Hi cookiegal,
I run both Office 2000 and Office 2007 on a 32-bit Win 7 PC (and did so on a Vista PC before that), with no issues. Since you're having problems with both the 64-bit and virtual 32-bit environments, that suggests an issue with your Win 7 installation, rather than with Office, per se, or, if the virtualisation uses components from the 64-bit installation, the same Office issue is affecting both.
Since a repair didn't help, try the approaches suggested here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/921541
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/...artingWord.htm and
http://lounge.windowssecrets.com/ind...owtopic=197827
for various series of troubleshooting steps that will help you track down (and hopefully solve) the problem.