Opening documents fails.

[thowell...@gmail.com]

I use Windows XP Professional and have run in to an interesting
problem. I'm having issues opening certain documents from the
explorer.

Double-clicking a document will normally open the associated
application, load my document, and I'm ready to rock-and-roll. What's
happening to me is that I double-click the document - in this case an
Excel spreadheet, the window freezes for over a minute, finally Excel
starts and loads my document. Now if I start the application first -
which in the case of Excel takes about 15 seconds - and File -> Open
or drag-and-drop it works fine, no delays. In another case, when I
attempt to open a JPG (or any other) image via Paint Shop Pro I get
the same minute or so delay but after loading the application I get a
dialog that says: "Windows cannot find (filename). Make sure you typed
the name correctly, and then try again." Again, if I pre-load the
application and File -> Open or drag-and-drop it loads immediately and
without incident.

This is a relatively new installation of Windows XP. I do run anti-
virus software - both an on-demand scanner and a real-time scanning
service. While this affects Office documents and image files (Paint
Shop Pro) other applications like Quicken and Acrobat load documents
fine. I have tried to repair the Office installation but that changed
nothing. I have tried to reinstall both Office and Paint Shop Pro to
no avail as well.

Any suggestions?

With regards,
Tom Howell-Cintron