Help: document or URL launching hangs/fails

[pdmarks11]

Big problem: I can no longer open Office documents or URLs from either
Window Explorer or Outlook. (Think about how often you do this every
day!)

- From Windows Explorer it hangs (2-3 mins) then fails with: "there was
a problem sending the command to the program".
- From Outlook (shortcuts, URLs) it hangs (2-3 mins) then eventually
opens

Outside of Office/Windows Explorer, it works fine:
- Copy+pasting URLs directly to IE works fine;
- opening documents from File->Open in any Office document works fine.

What is the source of this "launching" behaviour and can it be reset to
the Windows default somehow?

Microsoft.com/support has no answers. I have tried the following based
on similar problems in newsgroup postings, with no help:

- I disabled and exited firewall (ZoneAlarm) and antivirus (CA eTrust).

I also confirmed that 127.0.0.1 and 0.0.0.0 were already "trusted
networks" in ZoneAlarm.
- I used "Detect and Repair" from Word and Outlook
- I ran a complete virus scan with new signatures
- I ran a complete MS AntiSpyware scan, cleaned two minor offenders,
and rebooted
- Removed COM add-in from Outlook (Google search) and rebooted

This began last week and continues. I'm running Windows XP Pro SP2,
Office 2003, IE 6.0

 

[pdmarks11]

This happens from *any* Office application, not just Outlook. (And
Windows Explorer too, as I mentioned.) Clicking URLs or shorcuts to
other documents always triggers this behaviour.