Word keeps shutting down for no reason

For sometime now when I use word for no reason I get an error that says

"MS Word has encountered a problem and needs to close. Sorry for the inconvenience. "

Than it has a check box with the option of recovering my work and restarting Word.

Than it has the 2 buttons on the bottom to send an error report or not.

If I chose to recover the work it saves it and then it tries to shutdown again with the same message. I feel like it's groundhog day.

Sometimes I can work for a while before I get the message and other times it comes before I can even start typing anything.
The only thing that helps at all is rebooting and that's only sometimes. Can anybody help?
Thanks
Floyd

 

Yes I have. In fact I think I even reinstalled Office also sometime ago, although I'm not positive. It does it somewhat erratically and sometimes to even a brand new file before I start to type. It almost acts like a virus but scan whole disk daily with McAfee and get update daily.
I also run Adaware,Spybot search and destroy,Clean Cache,and Spyware Blaster on a daily basis also.
Floyd

 

Win XP Home, with all updates done except the new SP-2.
MS Word 2002(10.66121.6626) SP3.
Floyd

 

See whether Word closes if launched with the /a switch (click Start - Run and type "winword.exe /a" (without the quotes)).

 

Brett, I rebooted a couple of times and now it seems to be working again, although I full expect that to be somewhat temporary. I did save your post and will try to use your suggestion next time it acts up.

By the way what does that do exactly so I know?

Thanks again for yours and Pete's help. I really appreciate this resource.
Floyd

 

Click.