MS Word tries to connect to the Internet and hangs ???

[AIO]

Whenever I open MS Word, the dial-up dialog of my ADSL connection pops
up, hence I assume that MS Word is trying to connect to the Internet.
(I have Win98SE and Office XP Standard Edition, and the computer is in
my office).

I click on Cancel, fearing it might be a Trojan or something calling
back, and MS Word totally hangs and freezes. The menu items doesn't
work, I can't type a thing on the document. Word completely ignores my
keyboard and mouse clicks. I then have to Ctrl+Alt+Del and 'end' the
Word process in order to get rid of it. This does not effect the entire
Win98SE system, the other programs run fine, even MS Excel, nothing
else freezes.

I made a quick research on the Internet before posting this, and the
only thing I found is that MS Word could be appointed as the HTML
editor in Internet Explorer's Options>Programs. But I'm sure I didn't
change it to MS Word. I can't check now what it is as my computer is in
my office as I mentioned before. But this still wouldn't explain why MS
Word would hang after I cancel the dial-up dialog, would it?

I hope someone could give me a hand on this one. What's going on here
and how can I stop it? MS Word isn't supposed to reach the Internet,
right? Could it be a Trojan well hidden in MS Word or normal.dot?
However, I ran Security Task Manager, a third party program that list
all running processes, even hidden ones and I don't see anything
suspicious there. Your input will be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[John Cello]

Try going to Tools...Options...Service Options and clearing anything that may
try to access the internet. Microsoft apparently assumed that everyone would
have a hot internet connection, so the office programs go there to look for
templates, help, updates, etc.

Hope this helps

John Cello
www.johncelloconsulting.com