Outlook 2003 won't let me use MS Word 2003 as email editor

[John]

I am running XP Pro on a Dell C610 that is maxxed out in terms of RAM and
has a 100GB HD.

Windows Update had me dowmload some updates a couple of days ago and it
seems like ever since then, MS Outlook 2003 won't let me use MS Word 2003 as
my email editor. I can check it but if I try to write a message Word doesn't
open as the editor and then when I go into the Mail Format options, it is
un-checked again. Until now, it has worked fine for over a year.

Any ideas?

Thanks