & settings
Normal   - D&S\rwj\recent
Normal   - D&S\jj\app data\MS\template
Normal03 - as above
Normal   - D&S\rwj\app data\MS\template
Normal03 - as above
Normal04 - as above

and 1
IE - Normal - My Computer.

Incidentally, I forgot to mention that I have been using
Norman AV (Not Norton) for around a year without a
problem. My system is Windows XP Home ed, and a couple of
days ago when I closed word it said that "changes had
been made to Normal.dot" I thought I had said NO to the
save but maybe I did not.

In MS\office\start up there is a file called sspiro97.dot
131KB, and one called ~$piro97.dot 1KB and if I rename
one and try to start Word it just recreates another 1KB
file?

Do I rename 6 of the Normal*.dots?

Richard