Just to be sure - it is MS WORD {Part of MS Office?} and not WordPad that is in the XP program/accessories list??

I found a few things -
Or could be a virus or ?? that scrambled the settings...

Open up MS Word and try this settings change-

under "Word Options / Advanced / Display", named "Show all windows in the taskbar". Turning it off hides all Word icons in the taskbar but one. This way, the described behavior disappears, but at the same time, also the ease of restoring a minimized document.]


While you're in the settings/options look through all the other sections to see if anything else looks like it needs to be adjusted.

Or if there is a default button - you could just use that unless you did make changes previously.


If all else fails and you have a disk to reinstall MS Word - I'd uninstall it a reinstall to get it all back to normal.

Or if no disk, just download & install the free Open Office program - it's almost the same and you can open ms word docs with it also.

But I would try the settings first - then run scans & if still does it then uninstall/reinstall or use the other program.