Sorcha (& Mgas re Word 2K)

The generic bad news is that I believe that Word 2000 (and Office 2000) have dropped out of the "supported versions" list for updates from Microsoft. WinME also is unsupported. I haven't found confirmation, but since my old Word 2002 went, the older Word 2000 probably did as well.
A complicating factor for outdated programs is that WinME did receive a number of OS updates while it was current. I didn't have WinME running since beginning of automatic updates, but Win2K (with Office 2K) received a couple of OS "critical patches" that needed complementary Office patches for compatibility.

If you succeeded in reinstalling Word 2K from original disks, the Word installation would possibly be lacking updates needed to make it compatible with OS security changes that you might have on your WinME, and I frankly don't know(?????) if you can get Microsoft to give you previously issued Office program updates if Word 2K is "out of support."
Note that I haven't checked recently on the status of Office 2000, and have been unable to find anything on what Microsoft policy is with regard to retrieving patches/updates issued while obsolete programs were still supported.

1. Assumption: "Word isn't installed" means that you've looked in Control Panel|Add or Remove Programs and it isn't there. (?)

Caution on Control Panel:
a. Word may not be listed separately, but may be included in an "Office" install even if it's the ony Office program you have.
b. If listed, it could appear as "Word," "Microsoft Word," "Office xx," or "Microsoft Office" or almost any variation of these "somewhat likely" names - or as something else.

2. Question: Have you looked at Start|Programs for Word, Office, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Office, etc and confirmed that it doesn't appear there? If it does by some chance appear there, a right click and "Send to Desktop" would create a new shortcut that might work better than the one you have. (The shortcut could be corrupted.)

3. Question: Can you locate where Word 2K was/(is?) installed?
Since you can workaround the error message and get a new doc open, the "executable" for the program is probably still present, and Windows Explorer should be able to find it. You'll likely need to inclde "search hidden and system files" on the "advanced" search button (remember that I've forgotten what WinMe/Win98 Explorer looks like). The actual "program file" probably is called "WINWORD.exe" since that's been the usual name for all versions that I've seen since Word 6.0 for DOS. Searching for filenames containing "Word" should find it.
I would EXPECT it to be at C:\PROGRAM FILES\MICROSOFT OFFICE\OFFICE xx\.

Re the "Office xx": Office 2007 appears as "OFFICE 12" and Office 2002 as "OFFICE 10." Other versions appear to have overlapping numbers, but I don't know of a place where their identities are given so that you can really tell what you've got. (Lin's Office 2003 - original OEM installed - has both OFFICE 10 and OFFICE 11 components.)

If you can find the Winword.exe file, and if Word opens okay when you double-click it, you could just have a corrupted shortcut on the desktop. Right click on the Winword.exe file and either "send to desktop" or create a shortcut and drag the shortcut to desktop - should work. Assuming that a new shortcut from the Start |Programs menu didn't help, a fresh new shortcut from the Winword.exe location might.

If the failure to open happens when you click/double-click on a document file, it's possible that a "filetype association" is misdirected to a wrong location for the Word startup, or that the file extension** has been changed or is incorrect. In recent Windows versions, click on any folder in Windows Explorer, click Tools on the menu bar, on the File Types tab check what program is selected for .doc/.dot and other Word variants.

** This probably is an unlikely thing, but if your Win Explorer is set to Hide Extensions for Known File Types (which I think was an option even in WinME) you might not notice if the file actually is a .docx, .docm, or other "new file format" that may have come from someone running Word 2007, or might have had it's extension changed when the filename was edited. In Win Explorer, click on My Computer, Click Tools on the top toolbar, Folder Options, View Tab, and make sure that hidden & system files are displayed and that file extensions are NOT HIDDEN.

(Note that I don't have WinME to check where the above settings are, but they should be similar to what I've described. – maybe.)

If you have a .docx or .docm file, and DON'T have the filters to convert it to a Word 2K .doc format, Windows might assume that you have a Word 2007 program that needs to be installed. That's not a documented behavior, but Word 2007 is such a bundle of crap (only a personal opinion) that I'd believe it could happen.

Office 2007 (Start|Programs|Microsoft Office 227) includes a "Microsoft Office Tools" with a subutility called "Microsoft Office Diagnostics." I don't remember anything of this sort in earlier Office versions, but if it, or something like it, happens to be there it might help.

IF you can find a folder with "lots of Wordy stuff" in it, especially if the winword.exe is there, you might look for a program-specific "uninstall" file that you could use to clean out an existing semi-installed Word version to allow a clean new install (assuming you have original disk(s)). Office programs don't usually have one, but it won't hurt to look. As a last resort method, you could just delete (or rename or move to somewhere else) everything in the folder, which should allow you to reinstall Word 2K from scratch. Note: this is really a last resort, and should wait until you've tried everything else you can think of.

Removing program components that are setup in registry keys can leave messy "orphan" keys in the registry. If you can get a "new install," sometimes you can then use Control Panel to do a proper uninstall, which sometimes will clear the bent up registry keys, so that you can then do a fresh install to get things to work.

For now, that's probably enough for you to think on, and I can't think of any other easy(?) things to suggest. (Even lots of the above is guesswork, since I've never run WinME and don't have anything close to it to refer to.)

John