>Sorry, Nadya, I'm out of ideas. Thought it would be an easy one and as it turns out it's a real nasty .....
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>It appears word is asking for a lot of memory when starting. Maybe you can start by turning off the spelling checker and see what happens

Thanks, Gregory. I think, my problem is how can I control what programs are running in the background. E.g. there are several programs running as startup which I never use and really do not need. What is the proper way to take control of my Windows XP behavior?