Excel Issue. Lag + loading blank when Double clicked.

I think the following may help anyone else who have this issue, I am just unlucky with this one.

Laptop: Dell Latitude Turion dual core cpu, 2gigs ram, ati chipset. Symantec Antivirus 8. XP Pro member of domain. Office2003

Issue: Double click on an excel file, computer brutally lags for over 1 minute then opens a blank half responding excel.
Works fine when you open excel, then file open or drag drop excel files.

I have seen this issue a number of times before and used the following tricks to fix it.. but this time it persists.


What have been done:

My computer, tools, folder options, file type, go to xls and click advanced, open =>Edit and chose program.

Uninstall office, reinstall office.

Test in local administrator profile, no difference so recreating the profile wont help.

Redid again the file association as listed above, tools, folder options, file types, xls, advanced, edit, select the excel exe (in program files\microsoft office, office10 or 11 or 12)
At the end of Application used to Perform Action: I added /e "%1"
then unchecked the use DDE box

I also went to tools options general and unchecked the "ignore other appliocations" box (from the excel software)

Start => Run
excel /unregserver enter
excel /regserver enter


After All That... SAME DAMN ISSUE.... I really think I tried every trick in the book, Most of the listed above usually fixes that exact issue....


Would anyone be aware of something that I may have missed ?
If not, I am strongly considering the classic reformat.

Symantec may slow down the entire computer but to my experience Symantec Antivirus Coorporate is pretty decent unlike that garbage Norton Internet Security.

Long story short my problem is resolved without the classic reinstall.
The culprit was a Windows Update that removed the Temp folder.

So with the temp folder missing, opening files or opening anything that requires storing information in the temp directory would end up in a freezing lag.

So back to my list of solutions... verifying the temp folder
C:\documents and settings\%userprofile%\local settings\temp
Make sure it exists or delete the data inside when one has weird issues.