word only opens in safe mode

[vanderloo]

I'm finding old posts on other forums that claim to have the solution to my issue but the links to the solutions are dead. I'm getting this message when trying to open Word-


"Word failed to start correctly last time. Sarting Word in safe mode will help you correct or isolate a sartup problem in order to successfully start the program.
Some functionality may be disabled in this mode. Do you want to start Word in safe mode?"
I've seen references to the word.dot file in the registry being corrupted but am not sure what I'm supposed to do with it. I've also read that some add-ins can cause this issue but I have none. I'm using Office 2003 with front page. I've seen a few posts saying an un/re-install didn't help. Did a system restore twice. The problem persists.