I've seen this occur now on two separate operating systems, so the OS is out. I just installed MS Office 97 (newest version I have :) on a Home XP pc, BUT I slaved the old drive into this new pc. The fact that the same Word docs are being used, makes me think it is one of the above but I've not had any luck finding the source using both McAfee and Norton.

There are no listings for any macro virus that has the capability to remove the winword.exe file (source Google, AltaVista, groups.google, MS KB, McAfee, Norton, etc.)

Any thoughts would be great.