Over the weekend a relative of mind took the liberty of cleaning-up my computer, deleting some temp files and cookies, supposedly in order to make my machine more efficient. He also might have downloaded some stuff...since that point, every time I try opening excel,word or powerpoint it will open for approx. 5 seconds and then screen is replaced by desktop screen. Same holds true when openning a saved file. Is it possible this is a config. problem? Or can this be some sort of bug...everything else works o.k. Help is appreciated...Thanks in Advance..

could be, but it sounds more like he deleted or damaged some critical files. Try this: delete the normal.dot template which you can find in c/program files/microsoft office/templates. Then try opening the program. You could also try to repair office from the cd. good luck:)

sue...do u mean "normal.template"?? If this does not solve the problem what have I affected by deleting "normal.template"? Unfortunately I do not have Office cd's...programs came bundled..tx.

it's the template called normal.dot. If you delete it, the program will recreate it the next time you open it. A corrupted normal.dot can cause all kinds of strange problems with word. It wouldn't hurt to do a virus scan, mind, but the fact that the problems seem to be specific to office applications makes me think that it might be a corrupt normal.dot file. Do you have a recovery cd for your system? Can you use it to restore/repair the bundled software? You could try that, too. HTH

sue..yes, I do have a "compaq recovery cd". Is that the one I should use to SELECTIVELY restore the excel,powerpoint and word?? As you can see, I am very cautious when it involves software.

If the office software was installed as part of the out of the box computer, it should be on the recovery cd. Check the documentation that came with your system for directions. Have you tried to delete the normal.dot file? What happened? (my general rule is, try simple solutions first:))