MS Excel - recent problems

Anyone else getting this?

Recently, a co-worker was telling that their MS Excel (Office 2000 version) was taking a while to open on their system. I thought that this might be down to the single system itself but then another and yet another started reporting the same issue. I, too, have had it happen.

So, it seems system-wide. We have Norton AV and all are up-to-date and run every Friday. Thus, I do not think it is a virus (but going to check on Norton just to be sure). Also, going to run "Detect and Repair" and see if that helps.

It just seems wierd that multiple systems would get to this point if there wasn't something affecting Excel across the LAN. All the files that they are accessing are either on their own CPU or in some cases are on the network CPU.

We have a basic peer-to-peer network. Most of the Excel slow-downs are on systems running WinXP (home or pro) w/ SP2.

Any ideas/suggestions?

Thanks.