Word freezes offline

[vc7vc]

I started working at a new company and they loaded Office 2003 on a laptop
for me. I am advanced in Word so I created myself a toolbar button that
hyperlinks to my To Do List that is saved in My Documents. However, My
Documents is located on the company server. Therefore, they set my computer
up so my files would synchronize to my C: drive when I logged off (all of the
My Documents folder icons now have shortcut arrows on them).

The problem is that when I was working offline at home, I clicked my toolbar
button to open my To Do List and then tried to save it but Word froze and the
only way to get the computer working was to press the computer's off button.
When I restarted and opened Word again, Word worked until I tried to save a
file. The company reinstalled Word but that didn't help. By reading, I
found out that some settings are left in the registry. I got another
computer and it was ok for a while but it now has the same problem (and
Outlook freezes when I create a message because it uses Word as its editor).
When I connect via VPN to the company's server, Word still freezes. However,
when I am docked at work, the computer is fine.

Any ideas how to fix this problem?

TIA, Vivian