Outlook not closing winword, excel etc

[dilligaf]

First time at this, let's give it a go.

I have XP Pro, Service Pack 3 and Outlook 2003 SP3. Recently my machine started slowing down. When I looked under Task Manager, I noticed loads of instances of Excel (if I've opened a .xls attachment) and Winword were open (Outlook using words as doc editor). When I close Outlook, it stays listed in Task Manager, as well as the instances of Excel and Winword. I have to kill Outlook using Task Mgr to be able to reopen it. Then once re-opened, even more instances of the MS apps appear over time.

This started at the same time as Internet Explorer 7 started crashing whenever I open a forum such as this (now using Firefox). Same situation for IE7 - if I exit, it stays resident and shows in Task Mgr.

I'm just sick and tired of having to clean up manually after IE7 and Outlook. My main concern is that eventually I will corrupt my email file if I keep closing Outlook manually.

Any suggestions ? All welcome....