Involuntary shut down of Word and Excel when lose focus

[Ann]

on two different machines, both running Win2000 OS and Office 2003, over the
past week, several times Word and twice Excel has been open and running and
then just shut down. No message, just blinks and closes immediately. When
restarted, the program displays the 'recovery' sidebar.

initially this was notice when printing, both different systems have HP
printer. We deleted all printer management programs and are now running the
printer through Win2000, with only the .inf installed. After this was
changed, the situation continues, on an apparently random basis. sometimes
many other windows are open, sometimes it is the only one. It is not always
on 'print' either.

any ideas?

thanks much.