After years of Word 2003 usage, my Word installation developed two problems:
(1) a slow winword.exe boot;
(2) a “hang”/delay effect, when switching from other apps to winword (technically, a slow onfocus event response).

In order to fix (1):

browse to
C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR-USER-NAME\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates
and delete every file there is or, at least, normal.dot.
This will force winword to reconstruct the deleted file(s) and, while doing so, to clean garbage that has been appended to the template(s), usage after usage. Just compare the initial normal.dot size (53 KB) to the size it can grow to, after hundreds of Word sessions… (in my case, 2 MB).

In order to fix (2):

launch winword without addins, via the command line, by typing
winword /a

Problems that remain:

my #1 annoyance is the onfocus delay, that the /a switch does fix. So, I have at least one addin causing the issue, but after going to Word’s tools -> templates and addins menu, and having disabled all the listed addins, the software reactivates them on its next launch and the onfocus delay plague is reborn, hence I still can’t find a way to do a regular winword boot without the issue.

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