What version of Word are you using? Is it part of Office Suite and do the other programs start up and work okay? Have you recently updated anything through the Microsoft site? Chances are that their lack of support of the older systems is catching up to you, but it shouldn't grind to a halt.

In older systems I used to every so often reinstall my operating system to clean up problems it developed over time. This also means reinstalling updates. I think you can get the old ones from Microsoft but (and John in Kansas will tell you for sure) I think they stopped supporting Win98 a couple of years ago, and Win2000 is also on the block. So what's out there as far as fixes for old problems are all you're going to get.

Good luck.

SRS