[Dmitri]

I have a workstation with Windows XP Pro, Office 2003 and some other
programs. Some time ago I had a problem -- some applications from Office 2003
didn't start when launched from the Programs menu or from the 'Quick Launch'
toolbar. E.g., Outlook 2003 says that an invalid command-line argument was
given (I cannot reproduce the message literally, since I have a Russian
version of the MS Office and the message is in Russian). Excel reports that
it couldn't find files "Files\Microsoft.xls" and "Office\Office11\Excel.exe",
but at the end it starts.

I have re-installed Windows XP and Office and for a couple of weeks Windows
ran fine. Recently, the problem appeared again. I installed the driver for a
HP scanner, scanning software (HP director) and started scanning. After 40 or
50 pages, the HP Director suddenly said that it cannot start scanning:
"Improper command-line arguments." The message was so similar to those I had
seen before that I tried to run Outlook and immediately I got the same
message about invalid arguments.

When I try to start Outlook from Start-Run-"outlook", it runs happily. When
I launch it from Explorer but double-clicking on the executable, it doesn't
complain. Actually, I could easily live this way, but, unfortunately, the
inability of HP Director to run the scanning program is more serious.

FWIW, I think that the problem may be with registering the appropriate
classes in the OS, but I have no idea where and how to fix it.

Any clues?

Thanks!

PS: No, it's not Sircam virus. I checked it both visually
(exefile\shell\open\commmand in the registry) and with McAfee Virusscan.