Office XP slows down with time

I still can't seem to figure out why this is so. I'm using Office XP SP3, and
when I first boot my computer, everything runs perfectly. However, when my
computer has been running for awhile, Office programs and functions begin to
slow down quite dramatically. Basic functions like saving, formatting text,
opening (in Word/Excel), creating graphs.. all these functions take forever.
I could wait sometimes 1 min before a box pops up after I select "Format
Text".. During these times CPU utilization shoots up to 50+%; I have a 2.6GHz
processor with 2GB RAM. I've checked with antivirus as well as malware/adware
apps, nothing abnormal. Perhaps it could be a hardware issue? I do have
Norton Systemworks 2005 installed but I've removed the Office plug-in, and no
change. But I don't think this is the problem because it was running
perfectly fine last time with Norton installed, this was before I reformatted
my computer. I'm really quite desperate, don't know whats going on. Anyone
have any comments/suggestions/thoughts? Much appreciated.

Have to ask, after the format, reinstall of win, you installed manufacturers
chipset & other drivers and did'nt rely on winupdate?

"novasonicse" <novasonicse@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:F9E79B8D-5AF3-4968-A247-7D2D61CBB009@microsoft.com...
>I still can't seem to figure out why this is so. I'm using Office XP SP3,
>and
> when I first boot my computer, everything runs perfectly. However, when my
> computer has been running for awhile, Office programs and functions begin
> to
> slow down quite dramatically. Basic functions like saving, formatting
> text,
> opening (in Word/Excel), creating graphs.. all these functions take
> forever.
> I could wait sometimes 1 min before a box pops up after I select "Format
> Text".. During these times CPU utilization shoots up to 50+%; I have a
> 2.6GHz
> processor with 2GB RAM. I've checked with antivirus as well as
> malware/adware
> apps, nothing abnormal. Perhaps it could be a hardware issue? I do have
> Norton Systemworks 2005 installed but I've removed the Office plug-in, and
> no
> change. But I don't think this is the problem because it was running
> perfectly fine last time with Norton installed, this was before I
> reformatted
> my computer. I'm really quite desperate, don't know whats going on. Anyone
> have any comments/suggestions/thoughts? Much appreciated.

Yes, that's correct. I got all my ASUS/AMD/nVidia drivers from the net after
I reformatted; this was done probably a few months ago and I actualyl ahven't
gotten to using WinUpdate till recently. Still had problems before I updated,
though.